Turtle Creek Construction computerized in 1986, soon after the Mac Plus came out. Microsoft Excel was our go-to app for almost everything. It worked great for construction estimates. Less ideal for job cost accounting, but good enough. We even used it to print invoices.
TurtleSoft began in 1987. Retail has more data and less math than construction. We soon found that Excel wasn’t the best tool for selling estimating software. Luckily, we discovered FileMaker. Together, the two apps met most business needs. Problem was, they didn’t talk to each other. Neither app could do it all on their own.
Goldenseal accounting software happened because we needed a better way to run things. It was frustrating to enter everything twice.
From the beginning, Goldenseal was built for our own software business, as well as for construction companies. We made it look like what we already used every day. Breakdown tables copied Excel, mostly. The rest of the interface came from FileMaker. The look and feel were different enough that we didn’t get sued.
The biggest addition was posting. Enter material purchases, and Goldenseal posts them all over the place. It creates instant payouts or adds to Accounts Payable. It updates job costs, T&M billing for projects, and current prices for estimating. It adds things to inventory. That’s what was missing from the Excel/FileMaker combo.
Almost all Goldenseal business transactions do some posting. They also link to related records with a button, a menu or a double-click. Connections make the data more useful.
Posting is what our staff has been working on the past few weeks. Most of the code was already OK as is, but some was affected by design changes.
TurtleSoft Pro is less like FileMaker, now. Our staff has learned many new interface tricks since the 90s. But, some of the improvements affect the posting process. For example, Goldenseal pops up a bank transaction window when you pay for a purchase. That’s not so easy in the new single-window interface. We finally decided to skip the extra window. Often it was just distracting. The PAID watermark already lets you know it’s done.
Bank transactions changed, and that affects almost everything. It’s not just that we merged the former cash, checking, credit card, loan and savings accounts. The old app also used different layouts for deposits, checks, payments and transfers, plus even more layouts for breakdown tables. Now, everything shares the same layout. It’s simpler, but different.
Action dialogs also do a lot of posting. Reconcile, Pay Bills, Deposit Funds and Job Costs work well now. We’re currently testing Project, Sales and Rental Billing. Last on the list is Write Payroll.
Payroll was the last thing we added to Goldenseal accounting software. That and estimating took a few years to get completely right. Likewise, they will be the last things to be finished in TurtleSoft Pro. The basics are already done for them, but their quirks may take a few weeks.
Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com
