This post and others like it relate back to an introductory post that explains the point. This is an edited variant of something I wrote in 2007, in this case relating my experience/history with spreadsheets, bookkeeping, tax, timekeeping and accounting related products. In no particular order, the list as best I can remember…
Excel
Google spreadsheets
Lotus 1-2-3
Quattro Pro
Multiplan
Quicken
MS Money
Quickbooks
Peachtree
Juris Classic and Next Generation
Juris Management Console and various utilities
Juris Time Sheet
Juris Expense Sheet
VisiCalc
DAC Easy Rapid Tax
Star Office
OpenOffice
First Choice
TimeForce Qqest time clock
Tranti time clock
XTreme Time Minder
There are probably others I’m forgetting. Some of the above were various versions. The funny thing is, I’ve done support for programmers who were working on accounting software packages, but not ever used the ones in question myself.
I’ve ended up using Excel regularly.
The Juris products are peculiar to law firms, where I supported them, including a big migration from the “classic” DOS version using BTrieve data to a 32-bit version for MSDE or SQL Server.
With my accounting degree, you’d think there’d be a bigger emphasis on this stuff, but not really.
I added the two timeclock systems and the timekeeping software I used internally. For the Timeforce Qquest, I actually set it up, isolated the timekeeping machine on a separate network with the bookkeeper’s computer, helped figure out how to use it, and later fixed a polling problem. For Tranti I wrote documentation for the standalone timeclock, and supported the timeclock software integrated with the POS system. I wrote Time Minder for entering time and categorizing activity based mainly on the wishes of a large XTreme Computing client, but such that it could also be used for any client and internal timekeeping. In an earlier, completely different version I had a stop/pause/resume/start measuring function I thought was cool but wasn’t as needed or useful as expected.
Next up will be graphics and presentations software.