Allison-Crain, Sarasota

Allison-Crain had a line of accounting programs for CPAs. They rented part of their office space to Don Moulton, who started writing a 1040 tax program in 1980. The apparently decided to work together with Allison-Crain providing the Sales and some of the financing, and Don writing the program. We joined them when he was the only one writing programs. After a month or so, we pointed out that more programmers would be needed in order to have an income tax program for the 1040 form and 30 or so others by tax season in January. He hired more programmers and we created a program early in February just as the money ran out and we got laid off. At the time, they were negotiating with H  & R Block to sell them the program, or modify it to meet their requirements.

We left and the battle began. Within a year or two, Don took "his tax program" and moved out. Arthur Andersen decided they needed a tax program and bought Don's program around 1983. Allison-Crain said it wasn't all Don's program and sued and eventually apparently won over $30 million in a settlement.

Arthur Andersen hired Don to be the office manager for the Sarasota tax organization. Arthur Andersen added to the product and made it suitable for their large tax offices all over the world, and also covered all personal and corporate tax forms and state tax forms for all states. By 1990, they had about 300 people involved in the Sarasota tax development effort, all developed in MS DOS Basic. By 1993, Windows was on the customer's horizon and the 5 year effort to convert all 485 products to Windows began.

The saga continues: see "Arthur Andersen".