FW Editor: What are your plans or objectives in the near future?
Derek Liew: Moving forward, I am thinking of moving DES to web-based platform, basically employing the use of open-source technology, and it would probably take me some time before I can release my first beta version.

FW Editor: How and when did you start writing the code for DES? What inspired you the most?
Derek Liew: It was not my initial plan to develop and to commercialize DES, although, it took a lot of my personal leisure time and a great amount of effort to fully complete DES. It started five years ago, when I was working with some of the accounts staff in an IT firm, and during that period, I was generating a list of customer statement, and my curious thought was, “how does the computer know the age of each of the customers’ account?”….”and how would the system compute and come out with those profit and loss statement, and those trial balance?” It is all this impending thoughts that drives my mind to actually think, and find out how does all this pieces of clues comes together and work around like a complete jigsaw puzzle. I was determined to go further, and begun doing some research on database design, communicating and getting feedback from online forum and my understanding grew as I begin to go deeper in my research. It came a point in time, where I actually hit a brick wall, while I was designing the architecture of DES, but it all went well, after pausing and given some thoughts to it.

FW Editor: Why did you choose to develop an accounting software, and not other application?
Derek Liew: I have been experiencing the use of a vast variety of accounting and ERP solution for the past 8 years of my working career, and I felt there are huge flaw in some, if not most of the solution available during that particular period of time..and.. it sort of prompted me to develop a version, that has all the flaws eroded, and to improvise on some of the defects.

FW Editor: Do you need to have accounting knowledge, in order to run DES?
Derek Liew: If you asked the same question to a fair number of vendor, I bet 90% of them would say, “You need not know double entry or accounting skill, system will take care for you”, right? Wrong. Holding a licence, doesn’t mean you can drive safely on the road. Your wheel is your basic accounting skill, without it, you’ll lost in direction. I definitelly encourage user to equip themselves with some basic accounting knowledge, before they even begin to set-up their chart of account, even more so, to those who are from non-accounting background. You’ll also need to understand the nature of your business, the type of reports you would need to generate, your country tax regulation and its accepted accounting practices. All of these I have mentioned, can only be answered by the user themselves.

FW Editor: Which is the most important feature of DES?
Derek Liew: Well, if you're running a small trading company, you would found most of the basic accounting functionalities available in DES. In short, I think cash module and order processing would be important, if you need the basic requirement to perform order processing and be able to keep track of your company cash flow.

FW Editor: Which of the modules you think, has the greatest complexity in terms of its design and development work, and tell us why?
Derek Liew: If I were to choose one, it has to be on the sales return mechanism. When I went through the costing mechanism design for the inventory module, I thought it must be the most challenging work to go through, but, I was wrong. The workaround on the GL interface, for a sales return entry is the toughest of all. The coding work on the server-side for the costing mechanism for the inventory costing method, is only half way complete of the sales return cycle. You have to figure out how would the system keep track of which sales invoice, which unit and at what unit cost and selling price, should the system take and reverse, when a user perform a sales return for a particular customer. Not to mention, the GL interface and the complexity of incorporating foreign currency features in the design.

FW Editor: What is the future plan for DES?
Derek Liew: I hope to see some review and feedback from user on my solution. A positive review would be inspiring and a negative review would definitely drive my instinct to further improve DES.

FW Editor: Do you have a message for DES users?
Derek Liew: Download it and let me know how would you rate DES?