9 out of 10 Accountants recommend Pastel Accounting

[Philip Copeman]

As we become more successful you will find that we are going to bump up against the traditionally entrenched commercial companies. They have become used to the rich pickings of annual licence fees. South Africa seems to be the first one that we will meet them . Please find below my objections to The Current Pastel Ad campaign in South Africa, their response and my Second Response. This looks like it may draw out.  I would appreciate the input from  any of you that feel that you can help us with this one.

Pastel has the largest installed base in South Africa, but this problem exists for us in most countries. The Commercial packages use the revenue generated from sales to advertise and  entrench their position.We do not have that luxury, but we can stop them misleading the users. I foresee that this is the first of many battles that we will have with the Commercial companies, Sage in particular, in different countries. If any of you have a similar position in your country, contact me and we will see what we can do about it.

If you have any doubts about how your contribution has aided the success of TurboCASH check out these statistics:

Independent Source forge Downloads
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?group_id=86088&ugn=turbocash

Our registrations by country January 1 to 12 March.
http://www.turbocash.co.za/philip/downloads/downloadstats.html


Press Release - Cape Town 15 March 2006
                        Philip Copeman

Open Source Accounting Project TurboCASH Accounting has challenged Local industry leader Pastel Accounting on its "9 out of 10 Accountants Recommend Pastel" Advertising Campaign.

Philip Copeman Project leader of the TurboCASH Project, said "The last year has seen rapid rises in the adoption of Open Source technologies. TurboCASH has been part of that success.  Locally developed TurboCASH is now the world's leading Open Source Accounting package for small business and is used in over 80 countries in 15 languages. Our current user base is in excess of 30 000 users. We are taking significant market share in a number of countries."

"Our rapid adoption has been done not by traditional marketing campaigns, but using the Open Source methods of recommendation and free distribution. The whole success of  TurboCASH has been that it is recommended to accountants by other accountants. We object to the commercial packages like Pastel Accounting, who use traditional advertising methods to promote their products, creating the impression that Open Source products are fringe products. This is misleading the public."

"TurboCASH Downloads are independently verified by the Sourceforge web site and currently run at over 15 000 per month. The product is further distributed on a number of  leading PCs. Independently, magazines and user groups promote and distribute TurboCASH. This leads us currently to user registrations of over 100 per day of which around 20% are in South Africa.  There is no way that one can twist the semantics or modify the fact that a large section of the market is now adopting Open Source products. We are asking Softline Pastel to withdraw their misleading advertising and will take necessary action to prevent this if we have to."

The TurboCASH Project is supported by over 400 project members who support and contribute to the development of the product.




Lara Nahon wrote:

Philip Copeman
Project Leader
TurboCASH Open Source Accounting Software

 

Dear Philip

 

Thanks for sending through the e-mail and engaging in dialogue with Softline Pastel.

 

In response to your earlier telephone call and subsequent e-mail I would like to clarify a number of points as follows:

1. Your e-mail states “in the spirit of friendliness can I run with this?.....Press Release – Cape Town 15 March 2006” – there are a few issues I would like to cover here. First I would hardly say the threat of issuing a misleading press release is in the ‘spirit of friendliness’. Second you contacted me at approximately 1:35pm this afternoon, Thursday, 16 March 2006, however the press release is dated 15 March 2006. This leads me to the obvious conclusion that you are more interested in creating sensationalism in the press than acting ‘in the spirit of friendliness’ or focusing on the facts.

 

2. In our discussion this afternoon I suggested that when Softline Pastel’s Managing Director, Steven Cohen, returned to South Africa I would have an opportunity to discuss the contents of our telephone call and I would revert to you on Wednesday, 22 March 2006. You responded by saying you couldn’t “wait around forever”. I pointed out that today was the first time you had contacted me with any gripe in respect of Softline Pastel’s advertising even though Pastel has had a high level of awareness and advertising presence for a number of years. Waiting until Wednesday, 22 March 2006, can hardly be considered “waiting around forever”.

 

3. I now refer to the statements at the end of the third paragraph which read as follows: “We object to the commercial packages like Pastel Accounting, who use traditional advertising methods to promote their products, creating the impression that Open Source products are fringe products. This is misleading the public." I am not sure what objective reason or argument can be raised in respect of Pastel (and I would assume other competitors in the market) being commercial and utilising traditional advertising methods. Furthermore I am not sure why the use of traditional advertising methods creates “the impression that Open Source products are fringe products”. And therefore I fail to understand why “this is misleading the public”.

 

4. In our discussion you highlighted how successful your Open Source strategy has been, with more than “100 registrations per day”. Further, your press release goes on to make a number of sweeping statements about the success of your strategy including: “TurboCASH is now the world’s leading Open Source Accounting package...”; “...is used in over 80 countries in 15 languages”; “...current user base in excess of 30,000”; “...the product is distributed on a number of leading PC’s”. Softline Pastel’s business model is completely different to that of TurboCASH – it is not based upon free distribution or Open Source technology, and as you pointed out in the press release the model is ‘commercial’. Therefore based on the tremendous success that TurboCASH is enjoying by your own admission, and the fact that TurboCASH and Softline Pastel each have different business models and technology offerings, and are therefore targeting a different type of user, I am not sure where the problem lies.

 

5. An additional note – your press release states a “current user base in excess of 30,000 users” and then further on “....downloads .....over 15,000 per month” and registrations of “over 100 per day” which would equate to between 2,000 to 3,000 per month. I am not sure I understand all the numbers here: 15,000 downloads per month would mean this has been in existence for only 2 months to get to the 30,000 current users, or alternatively there may be registrations of “over 100 per day” and “downloads....... of over 15,000 per month” but that these users do not remain as users.

 

I trust that the press release has not, and will not be issued.

I am not sure what the purpose of the release is. It appears that although you claim Pastel is utilising misleading advertising it is TurboCASH that aims to embark on a misinformation campaign in order to create headlines and mislead the public.

 

This is not the way in which I thought our conversation would develop.

 

I look forward to your response and resolving any confusion that may exist.

Regards,
 
Lara Nahon
Director - Business Development
Softline Pastel

Philip Copeman wrote:

Our project's success depends on the many hours of voluntary contributions from accoutntants and consultants all over the world. It is my responsiblity to see that that success is rewarded.

I simply have to counter what you are saying out there. Every day that you continue with your campaign We will continue with our objections. Yesterday you continnued with your ad canpaign. What I am not hearing from you in any of this is a willingness to back off the obviously incorrect position that "9 out of 10 Accountants recommend Pastel".

No need to bring Steven into it, I am sure he is a really busy man, I am quite happy to deal with you on this matter. I have told you that as an interim offer we are happy for you to continue with "7 out of 10 Accountants recommend Pastel Accoutning", that is in itself is a compromise on our side.

Clearly my problem lies in the fact that you are creating the impression that the only main stream accounting solution available is Pastel. That the rest of the packages, including TurboCASH share 10% of the market. I would not be bringing this up if I we were not unhappy about it.

Now to make us go away is really simple - just show me a vague way in which your statement can possibly be true. In our telephone conversation you said that this was  independently verified by Market reesearch. If you were to share this with us, perhaps we would then be able to understand your position.

Until then, understand that every day that you continue with this offends us.