Reckon has delayed the launch of its cloud accounting software Reckon One by at least several weeks. The long-awaited launch had been scheduled for November 6 but the company had decided to extend the beta program to iron out bugs and take on feedback from accounting partners, said Daniel Rabie, Reckon’s strategic director.
“There are a couple of small things that need to be right, and there’s been some excellent feedback through the beta process so I think that it’s worth extending it,” Rabie said. “We haven’t rushed it to date, why would we rush the last couple of weeks?”
One of the sticking points was managing how bank feeds were processed by the cloud program. Reckon had direct feeds with the bigger banks and used Yodlee for other financial institutions.
“We’re getting a lot of feedback about what competitors are doing right and wrong with managing bank feeds and it’s just streamlining that to make sure that it’s efficient and effective,” Rabie said.
Reckon’s developers had also made “enormous speed improvements” over the past couple of weeks, Rabie said.
The decision to delay was partly due to the fact that it was a slow period for accounting software sales. “People don’t make huge purchases in November and December. If it was June it might be different,” Rabie said.
Reckon will slowly release Reckon One to test its performance with many users rather than hold an official launch.
“I’m not putting a date on (the launch), I’ve learnt that mistake from the past,” Rabie said.
“There’s a bigger picture and we have to keep believing in what we’re doing longer term. I can understand people’s frustration at it not being in market, but our partners are almost like family and it’s more important to keep our reputation intact,” Rabie said.