Eagle Business Management Software

[ken_sylvania]

Had some interesting discussions recently with one of the business analysts at ABC Software regarding their ABC Accounting Software. I knew of a number of businesses in the area that use it but had not realized how fully featured the software is. The owners of ABC are focusing on providing a good affordable software for small businesses.

[Neto]

Had some interesting discussions recently with one of the business analysts at ABC Software regarding their ABC Accounting Software. I knew of a number of businesses in the area that use it but had not realized how fully featured the software is. The owners of ABC are focusing on providing a good affordable software for small businesses.

I communicated with a rep from ABC some years ago (for a client), but the business went with Intuit in the end. With EBMS switching to subscription, I need to get in contact with the ABC folks again. (If I recall correctly, they've been doing this since in the middle 70's, and their program is 'lighter' in the sense of what computer power it takes. From what I've heard, most computer programs now-a-days are pretty much full of bloated code, with multiple 'bandaides' 'fixing' programming bugs.

[ken_sylvania]

Had some interesting discussions recently with one of the business analysts at ABC Software regarding their ABC Accounting Software. I knew of a number of businesses in the area that use it but had not realized how fully featured the software is. The owners of ABC are focusing on providing a good affordable software for small businesses.

I communicated with a rep from ABC some years ago (for a client), but the business went with Intuit in the end. With EBMS switching to subscription, I need to get in contact with the ABC folks again. (If I recall correctly, they've been doing this since in the middle 70's, and their program is 'lighter' in the sense of what computer power it takes. From what I've heard, most computer programs now-a-days are pretty much full of bloated code, with multiple 'bandaides' 'fixing' programming bugs.

You're correct. Their speed is phenomenal. And yes, they ran their earlier software for years on the Atari systems, before Microsoft was anything at all.

[QuietObserver]

What advantages does EBMS have over Quickbooks?

Data entry is much faster.
Nearly everything can be done from the keyboard with very little need for mouse imputs.
More advanced feature set and more powerful reporting options (compared with QB Premier at any rate)
Ability to have multiple companies open at once, or even multiple instances of a single company (think customer screen open on one monitor while a GL window or vendor window might be open on the other.
Permanent record of every posting to the various ledgers. (QB may have an audit function that would work for this, but I'm not familiar with it.)

I don't understand why accounting software is so expensive if a local company like EBMS or ABC can create a program that works as well or better as QuickBooks. At this point I use Quickbooks Desktop which is reasonable. I expect to be pushed to a subscription plan sooner or later.

I bought a perpetual TeamViewer remote software 3 years ago for $800 (which I thought was a lot at the time.) Now they're trying to sell me a subscription for $600/ year. They've been offering gift cards and half-price off for the first year. No thanks. I plan to keep using my old version until it breaks. Then, I'll try to find something cheaper. It makes no sense to me why every other technology keeps getting more affordable, but business software keeps getting more expensive with subscription pricing.

[Josh]

I've noticed plain people tend to prefer to buy a capital asset, and prefer not to pay subscription fees.

The software industry had a strong push a number of years back to try to move everything to subscriptions. There was lots of talk about how this would lead to sustainable, long-term revenue growth. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing from customers is that a $20/mo subscription for a piece of useful software is fine - but $100/mo per user is not fine, especially once they are paying multiple vendors those kind of prices. The software industry's sales side seems to have tilted a bit far into trying to milk customers for every dollar.

[Josh]

What advantages does EBMS have over Quickbooks?

Data entry is much faster.
Nearly everything can be done from the keyboard with very little need for mouse imputs.
More advanced feature set and more powerful reporting options (compared with QB Premier at any rate)
Ability to have multiple companies open at once, or even multiple instances of a single company (think customer screen open on one monitor while a GL window or vendor window might be open on the other.
Permanent record of every posting to the various ledgers. (QB may have an audit function that would work for this, but I'm not familiar with it.)

I stopped by a computer shop in rural California last week whose owner still has the first copy of QuickBooks he used, from around 1992. He's been using it and operating it on behalf of customers ever since.

Of particular note was that using the 1992 DOS version seemed to be faster than using modern-day QuickBooks Online, in terms of quick data entry, doing things from the keyboard, and so on.

[JoshScott]

The new SaaS (software-as-a-service) trend is very disappointing. Web browser-based software that depends on the internet is clunky and crippled and undesirable compared to desktop or local network based applications that run natively. You all are right, paying lots more money for something that performed a function just as well under DOS in 1992 as new products do, with few exceptions, is good for the software companies but bad for consumers. We're still using Quickbooks Premier for now, but I expect to transition to something else before too long as Intuit will undoubtedly attempt to force us all to their "cloud" based "solutions". Maybe it's tie to check out ABC. I'd rather run ABC on my Atari (yes I still have 2 Atari computers) then ever sign up for a monthly subscription to some online bookkeeping "app".

[Hats Off]

For me the QBO cloud is way faster than any system where you have to do data entry. I download my customers bank and credit card transactions and use rules to post automatically. If i can't download the bank accounts, I will upload the statements to Auto Entry - they code as much as they can, then download to me again with very little data entry. At one point we used a free cloud program but my assistant said it was too expensive compared with QBO even though it was free. Now you can also use Auto Entry with QuickBooks and Sage to eliminate most keyboarding. Your 2002 version of QB desktop has to be very cheap to match the cost of downloading bank transactions automatically.

[mike]

The new SaaS (software-as-a-service) trend is very disappointing. Web browser-based software that depends on the internet is clunky and crippled and undesirable compared to desktop or local network based applications that run natively. You all are right, paying lots more money for something that performed a function just as well under DOS in 1992 as new products do, with few exceptions, is good for the software companies but bad for consumers. We're still using Quickbooks Premier for now, but I expect to transition to something else before too long as Intuit will undoubtedly attempt to force us all to their "cloud" based "solutions". Maybe it's tie to check out ABC. I'd rather run ABC on my Atari (yes I still have 2 Atari computers) then ever sign up for a monthly subscription to some online bookkeeping "app".

QB Desktop is here to stay in my opinion. There are too many other Windows applications built to sync with it for Intuit to just drop it. I don't think it's going anywhere. Their whole model for developers would have to be upset for these applications to integrate with web-based software. I'm sure it could be done, and as long as the cloud-based version would have the same features and stability, I would be OK with it. I just don't expect it to happen.

[ken_sylvania]

For me the QBO cloud is way faster than any system where you have to do data entry. I download my customers bank and credit card transactions and use rules to post automatically. If i can't download the bank accounts, I will upload the statements to Auto Entry - they code as much as they can, then download to me again with very little data entry. At one point we used a free cloud program but my assistant said it was too expensive compared with QBO even though it was free. Now you can also use Auto Entry with QuickBooks and Sage to eliminate most keyboarding. Your 2002 version of QB desktop has to be very cheap to match the cost of downloading bank transactions automatically.

That might work for somebody who is putting the books together after the fact, but for those of us who keep books to know what our financial position is today - not real helpful.
How do you get line item detail for your invoices that way? And how does that work for customer invoicing, bill payment, etc.?