News

Herschel has made it into Capterra's inventory management software top 20 for 2018. Here's the list: https://www.capterra.com/inventory-management-software/#infographic Pretty good for a freeware system!

Update 06 Aug 2018 - We've cleared our backlog and our consultancy service and our basic and standard support options are now available for purchase. See our shop page for more details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 01 Jul 2018 - You can have too much of a good thing. Coping with our current support load and coding new Herschel [...]

We've been busy and a new update to Herschel is now available in our shop here. This version squishes yet more pesky bugs and adds a few tweaks.  Here’s the list: Numerous text errors tidied up. Extra access level 6 added to Sell module in user details tool. Customer details tool requires Sell level 6 [...]

26 Feb 18 Update - Just hit 3000+ downloads..... ---------------------------------------- 01 Dec 17 Update - Just checked Freshdesk and discovered we have now had 2000+ downloads. Once again, thanks for trying Herschel. ---------------------------------------- 22 Aug 17 - A big "thank you" to everyone who's downloaded Herschel since we started our modest Google AdWords campaign in [...]

Forget those sickly Christmas videos on TV. Instead vote for the cutest video of the year - "Hedgehog Close" by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. You can view it and vote at www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/vote-hedgehog-close-2018-charity-film-awards/ And, yes, those funky "hedgehog highway" signs would make great Christmas presents for anyone with a garden. You can order them (at a [...]

Back in the 1980's I visited a small electronic sub-contract assembly company in Newbury. It was called Osborne Electronics, founded by Clive Osborne, who was now looking for a stock control system. Something simple and cheap. He started using Herschel. Over the next decade Osborne Electronics, with a little bit of help from Herschel, grew [...]

We've been contacted by the Bo Children's Hospital Foundation in Sydney, who hope to use Herschel to control the pharmacy in their hospital in Sierra Leone. They were pleased to learn the Herschel software was free, and we're going to give them free support as well. You can learn more about the charity here: http://www.bochildrenshospital.org.au/index.php [...]

Update: It seems BA's little mishap cost GBP 58 million! When we were developing Herschel version 12 we did an in-depth investigation of making it a cloud-based application. Our conclusion was a locally hosted version would be faster and allow us to make the most of our "Minority Report" inspired multi-window approach. One thing we [...]

A new update to Herschel is now available here. We're gradually working our way through the wishlist of items requested by you, our users.  If your suggestion isn't included, please be patient - we're working on 12.0028 at this very moment. Here’s the list of changes in 12.0027: Collection of Crystal Reports added to solutions [...]

My Ebay saved search sprung into life recently and alerted me to a listing for a Dowty related item (I was an engineering apprentice there in the distant past). I'm now the proud owner of a Dowty Mining Equipment Ltd paperwork celebrating the company receiving the Queen's Award for Exports, 1980 and 1981. For the [...]

A new update to Herschel is now available here. This version tidies up things for new users and fixes a few small errors. Here’s the list: Newsletter signup added to help and login. Reindex your datafiles option tidied up behind the scenes. A new installation now advises user how to alter their business information. Currency [...]

We'd like to thank all our customers for their business over the last 25 years. Back in 1992, after two years of development, version 1 of the "Herschel Manufacturing System" was ready.  We released it as "shareware", which meant people could try the software and then buy it if they liked it. We thought Herschel [...]

We've improved and streamlined our online shop and rationalised our product range. You can see it here. It's quick and easy to order our various support options and services. Support is now paid annually, to reduce paperwork and administration. All payments are now made using PayPal - although you don't need a PayPal account to [...]

A relatively exciting new update to Herschel is now available here. This version fixes several bugs and adds more functionality to smooth things along. Here’s the list: Various incorrect captions and text corrected. Link to example spreadsheet added to plan module's forecast tool import page. Example plan spreadsheet also added to version 12 install. Optimise [...]

This is a minor release which actually slows Herschel down for a moment when it’s doing some of its printing options.  Windows 10 was struggling to keep up and getting all confused. We've also added an extremely useful help button to the main Herschel window.  This will take you straight into the relevant Freshdesk solutions [...]

As an experiment, we bought a (very) cheap Windows 10 tablet on Amazon to play with.  We loaded on Hershel and were surprised to find it ran perfectly. So we’re working on a tablet version of Herschel with bigger fonts and buttons. We’ll let you know when it’s ready. The picture shows a Herschel user [...]

We’d been putting off upgrading our PCs for over three years.  Moving everything to new hardware was just too much hassle.  I spoke to our local computer guru and he suggested replacing our hard disks with SSD drives. The new drives were fitted within a day and the results have been incredible.  One PC which [...]

After months of toil, our new Freshdesk support site is now fully working. If you’ve signed up for Herschel support, just send details of any problems to support@herschel.freshdesk.com – a ticket will be automatically raised, allowing you to track the progress of your query. There’s also a dedicated knowledgebase, packed full of implantation guides, detailed [...]

A rather boring upgrade but it does fix a few irritations and gives Herschel a shiny new Windows 10 appearance (we made all the corners square). It's available here.

Well, Windows 10 is here and (to echo Peter Allgood’s glowing praise of Herschel) it’s “quite good”. The great news is Herschel works fine on Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP.  All at the same time.  Without SQL server. And as Windows 10 is the last version Microsoft plan to release, Herschel will run on [...]