Re: Clear competitive advantage

[Bob Miller <..hidden..>]

Hi Chris,

>         In my area, Sage Simply Accounting is probably in use by about
>         90% of
>         the businesses (yes, 90%), of the remaining 10%, probably
>         about half use
>         quickbooks or other Intuit software, and the rest use
>         industry-specific
>         or mac-oriented software.  Probably the biggest single reason
>         for that
>         is the accountants in this area; many of them won't look at
>         your data if
>         you don't give it to them in such a way they can drop it into
>         simply
>         accounting.  If an accountant will take it, often you have to
>         pay them
>         to convert it, which usually means paying them to manually
>         re-enter all
>         the data into Simply - needlessly expensive.
> 
> 
> That might be a good use case for hosted solutions, and an ability to
> grant an accountant access for a period of time and then disable the
> user.   Why import when you can access and suggest adjustments (in a
> batch or other unapproved transactions) live?  Again though usability
> would be a key there.

Agreed.  One of my customers who dropped lsmb went with a hosted
solution.  it ties in with their google accounts and has feature sets
that simply accounting does not have.  They are quite happy with their
decision...

>         Simply Accounting also
>         won't let you make an obvious mistake.  If you try to do
>         something
>         stupid, it will stop you.  As I am sure we have all dismayed
>         at one
>         moment or another, lsmb happily lets you do whatever stupid
>         thing occurs
>         to you at the moment.  Several times in a row if you insist ;)
> 
> 
> Could you give some specific examples?  Defining "obvious mistake" is
> hard and examples make it easier.  Just to let you know we have
> tightened up certain sorts of controls for certain kinds of obvious
> mistakes here during 1.3 and are working on tightening up some more,
> but examples are really important to get so we can decide how to
> differentiate them from legitimate but very similar workflows.

Hmm..  I may be outdated with this statement.  The two examples that
spring to mind from our old system; you could make a general journal
entry that didn't balance, and you could also link accounts incorrectly,
neither of which is something simply accounting would let you do.
Apparently we have not tried to do either of those things since our
recent migration to a current version of lsmb, so I can't say if those
things still apply.


>          2.  Their accountants will refuse them service or charge them
>         unreasonable amounts of money if they don't use simply
>         accounting. 
> 
> 
> We need to work with accountants then and reach out to them.

Agreed.  These guys are the central pivot point around which potential
customers choose their software.  If these guys like it, customers will
use it.

>          3.
>         Simply Accounting is to dummy-proof and feature-rich not to
>         use when
>         compared to lsmb.
> 
> 
> And we are missing important little things like payroll in 1.3. 

I am still looking for that guinea pig...

Thanks for listening :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get your SQL database under version control now!
Version control is standard for application code, but databases havent 
caught up. So what steps can you take to put your SQL databases under 
version control? Why should you start doing it? Read more to find out.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=49501711&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_______________________________________________
Ledger-smb-users mailing list
..hidden..
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ledger-smb-users