Custom Software Projects
Gaming Projects
Over the years I've had several people commission me to write custom horse race handicapping programs. These have frequently involved Beyer and other speed handicapping projects, For a number of years this resulted in a package called Winning Edge Horse Racing that was sold at several places including the Gamblers General store in Las Vegas.
I also spent a few months working on accounting software for a company in Las Vegas that merged this with slot maintenance software. This included inventory control, bar-coding, and maintenance scheduling.
Two other elements here were a football handicapping package and a baseball handicapping package.
Restaurant Projects
A number of years ago I wrote a program for a small accounting office for restaurant payroll. This project was interesting as it had a number of special features regarding tips. This was an Albuquerque New Mexico Visual BASIC project.
Specialty Manufacturing
Manufactures have a number of special needs. I've worded with project costing issues, machine control, recipes, and even machine depreciation. Many times these are small projects that merge with standard accounting packages such as PRO or Peachtree. Assigning costs to a job from accounts payable can be time consuming if done manually. Setting it up with software can both save accounting time and expense and increase accuracy resulting in better and more accurate bids. These projects were Visual FoxPro and were done in Las Vegas, Nevada, Henderson, North Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga California. These were Visual FoxPro projects.
Job costing software often involves timing. When does stage one have to be done. What parts have to be available for the assembly state to be started. Standard accounting software is often week in this area. Many custom manufactures need to do a great deal of part substitution. While a component may be similar the vendor it is purchased from may have changed the price or part number. This is often beyond the capabilities of simple kit routines found in many accounting packages. Several of the projects I've worked on deal with this issue. The first of these was in Henderson Nevada, others were in San Bernardino, Loma Linda, Newport Beach, and Arcadia California. These were Visual FoxPro and ACCESS projects.
Tracking who bought what can involve a lot of data and may require extremely fast response. One of the project I dealt with for this issue required allowing customer service to know all the products a customer had bought by the got through an opening sentence of 5 words. We used the phone number for this. This project started out in Santa Monica and ended in Ventura California.
A lot of industries get involved. Specialty manufacture includes eye glass lenses manufacture, specialty rubber, machine tools, aluminum products, software, and even barbeques,
Marketing Projects
The better you know your customer the better service you can deliver. That still means you can make more money. Unsurprisingly a number of projects come out of this area. As mentioned earlier one project involved product registration. Another project in Pasadena California tracked utility stock buyers. Sales growth trend projects can help determine if you are still on goal. A new area of interest is SOE or Search Engine Optimization. This involves both getting noticed and increasing sales. A lot of this has been done in Tustin California.
Church Accounting
One of the early Albuquerque projects was a church donation records program. This also resulted in a retail package that sold to Catholic churches in Canada. Another, church area that dealt with donations and welfare was a package for Catholic Social Services in Albuquerque. Both of these project started in BASIC. The first ended in FoxPro. Another non-profit job was to track grants for a small school funding project manager.
Legal Software
Before FoxPro there was DACBASE and dBase. I did a number of projects in both of these. Some for the Air Force, others for Political Parties. The larges of these was a package for an Personal Injury attorney in Albuquerque, NM. This was a case management package. We tracked types of injuries, merged with Class ACT accounting. We even had info about the personal preferences of opposing attorneys. It was quite an interesting job.
SQL and other merges
Some of the more interesting projects over the years have involved merging data. Currently this usually involves SQL tables. Setting up Front ends to merge SERVICOM/H2 plumbing/scheduling software with Peachtree has been a major accounting project. In this case Peachtree had the strength in Accounts receivable and H2 has the strength in service business work orders and scheduling. Using Enterprise manager to set up special EXCEL and QUATRO PRO reports as well as FoxPro to set up special imports into the General Ledger (GL) is fun. One of the issues is that only partially paid accounts need to be individually imported to Peachtree. Cash jobs can be summarized and imported in that way. Mailing list can be exported directly to labels. In the past I've imported data from COBOL programs and sent data to them. This has even included data going to the IRS. Pulling data regarding charges off the Web and importing it can present the challenge of a HTML exports to CSV/EXCEL not being in standard form.
SAGE/ACCPAC/SBT PRO and Vision Point
These modifiable accounting packages have been around for years. both are complex relational database backends in DBF or SQL format. Moving the data between them means understanding data dictionaries. I've worked on projects with these that involve service stations, real estate, cigar stores, manufacturing, software, Mas 90, medical supplies and many other things. In some case the packages were modified to run in clipper and DOS in other cases they were in the latest XP Pro environment. Data has needed fixing or changing.
Accounting and Programming
Most programmers don't understand accounting and most accountants don't understand programming. That results in a lot of unnecessary problems. For instance I've frequently seen invoices that don't add up, audit trails that don't exist, and cost recognition that doesn't exist. One recent statement I ran into was why shouldn't we consider it a sale if they paid for it. What does it matter that we don't have it to deliver. We got the money Needless to say it mater to the customer and the inventory manager. I don't know how many times I've had an accountant say "Oh, we have that in a spreadsheet." Frequently that means that it takes half a dozen spreadsheets and a day or two's work to figure out something that proper use of an accounting database could tell in a few minutes with a few keystrokes. Along the same lines there is the issue of the bookkeeper who maintains that sheet leaves and nobody can find it again or it's there but what is the password. Excel can be really good at blocking with passwords. Properly structured and maintained software solves these problems
Training is another area that often seems to get short shift. One unfortunate problem is that I've been asked to create a report on a number of occasions that exists. It's just nobody noticed it on the menu. Training solves that problem. This is particularly true of low ends like Peachtree and QuickBooks. Likewise people often spend huge amounts of time waiting for reports that should take seconds to generate because they have out grown their system. How much does it cost to take 20 minutes to run a sales report that a more expensive and powerful accounting package 1 minute to run. How much does it cost to have the data be inaccurate. It's not just the cost of letting a clerk sit around, it's also the likelihood that after a time or two people get sick of looking for the data and guess. Not knowing some data can produce other kinds of costs. Failure to do check rectification can result in extra fees or a lost check appearing for an amount you never expected because you didn't write it. Training saves money.