Johannesburg, 23 Jul 2024
South Africa’s Peresoft, an accounting software specialist, has stayed ahead of the innovation curve for over 40 years and recently marked the start of its next decade of growth with new releases for Sage 300 (formerly Accpac).
Founder and MD Bobby Perel says the company’s first innovation came when he wrote one of the first Cashbooks in the world for a micro-computer back in the early 1980s.
Having studied programming in London, Perel borrowed money to buy his own computer.
He recalls: “The IBM PC had not hit the market yet, so we were using a North Star with 256k floppy drives and with Accpac AR, AP and GL. When I saw Accpac, I was impressed by the way everything looked. Solid, quick and logical, and very easy to understand. I got the development kit I needed to write software for Accpac. At around the same time, BSG (Basic Software Group) had developed its own operating system and very clever programming code for writing accounting software, and released its software for the IBM PC.
That big breakthrough was the beginning of a journey for Peresoft that is still going 40 years later. Our products have outlasted so many because of takeovers by Microsoft and other larger IT giants, but our products are still strong and looking stronger for the future.
One of Perel’s early clients was the accountant for Sun International, who required Peresoft’s Cashbook. He notes: “They are still happy users of all our products.”
In 1984, Cashbook for DOS was installed at 20 000 sites in North America, Africa, Asia and Australasia. By 1996, Cashbook for Windows was in use at over 6 000 sites worldwide.
Perel says Cashbook’s success is due to the fact that it simply works, and offers a good support structure. “The software itself is complicated, so we worked closely with the dealer community to train them to install it properly. We have a very solid dealer base of several hundred dealers, all of whom have very sound knowledge,” he says.
“Without someone who knows how to install it, and most importantly, fix it, the software will fail. And what about doing custom imports and interfacing with different invoicing systems? The permutations are endless. Businesses are very unique and require unique solutions. Our dealers are able to do this. They know their stuff.”
RecXpress and EFTXpress were added in 2012, to complete the company’s cash management solutions for Sage 300. Perel says: “These were developed because our users wanted a way to integrate bank statements and required an EFT interface. We have a vast number of users and their feedback has informed the development of all of our innovations.”
With Sage 300 still widely in use and growing, Peresoft products are now rolled out to 100 new sites and 400 new users a year, with a 99% renewals rate among 30 000 users.
Peresoft’s most recent innovations include true automation releases for RecXpress and EFTXpress for direct linking of statements into the product without human intervention. “It also remembers transactions and puts them in the right place. It’s now way ahead of what people think it should do,” Perel says.
Perel adds: “There is now a very strong pull towards software as a service (SaaS), which is a good solution in terms of releasing yourself from the stress of managing hardware. However, there is a risk of downtime if your connectivity fails. The beauty of Sage 300 is you can have it both in the cloud and on-premises.”
As a longstanding technology partner to Sage worldwide, Peresoft continues to develop applications that help modernise the Sage 300 Cloud solution to meet the changing demands of the market.
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