Source Code Lets You Change ANY Aspect of Your Software to Fit Your Business
For companies with unique products or processes; specific preferences; or complicated inventory and ERP components—those requirements can be met by using accounting and ERP software that offers modifiable source code.
It’s common in industries like manufacturing and wholesale distribution for some companies to struggle for years trying to find an accounting system that will work the way they need it to—for example, to manage the details of complex inventory. Source code software lets them change their system instead of changing their company to fit the software’s limitations.
What is source code?
Software source code is the numerous lines of text in a programming language or code, which tells a computer what to do and how to do it. The programmer then compiles (i.e. optimizes and compresses) the source code into the executable software program that you run.
For the vast majority of software programs, such as word processing, spreadsheets and accounting software, you only receive that compiled executable. The software company doesn’t make the editable programming code available to you. This means you can change the small details that the program allows you to change, such as fonts or items in the settings menu of the program. But without the source code, if you want to change anything else you’re out of luck…
However, when the underlying source code is made available, you’re able to go into the software to re-program it (or we’ll do that for you), changing or adding any functionality you want to make it fit your business, and then you compile and use that version instead.
1. Source code is flexible to your unique needs
Access to the source code provides important flexibility to a distributor or manufacturer when they have unique business requirements—because often, no pre-packaged accounting and financial management system exists which fully meets your needs.
Without a source code modifiable system, a business with unique needs may need to abandon a critical process that may be important to their customers, because the software can’t accommodate it. Or they may be forced to handle that process manually—often via piles of Excel spreadsheets—which is tedious, error prone and doesn’t scale to large numbers of transactions.
ACCOUNTMATE FOR SQL – CUSTOM FIELD MANAGER MODULE
ACCOUNTMATE FOR SQL – CUSTOM FIELD MANAGER MODULE
2. Source code provides you with a competitive business advantage
Even if your business doesn’t have unique requirements, are you doing things the same way your competitors are? Even if you’re “doing it better with improved customer service,” customers are too often shopping by price alone—so it’s tough to stand out in your market without offering a unique value proposition.
As you develop new options to offer more value to your customers, and new processes to better serve your customers, those business differentiators can be accommodated by a source code accounting and financial management system—leveraging your innovation to drive growth!
3. Source code is adaptable over time
Clearly, source code allows you to do things you couldn’t otherwise do easily, or at all. But what about when your business requirements change? It’s a huge effort (time, money, business disruption) to swap out the entire “central nervous system” of your business—your accounting system.
A source code available system lets you respond rapidly to business changes by adapting your current system to accommodate new requirements. There’s no need to replace your software and start over.
Even if a non-source-code system initially fits your needs perfectly, the one thing we’re sure of is that your needs will change over time. With source code at your fingertips you can be sure your system can respond as rapidly as you need.
Full disclosure: With great power, comes great responsibility!
Our first job is to talk you out of having us customize your source code.
AccountMate straight out of the “box” is immensely powerful and flexible already. So if your business process automation need can be supported with the built-in features, you can keep all of that custom programming money in your pocket.
When you need AccountMate to automate something unique to your business process, we’ll have a conversation with you about the long-term lifetime value and upgrade cost of that change—not just the short-term initial value and programming cost.
When you really DO need source code modifications, our job is to minimize your future cost of software upgrades.
We do the programming in a way that won’t come around and bite you the next time there’s a software upgrade. You don’t want to be in a position of having to postpone software upgrades for years because the cost of updating your heavily customized system is prohibitive.
To address that risk, we use “loose coupling” rather than “tight coupling.” If 100 lines of code are mixed directly into your software’s source code, that’s tight coupling, and it may constrain your future flexibility. Instead, those 100 lines of code can usually sit outside of the source code, with only one line of new code added in the source code to call that external function.
That means when you update AccountMate in the future, only one line of source code needs to be updated. This also makes it easier and cheaper to update the custom external function anytime.
So what you want is loose coupling!
We talk about this up front with our clients. Unlike some software developers who don’t mind inflating their clients’ programming costs because it’s an easy thing to hide—NexLAN proactively uses loose coupling and other best practices to minimize your programming cost.
AccountMate offers a complete ERP suite of software with source code
For over 30 years AccountMate has provided powerful and flexible accounting and business management software with source code available.
Robust and mature, AccountMate is in use by more than 125,000 users in 200 industries.
- Accounting
- Financial management
- Inventory management
It’s a powerful mid-tier system that affordably does anything that super-expensive customizable enterprise accounting systems do, except with AccountMate you can have things up and running quickly. With many optional modules and add-ons, you only buy what you need.
AccountMate for SQL is the most popular version of AccountMate, with a comprehensive set of modules, all of it with source code available.
AccountMate Enterprise is the newest version of AccountMate, built on the latest Microsoft .NET platform, with source code available, including for all modules.
Partner with NexLAN to use your source code to support your business changes over time
Most users don’t customize the source code themselves (although some do, and that’s great too), so our team specializes in making changes, small to large, whatever you need when you need it.
Prior to “going live,” changes are tested not only by us, but by you too in a separate staging area that has a copy of your system—so we both have ample opportunity to ensure your live system isn’t negatively impacted.
We’re professional and fun to work with. And we believe in “no surprises” by providing not-to-exceed quotes to our clients. So rest easy.
Learn why selecting the right business partner is critical.
We have dozens of references who will be happy to chat with you regarding the quality, timeliness and cost-effectiveness of our AccountMate support and modification services. Don’t hesitate to ask to speak to our clients.
