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Flagship Technologies, Inc. -- January 30, 2002 -- For immediate release.


News
Release   
ManagePLUS for QuickBooks™ updates postponed until late 2002...

MADISON, MO -- Flagship Technologies' leading software product line is ManagePLUS, a farm accounting add-on for QuickBooks and Quicken. This news release clarifies the company's plans for future upgrades and changes in ManagePLUS, as described today by company president Mark Wilsdorf.

As detailed in an earlier news release, Flagship Technologies has discontinued future upgrades of the ManagePLUS for Quicken™ product because of soft demand for Quicken-related products and other reasons. ManagePLUS for Quicken continues to be available for purchase by users who request it, but it will not be updated for compatibility with Quicken releases newer than Quicken 2000.

The company does plan to continue updating and enhancing the ManagePLUS for QuickBooks™ product, however, and for good reason:  sales of QuickBooks-related agricultural software and training materials has been solid: "...about 20% above our expectations for 2001," according to Wilsdorf. But needed updates in the ManagePLUS for QuickBooks™ program itself are temporarily "on hold" because of unique circumstances in the QuickBooks-related software development picture.

"ManagePLUS for QuickBooks has been available since 1996," said Wilsdorf. "Since that time we've added a few features, plus minor compatibility updates as each new version of QuickBooks was released. But the core software of ManagePLUS is roughly five years old--and that's getting fairly old for commercial software. To make the kinds of changes and feature additions we want, ManagePLUS needs a major rewrite--we cannot continue to simply 'patch' our core ManagePLUS software to accommodate changes in QuickBooks and Microsoft's recent releases of the Windows operating system. This has been especially true since the release of Windows 2000, and now, Windows XP--ManagePLUS doesn't work properly with either of those versions of Windows."

Wilsdorf continued, "Intuit [the maker of QuickBooks] recently released a Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows programs like ManagePLUS to access QuickBooks data, and do it more easily than with the techniques we had to use when ManagePLUS was originally created. That will make a rewrite of ManagePLUS, using the SDK technology, much easier. But here's the problem: some features we need are missing from the first release of the QuickBooks SDK. And further complicating our rewrite decision is the fact that Intuit has hinted those features will be added to the SDK this year. What all this means is that it might be very bad timing to do a major rewrite of ManagePLUS right now. That would require us to devote months of development effort to creating data access methods which will likely be a part of the QuickBooks SDK by the end of 2002."

"So we face a choice among three difficult alternatives. (1) We could just update ManagePLUS as we have in the past to work with the new QuickBooks 2002. But that wouldn't solve its problems of not working with Windows 2000 and XP--both of which are beginning to represent a significant portion of potential new ManagePLUS users. (2) We could begin a major rewrite of ManagePLUS now, but with the likelihood of squandering a lot of development resources--programmer cost--to create features which may be had 'for free' this coming fall. (3) We could wait until later in 2002 to begin rewriting ManagePLUS, hoping that by then Intuit will have added the features we need to the QuickBooks SDK."

"The bottom line is that we've decided on option (3)--to wait before starting a ManagePLUS rewrite. The positive parts of this option are that we should be able to complete the rewrite at lower cost and with more advanced features. The downside is that we will have broken continuity for those ManagePLUS users who purchase QuickBooks 2002. They will have to do without ManagePLUS for now. But remember, simply updating ManagePLUS for QuickBooks 2002 wouldn't have helped folks who are now running Windows 2000 or XP anyway, so updating ManagePLUS right now wouldn't have been a perfect choice either. We only hope our ManagePLUS customers will understand our dilemma and that the wait won't cause problems for them."

ManagePLUS for QuickBooks™ will continue to be available for QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro versions 5, 6, 99, 2000, and 2001, until it is updated or rewritten to accommodate the newest QuickBooks releases.


About Flagship Technologies

Flagship Technologies, Inc., is located at Madison, Missouri. The company's primary focus is on developing and marketing agricultural software products, including ManagePLUS for QuickBooks™ and ManagePLUS for Quicken™, farm accounting add-ons for QuickBooks and Quicken, as well as other software products and training materials. The company can be contacted by these means:

Postal address: Flagship Technologies, Inc.
14976 Monroe Rd. 1039
Madison, MO 65263
World Wide Web: http://www.goflagship.com
Email: sales@goflagship.com (sales information)
info@goflagship.com
(other information)
support@goflagship.com
(technical support)
Telephone: 660-291-3000 (sales and order questions only)

ManagePLUS is a trademark of Flagship Technologies, Inc. QuickBooks and Quicken are registered trademarks of Intuit.


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