This past week, testing the new accounting software gave all sorts of weird error messages. It turned out to be something stupid: the code for deleting records wasn’t finished. It screwed up the database and caused mystery errors in other places.
Fixing that still didn’t help for deleted bank transactions. That was a whole ‘nother problem. The new app made a big change from Goldenseal, and all details are still not shaken out.
Goldenseal uses 7 different data classes for bank transactions. All checking transactions are lumped together. Ditto for cash, credit cards, escrows, etc. To show records for just one bank account, the code pretty much does a Find. For various reasons, there’s no way to see windows for two different checking accounts at the same time. Sometimes it’s awkward.
The new accounting app lumps all non-escrow bank transactions together. Then each account keeps track of its own transactions. You can view transactions for as many bank accounts as you want, all at the same time. The interface is better, but it makes some things more complex.
One example: tabs and window titles show the bank account name, but the data is bank transactions. Everything else only needs one class ID for both, so a lot of code assumed that. I think we switched back and forth several times, fixing one bug for banking and making a new one. Now everything uses two separate classes, and things work OK.
There are more oddities, but our staff is tracking them down.
Meanwhile, the new accounting software is down to 3 possible names. We will register domains for all three, just in case the trademark registration falls through. We learned to be cautious after the 1990s rewind from BidWorks to BidMagic.
Also, the TurtleSoft website is switching to a different hosting service. There may be brief outages over the next week.
Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com
