[moneydance] Now we're in the Big Time!

[Victor Roberts]

Phil Kane wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:01:08 -0500, Victor Roberts wrote:
> 
>>> I suspect that the reason those accountants advised that you move to
>>> Quickbooks is because they never heard of Moneydance and are
>>> unwilling to learn/purchase a new program.
> 
>> Even if they are willing, do you want to pay form their time to learn
>> your program?
> 
>   And who paid for their time to learn their other programs such
>   as wordprocessors, data bases, e-mail, and scheduling and "the
>   other" accounting programs?
> 
>   We use a lot of specialized programs, and that's what overhead
>   costs are all about, at least in my firm's office.  We bill
>   both by the job and by the hour, and learning a new program is
>   not billable.  It's professional development.

So if a customer came to you and insisted that you use a new program
that duplicated the function of a program that you already use, and this
 one customer was the only customer who insisted that you use this
additional program, you would buy and learn it without charge?

I operate a small technical consulting company. All time associated with
   acquisition, training and maintenance of the various computer
programs I use is charged to overhead, as you describe.  However, if a
client came to me and said I needed to use a different program, one that
duplicated one I had and knew could provide the required function just
to be compatible with a program that the client was using, I would
certainly consider telling the client that time used to learn that
program would be billed to them.  If the time required to learn the new
program was a very small fraction of the total time anticipated for a
large project then I probably would not, but if I anticipated only a few
hours of work on the project, such as my accountant provides each year
to my small business, and learning the program might take 25% to 50% of
that time, then, yes, I would tell the client that this would be
billable time.

Vic Roberts