How it all started

Remember SuperClerk?  That was our first software package, an All-in-One small business solution combining full ledger accounts with a simple database, spreadsheet, wordprocessor; and with Notepads, calculator, typewriter function, addressbook, alarm clock, etc, etc. It was launched in 1980, and the selling price was £999. (This was at the time when most computers only had cassette tape drive, and 360k floppy disk drives were a luxury at £1000).

SuperClerk ran on the Commodore PET computer, in 32K RAM. It was made possible by use of the excellent Business ROM (from JCL Software) which added a library of business related commands to the BASIC language. Commodore UK Ltd were impressed by SuperClerk, and they paid JCL Software and ourselves to produce a cut-down version for them to sell under the name MicroClerk for their new 128 Computer. As soon as the product was completed, Commodore USA had a management change and the new boss decided not to sell business software; as far as we know there are thousands of MicroClerk packages still sitting in a large warehouse... (we got paid anyway)

By this time, 1984, the IBM PC was starting to take over the world and so we sat down to write SuperClerk (then renamed SuperExec because dealers thought it gave a better impression...) for the IBM PC. The first step was to produce our own business programming language; this was done with Keyboard Productions Ltd and an American Company called APC; using the brilliant MegaBASIC language (a truly outstanding but un-recognised product, way ahead of its time).

The first version of our product was launched in 1987, and called ABC. This was version 1, with retail price of £149. About 10,000 copies were given away free by DIXONs (bundled with the new AMSTRAD 1512 PC - still with 360k floppies), and versions were also produced for USA, South Africa, Australia, Holland, France, Belgium, Germany and licensed to distributors in those countries.

ABC version 2 was basically ABC1 repackaged by our Distributor (ABC Systems Ltd in Sutton) as an excuse to raise the price to £249. By this time they had ceased to pay us for the packages they were manufacturing and selling, so we had lost interest......  ABC version 3 was essentially ABC1 with some networking functions added by our programmer Paul Southcott, for experimental testing by a few users only. (but Paul later set up his own company, and -- illegally -- took the source code with him and repackaged ABC3 as "his own" product called ABC+. After his UK company TreeRiver Ltd went bust, he moved to Alderney in the Channel Islands and continued to sell the same product under the name AE Office (Alderney Enterprises).   We hope his mouse leaps off the table and bites him, for his crimes of software piracy, and misuse of our customer mailing list.

We released the first truly new version of ABC in 1990 -- that was ABC4 with recommended retail price of £299. Add-on Modules were produced for ABC4, including WorkSheets, Invoice & Statement Design, Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing, Vehicle Maintenance, and of course Payroll. Updates for ABC4 were produced over the years, the final one being ABC4.009. A proper network version of ABC4 was released in 1993, and proved very robust and troublefree -- until Windows95 came along......

ABC5 was largely rewritten from scratch to make it work well under Windows 95 and 98, and to make it Year 2000 compliant. It was released in December 1998. Most of our products are based on ABC5. ABC5 has been updated regularly, and it works well under Windows XP.

Of course we now have ABC6 -- a Windows version of ABC. This can automatically import all data from earlier versions. With the internet growing in importance in the way we communicate, it is possible that future bookkeeping software will look and behave in a very different manner. Just be assured that our products will always stay a year or two behind that cutting edge of technology.

If you are using any older version of ABC (or one of its copies) you are invited to upgrade to the latest version of our software; we will even give you a discount.