Projects

Here are summaries of some of the projects we've done. We've been developing software under the name Successful Software since 1981. In that time we've developed applications for a number of different companies and in a variety of industries. What you see described here by no means includes every project we've ever worked on. If you are seeking someone with experience not described here, feel free to call or email us if you would like to talk about it further. (If it turns out that we don't have the experience you're after, we may be able to refer you to someone who does.)

Order / Sales Entry, Billing, Receivables, Payables, Purchase Orders, General Ledger, Financial Reporting, Sales Analysis

We've done a number of projects involving order entry, billing, inventory control, accounts receivable, sales analysis, accounts payable, general ledger, purchase orders or payroll. These were done for a variety of different types of businesses, with varying needs as to the type of data that needed to be captured and processed.

Some projects involved creating a new application "from scratch" to handle Sales Entry / Order Entry. Some of these applications were designed to "stand alone", without interfacing to other accounting applications. Other applications were done in a way that integrated with an existing accounting application.

Some projects involved modifying the source code for an existing "off-the-shelf" integrated accounting application to tailor the application to the needs of the company. This included modifications such as collecting additional data and carrying it through various update processes, and adding new functionality by modifying existing screens or adding new ones.

Other projects involved exporting sales transaction data on a regular basis from an existing accounting application, such as PeachTree accounting (www.peachtree.com) or others, to a new custom database. This was to provide special Sales Analysis or Salesperson Summary reporting not available in the accounting application.

Healthcare

Developed a system for processing medical claims. The system had screens for entering medical claims, pre-authorizing medical services to be rendered, maintaining data on facilities, physicians, health plans, plan members, diagnosis and procedure codes, and procedure fee schedules. It included a seamlessly integrated table-driven reporting system (using Seagate Crystal Reports automation objects). The entire system, including reporting, was designed in a 3-tier architecture for maximum scalability. Data that was analyzed frequently for decision support purposes was automatically loaded on a daily basis into a separate datamart database (using star-schema table designs). This allowed large amounts of data to be queried in seconds.

Developed a compensation system for physicians along with another programmer as part of a four-man team that also included a tester and a report developer. The application involved mechanisms for pooling, allocating, weighting, and adjusting charge and payment transactions to calculate compensation amounts. Transaction were pooled and accumulated by various criteria: Procedure (CPT) Codes, Modifiers, Sites, Sort Keys, Payers, etc. The application also handled capitated payments and fee-for-service transactions.

Food Production

Created an application for a bagel bakery chain to assist with calculating economic order quantities of various types of dough. The application tracked a history of usage which it then took into consideration along with pending orders in suggesting future order quantities.

Time & Expense Billing

Created an application for entering time and expense items to be billed to customers. The application allowed for categorizing various time / expense items, establishing standard rates for various services, and produced summary reports that could then be used to provide customers with documentation of services performed.

Price Quotes

Created an application to assist a supplier with locating the best prices available from a large number of vendors to satisfy a given customer order. The application automatically faxed requests for price quotes to vendors through WinFax Pro software (made by Symantec - www.symantec.com) to facilitate the process of filling customer orders.

Retail / Rental / Point-of-Sale

Developed a Video Rental Store application. The application managed 42 video rental store locations for a chain of stores in San Diego. Each store captured rental transactions and member information at point-of-sale workstations. Data was sent and received via modem to a central office computer network comprised of three large computer systems. The load was balanced across the three computers by having each of the three computers house the data for 10 - 15 stores in the 42-store chain. A customer could be a "member" at one store location with a prepaid movie rental plan, check out a movie at a second location, and return it to a third location, yet the application correctly updated data in the appropriate computer system even if the three stores involved happened to span all three central computers. A transaction was "queued" for updating the moment it was entered by the sales clerk in the store.

This system had many features, including movie reservations, inter-store transfers, ability for a sales clerk to access inventory in other stores, statistics on sales clerk productivity, a system for taking store inventory and immediately reporting discrepancies, tracking of each individual copy of a movie, rental patterns in different geographic areas to assist with projecting future order needs, ability to track rental revenue by title, store, area, etc., ad-hoc reporting down to a detail transaction level, and many, many more features. The decision support capabilities of the system enabled the company to maximize turnover of the product. The operational capabilities of the system enabled them to excel in providing customer service.

Insurance

Made various enhancements to an application designed for an insurance carrier in the Los Angeles area. Improvements were made in the areas of calculating agent commissions and chargebacks, "re-insurance" calculations and reporting, and others.

Mail Order

Modified the order entry software of a men's clothing catalog company to check for "bad risk" orders. This involved checking billing or shipping addresses against a "bad risk" file provided by an outside vendor. The matching made use of a "soundex" algorithm. (This is an algorithm that makes it possible to match up similar-sounding names or streets, and thereby allow for alternate spellings. For example, "Smith", "Smyth", and "Smythe" could be matched with a soundex algorithm.) The algorithm had to be coded by hand on this particular assignment. (In many environments soundex is available as a built-in function.)

Budgetary Accounting

Developed the "Encumbrance Accounting" portion of an accounting system for municipalities. (Other team members developed other portions of the accounting system.) This allowed users to enter initial budgeted amounts for each of their accounts. Throughout the year, updates to the general ledger kept track of how much budgeted money in each account had been "spent" and what was still available. (This application was eventually purchased by several cities in San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. We later did additional custom programming on this software for a city in the Riverside area to improve the accounts payable reporting and to make other enhancements.)

Sales Presentation / Marketing

Created a number of applications for assisting insurance sales persons in making a presentation of their product to prospective clients. Products involved a combination of insurance and investments that could be tailored to an individual client's needs. The calculations required to make the projections for the client were too complex and tedious to be done manually in a timely fashion. The software allowed the sales person to enter client profile data and data related to investment amounts and schedule and have the resulting projections instantly displayed. The calculations made use of insurance rate table information for age, sex, and other factors. The projections could be displayed on the screen or printed out in a 3 - 5 page proposal style.

Handheld Data Collection

Developed programming for a water district in the San Bernardino area for collecting water meter data. The programming was done for Psion handheld computers, and enabled them be used by water meter readers in the field. Data was downloaded to the handheld units in the order that the meter reader would walk his route. The display would include information such as "Dog" or other comments to assist the meter reader in his job. Collected data would later be uploaded to the office computer system and imported into the utility billing application for generating utility bills.

Serial Communications

We've done a number of projects involving serial communications. Some of these were: Interfacing a bar code reader in a point-of-sale environment. Creating software for capturing and storing digitizer output. (This was a large Calcomp digitizer. It was used with a set of blueprints in construction estimating. The output contained measurements, computed area, and counts of construction materials.) Communication with a cash register to retrieve the day's transactions (which it stored internally). Communication with an optical mark reader being used to grade test papers to retrieve its data.

Event Ticket Sales

Created many new screens, reports, etc. for an Event Ticket Sales application. The application kept track of sold / available seats, displayed and printed seat maps, kept data on season ticket sales, printed tickets, etc. Many modifications were made to facilitate the process of selling tickets and to enhance customer service.

Data Warehouse / Datamart

We've created Data Warehouse / Datamart databases. These systems transform data from operational systems to facilitate access to the data with end-user reporting tools. Scheduled load sessions automatically refresh data at regular intervals.

Payroll Direct Deposit

Programming was done to automate the process of payroll direct deposit. Security of the data and reliability of this mission critical process were large considerations. Data was transmitted to the bank via modem. The program had to wait for verification of the data, receive batch totals, and present this and other batch status information to a user. The application included the ability to search through and display payroll data to enable a user to do research when investigating reported discrepancies, etc. The system transmitted payroll data for several thousand employees.

Human Resources

Developed various screens, reports, form letters, and exports of data to spreadsheet software in a Human Resource Database application. This was to keep up with ever-changing government regulatory changes related to HCFA, OSHA, EEO, etc. In addition, reports and spreadsheet interfaces were developed to assist with the process of wage rate review, performance reviews, and tracking of employee licenses and education.

Data Conversion, Import / Export

We've done a number of small applications for converting or "transforming" data or importing / exporting data. Sometimes these were designed to run unattended and check for new incoming data at predetermined intervals. These include moving data between database and text files, moving from one database to another, moving data from one operating system to another (such as between UNIX and Windows), converting from one format of text / binary file to another, converting between multiple record type formats and single record type formats, compressing / decompressing data with "zip" files, conversion between EBCDIC and ASCII, and many other odds & ends.

Privacy Considerations

Created interfaces from / to a customized Human Resource database application to an application designed for Random Drug Testing compliance. Modified the Human Resource database to assist with tracking employees participating in rehabilitation. Confidentiality of data was a large consideration in developing the interface that allowed data to be moved between applications. For example, identifying information such as employee name or social security number could not be moved through the interface, nor be attached to testing samples. Yet, certain information updated in the Drug Testing application had to find its way back to the correct employee in the Human Resource application.

Exchanging Data with Mainframe Systems

Designed and implemented a Human Resources Client / Server application with data on 25,000 employees. The application used Microsoft Access (with a lot of VBA code) and Microsoft SQL Server. The SQL Server database was refreshed from mainframe data, importing change records on a nightly basis. Change records contained only those segments of an employee's record that had changed since the last import. The structure of the import record was table driven in MS Access with the ability to import new record structures from a Cobol copybook. (Mainframe data structures were in a constant state of change by programming staff. The ability to import new structures reduced the programming maintenance that would have otherwise been required on the corresponding SQL table structures.) All processing described here was done through user friendly interfaces using Access screens and menus. This included structure imports, nightly updates, maintenance of user security on SQL Server, table-driven report selection, inquiry screens, etc. Users of the application were physically located throughout the U.S. and accessed the server through remote terminal client software (Citrix Winframe) over a wide area network.