Xojo Case Studies

Studiometry

Tom Iwaniec has always had an interest in computers. His family got its first computer when he was eleven and the very first thing he did was take it apart to see if he could put it back together. Luckily, to both his and his parents' relief, he could! He got into coding in a pretty similar fashion. He learned by using code examples, taking them apart and tweaking them to figure out how they worked. It was a hobby and a passion that eventually turned into a useful set of skills.

Iwaniec started programming using the BASIC language on his TI-83 calculator. He would spend all day tinkering with it, making games and apps and whatever else he could figure out how to do. It was a great introduction to how coding works, and made the transition to using actual development tools easy.

His first Xojo app was a freeware tool called ThreadTracker. At the time, many forums didn't have email notifications or an easy way to check for new messages. The app would let you enter any websites that you participated in, along with your username, and it would download, parse, and notify you when someone else responded. It supported more than 10 popular forum types, which made it compatible with thousands of forums. The app presented any responses in a consolidated list, similar to an email client.

Today his main focus is Studiometry from his company Oranged Software. Studiometry is a business management tool that tracks clients and projects from start to finish. It helps track everything from potential clients, estimates, meetings and tasks, work, invoices, payments, and summaries. Thanks to its flexibility and helpful industry templates, it can be used effectively in almost any industry. Studiometry is a one stop shop for managing any business that has clients or projects.

"Studiometry Touch is our iOS companion app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that we recently rewrote from the ground up using Xojo," commented Iwaniec. "Previously, Studiometry Touch was written in Objective-C, forcing us to manage and maintain two separate code bases for our products. Any update to a class in Studiometry on the desktop would require a separate update to the Objective-C source code. Xojo's iOS support is mature enough to produce professional apps, and completely removes the need and hassle of developing a separate code base in Objective-C or Swift."

"Studiometry Cloud is a new service that we've recently rolled out that gives users synchronized access to their Studiometry data in our native Mac, Windows, and iOS apps, as well as via the web," continued Iwaniec. "The best part is that it is all written in Xojo, so we can easily share code between all of the different targets, saving us time and money in development."

Accounted, another app from Oranged Software, is a double-entry business accounting application that works in conjunction with Studiometry. Accounted can track bank account balances, income and expense accounts, and generate charts and reports.

"We use Accounted for all of our accounting at Oranged Software," Iwaniec said. "Accounted is great for small businesses that need an accounting app but don't want to sign up for an expensive monthly service, or commit to a huge, complicated app like Quickbooks."

Studiometry and Accounted are both tailored for businesses with 1-50 users and they currently have approximately 10,000 users. They are both very flexible apps that are currently used in many different industries: consulting, design, production, law, photography, construction, and more. About 80% of their users are on Mac, but thanks to Xojo they can easily offer a Windows version with a very small amount of extra coding.

While there are many project management/CRM solutions available, Studiometry is still one of the only to offer native apps on Mac, Windows, and iOS. On top of that, most services and products will focus on one or two features and force you to use several different solutions to manage your business. Studiometry, on the other hand, will help you keep everything in one place. Having one search field to access all of your business data makes Studiometry a surprisingly powerful tool.

"Now that we've developed Studiometry Cloud, we have the ability to create some really exciting new features that tie in the desktop, mobile, and web Xojo apps" added Iwaniec. "We're adding in the ability to send estimates to clients and get their feedback and approvals via the web interface, and then have it automatically synced to the desktop and mobile apps. Having the power to easily tie in new features between the web and native apps lets us do things that were never before possible."

Learn more about Studiometry.

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