Peachtree's 3rd Party Page

[Robert Walraven]

Recently Peachtree redesigned their web site and apparently have removed the page where the third party vendors Wizard and Real Trak had listed add-on products. (We dropped off the page a long time ago because we couldn't afford the $10,000/year extortion fee Peachtree wanted for nothing more than a link.)

I wonder what Peachtree's agenda is here. The page certainly cost next to nothing for them to maintain and they are throwing away $20,000/year that the two companies were paying. I suspect this has something to do with Sage trying to completely control the Peachtree marketplace. Rather than encouraging people to keep with Peachtree by supporting third-party products, I suspect they want to limit the capability of Peachtree to encourage customers to upgrade to Mas90.

Bob Walraven
Architect of PawCom

[dringstrom]

Robert,

I concur with your thoughts, particularly on the $10,000 "fee". It may be that Sage is conceding the low-end accounting package market to QuickBooks, similar to how Lotus 1-2-3 lost the war to Excel.

Intuit has certainly raised the bar by recently publishing an API, and implenting a developers program that makes it much easier for 3rd parties to hook into their software. It doesn't look like we'll be seeing anything similar for Peachtree until at least next year, if ever. Of course, that's good for you, because such functionality would compete directly with PawCOM.

In my view, much of the value in Peachtree is that it can be leveraged in several ways:

- import/export
- Dynamic Data Exchange
- PawCOM

Thus, in many instance, is makes for a great foundation for a customized accounting package. Peachtree serves as a great respository for transactions, but sometimes users need external programs to facilitate creating the transaction itself, or to generate necessary reports that are impossible within the software.

I don't see it as much of a loss that Sage took away the third party page. It wasn't a true representation of what's available in the market place. Most savvy users can locate add-on products or consulting services for Peachtree by using Google or following this forum. Periodic revamps make it difficult to locate information on the Peachtree website anyway. Plus, I chafe everytime that I have to sign-in to use the "Knowledge Center." Peachtree's goals would be much better served by improving the product, rather than following my foot steps around their support site.

In any case, if Sage were to cripple or discontinue Peachtree, I for one don't see MAS90 as the next step. I'd switch gears and throw in with Intuit instead.

David

[Robert Walraven]

In any case, if Sage were to cripple or discontinue Peachtree, I for one don't see MAS90 as the next step

I don't think Sage will be crippling or discontinuing Peachtree. Their reason for buying Peachtree was to have a huge base of low-end users who, when their accounting needs outgrow Peachtree, can be convinced to move up to MAS-90.

Sage also feels it is important to make Peachtree as profitable as possible so that they can pump it up in their annual reports to shareholders. They have already done so, indicating that the profitability has increased significantly since they took over. To this end we have seen a whole series of add-on functionality from Peachtree, each of which is intended to add new revenue streams. I think the message is that if Peachtree is not making money themselves from an add-on, they are not interested.

What Peachtree is not taking into account is that having third-party add-ons available encourages more people to switch to Peachtree. I suppose the way they see it is that it is more likely to keep the customer base happy and not want to upgrade to MAS-90.

[jag]

An interesting point here is that MAS90 has a lot of third-party apps designed for it (and you can see them in their website). That makes you wonder why they would use a different strategy with another of their own products.

Just my $0.02

[TheWolf]

Originally posted by jag
An interesting point here is that MAS90 has a lot of third-party apps designed for it (and you can see them in their website). That makes you wonder why they would use a different strategy with another of their own products.

Just my $0.02

I agree. I think Mr. Walraven's assessment as to why they removed the page may be incorrect.

[jag]

My intention was not to question if Robert is right or wrong. I was just pointing out the discrepancies between the marketing strategies of those two products. Just so you know, I agree in part with Robert's opinion.

They way I see it is that SAGE/BEST is now marketing MAS90 to a lower end user level (the part that PT2000 was intended to cover). And many third party apps (such as PawCom, just to mention one) gets in the way of this. I'm no expert here, but I believe that one of the best features of PawCom is the ability to generate many other reports (which Peachtree's CR can't even do or they are very complicated). From my experience one of the main reasons to change accounting software is the need of more complicated reports. What this would mean to SAGE? I'm just using PawCom as an example, but I think that this holds true for many other apps.

As I see it, Peachtree and MAS90 are two totally different worlds. The marketing strategy used in MAS90 probably won't work with Peachtree and vice versa. Anyhow, I still like the idea that a company has all the spectrum of different accounting programs (and I sure hope they develop good conversion programs).

That were my $0.04 (because you have to add the first $0.02) :)

[jag]

One last thing:

Technically, the page wasn't removed. It is just nearly impossible to find.

(As posted in the Peachtree Newsgroup):

Peachtree Main Site -> Third Party Disclaimer (bottom of the Screen) -> View our Desktop Solutions Directory (bottom right corner) -> Complete Listing of all Peachtree Third-Party Desktop Solutions

And also it appears on the Peachtree 2000 section (really incredible as there's no program for PT2000).

What does this third party people would do? It would be interesting to know what Wizard and Real Trak's reactions are on this matter. I'm sure they are not very excited about this changes.

[TheWolf]

I said may be incorrect. I try not to assume why a company does something, no matter how much I like or dislike them. Since Peachtree seems to be a good money maker for Best Software and I think you may actually see an expansion of third party soltuons in the future.

[jag]

I understand your point and I don't mean to criticize it neither. I think that third party apps are needed, and I would definitely like to see more of them in the future. Just as I like to see more integrated programs produced by Peachtree itself in the future.

I'm just expressing my opinion on what does Peachtree meant to do here. The same way I stated my opinion on the come out of Peachtree 2000 (which BTW I was correct). But as you pointed out it is only my opinion and not necesarily what really happened. :)