Need advice about developing accountancy software package.

And without being insulting to the general public, do not overestimate the levels of competence out there. If the software is to be sold as a "simple to use" piece of software, then the end users will, nearly by definition, have little or no experience of PC usage, other than general word/excel/email usage.

Expect a lot of support calls along the lines of "my PC crashed" or "my excel doesn't work" and it'll require a lot of time and effort to either solve their problems or convince them that it's not your fault/responsibility.

I do agree that there is a need for a small but simple accountancy package, but remember that the likes of Sage (with their First Books) is quite well established, easy (ish) to use and they have a lot of resources behind them.

For example, after the budget will you need to issue updates that the user needs to install to take account of new VAT rates, new PAYE rates and changes to the health and pension levies.

AlbacoreA said:

I'm a software developer and I think theres a lot of software thats is shockingly poor with regard to ease of use. Even companies like Microsoft, make some truly appalling obtuse software, despite UAT. In my experience its not unusual for a software company to do hardly any testing or even none. Its very common for software developers to think they know better than their end users, which is why you see so many unfriendly interfaces.

As you say a lot of applications claim to have ease of use, but a lot of them really aren't.

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Very true.

The only way to make software usable is to involve a range of users in the design, prototyping and testing of the software.

No one person is going to come up with highly usable software.

I do find that some have a knack for it, and some definitely don't.

But like you said you have to back it up with a systematic process.

I will have to re-work my software into Microsoft VB, look at branding and website domain names etc. My product should be ready to go at that stage.

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a bad idea. VB is basically a legacy language at this point and will not be supported in the future.

Better of at looking at C# ( from Microsoft) or even VB.Net (a lot difference from VB though).

Instead of selling an application you install on a pc why not think of an application you can host on the internet and users pay a subscription to use? Gives you a revenue a stream and makes it easier to support and upgrade.

you could secure it using https