Hi Cecil,

We are an SBT reseller in the process of switching to another product. We don't do custom SBT development, but I can tell you what I know about the market (which isn't much <g>).

>I would like to know more about these two Visual FoxPro-based products from developers who have worked with them.
>
>Questions:
>
>(1) What is the market now for accounting software? There was a time when SBT FoxPro developers made quite a premium in contract wages; I believe that day is gone.
>

Be sure to avoid VisionPoint. It is my understanding that it is now in "maintenance mode", but Pro Series is still under development. All of our clients use VisionPoint, which is why we are switching to another product. Pro Series is a higher-end product and costs quite a bit more than VisionPoint. I'm not sure how the pricing compares to AccountMate, so you might want to check that out.

>(2) Do either of these vendors sell their internal Visual and Non-Visual Class libraries, or do they only give an application class layer?
>

I believe that SBT provides all of the source code. Like Randy said, AccountMate limits what you can have. I have heard some complaints about this, but I don't know how much it really affects development. IAS Advance provides source code and a framework for development. I believe their pricing is in line with SBT Pro Series.

>(3) How are these companies doing financially? What is their market share? With even large companies going belly up, we can't be too careful these days.
>

Also, I wonder how the market will be affected when Microsoft and Intuit enter this space.

>I may have other questions later, but maybe this is enough to get the ball rolling.
>

Our approach has been to build our application using one of the excellent VFP frameworks. We then link to the GL by creating journal entries which are imported by the accounting software. This allows us to link to multiple software packages, and is especially helpful if the client is already using different accounting software than we would provide. The downside is that the application doesn't integrate or look like the accounting software. This approach has worked for us since we deal only with accounts receivable, and we would only get limited use out of the functionality provided in the software.