Is your oil and gas accounting software thirty years old?

Many small operators run their books on accounting systems designed in the 1990s: a Windows program reached through Citrix or a remote desktop, computing in monthly batches, priced on how many wells you run and what you make. The cost is not the license. It is the hours: waiting on month-end to know what you owe your owners, keying check stubs and vendor bills by hand, and one shared session for you, your bookkeeper and your CPA. Modern oil and gas accounting runs in the browser, keeps every owner balance live as of the last posted check or bill, and reads documents for you.

How do you know your accounting software is thirty years old?

You usually do not need to check the copyright line. The tells are in the workday:

• You reach it through Citrix or a remote desktop. The program was written for a Windows PC on a desk in one office. Everyone else gets a window into that PC.
• You wait for a cycle. Joint interest billing and revenue distribution are computed once a month in a batch: extract, review, distribute, print, post. Until the batch runs, the answer to "what do I owe this owner?" is "after the cycle."
• Every answer is a report. The screen shows the last thing you posted. To find out anything else you run a report, wait, and read it.
• The bill is tied to your well count and your revenue. The more you produce, the more the software costs, whether or not it does more for you.
• Your bookkeeper and your CPA share your session. Or wait for an export, or drive over.

If three of those are true at your shop, the software running your books is older than most of your equipment. You have replaced pumps, tubing, tanks and trucks in that time. The system that pays your owners is the one thing that never got replaced.

What does old software actually cost a small operator?

Not the license, mostly. The cost lands in three places.

Hours at the desk. Revenue check stubs come in from every purchaser in their own layout, and someone keys them: purchaser, wells, volumes, prices, taxes, deductions, line by line. Vendor bills arrive by email and get keyed the same way. For an owner-operator that is the evening after a day at the well.

Owner calls you cannot answer. An owner calls and asks what you owe them. With batch software the honest answer is "after the cycle runs," and the owner hears "I do not know." Owners notice when you can answer the phone. So does your banker.

The month-end week. Close the books, run the cycle, print, post, and back it out if something was wrong. A financial statement is a monthly event because the software only knows the numbers once a month.

What does modern oil and gas accounting software do differently?

Four things, none of them exotic in any other industry:

1. It runs in the browser. No Citrix, no server to keep alive, no session to share. The owner, the bookkeeper and the CPA each get their own login and their own role, on any device.
2. It keeps balances live. Every owner's balance is current as of the last posted check or bill: what is owed, what is held and why, what nets against what the owner owes you. The number on the screen is the same calculation that cuts the check, not a report you run to find out. We call that JIB Live.
3. It reads documents for you. Scan a revenue check stub or forward a vendor bill and it arrives as a draft, matched to the purchaser, the wells and the vendor. You review; you do not retype. More on that in software that reads check stubs and vendor bills.
4. Financials keep up. The profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and aging refresh whenever anything posts, and every number opens to the entries behind it.

Is switching worth the disruption?

Switching cost is why operators renew by default, so the honest answer depends on what switching involves. With Envytory, your backup file or your report exports load the chart of accounts, owners, division of interest decks, wells and history. Nothing is retyped. Then we run your month alongside your current system for two free weeks, so you compare the two on your own books before the first invoice.

The founding price is 500 a month, billed annually, locked for as long as you renew, for twenty seats. That is the whole decision: two weeks of your own numbers, side by side.