Frequently Asked Questions

Codence was initially founded in 1988 by Danny Mack and became New Millennium Communications in 1990. At first, the business sold Macintosh hardware, but then soon found its passion with FileMaker. We were one of the very first third-party partners with Claris (Apple’s precursor to FileMaker, Inc.).

Scott Love joined the company as CEO in 2016 and we renamed and rebranded as Codence in 2018.

In 2025, Codence was acquired by Fullcity. This merger underscores our dedication to providing the best possible service and solutions for our clients. Read the full press release.

We have two flexible approaches – one is a light, task-based approach and the second follows Agile programming practices. We handle projects from ideas to designs to detailed requirements through to development, testing, and deployment. To learn more about our project management practices, visit our Development Process page.

Get (Date), of course! …Get it? …as in a romantic interest?…okay, okay… if you have to explain a joke… maybe we’ll keep our day jobs.

Yes! Codence often partners with our clients to integrate solutions with Genesis, as well as give older solutions a make-over. We’re happy to help extend the life of older FileMaker apps, clean up some technical debt that might have piled up, or just extend what your internal team can tackle.

A Workplace Innovation Platform gives you the tools to tailor your existing processes and systems to meet the exact needs of your team and business. With it you can escape the work rut – where surely there must be a better way - to bridge the gap between appliance apps and enterprise systems, to unleash your ideas and expertise, to go fully paperless, and move to mobile. Learn more on FileMaker.com.

No! Codence is a fully-equipped custom development shop and a Platinum member of the FileMaker Business Alliance that can work with any FileMaker solution. We have decades of experience building new solutions from scratch or working with existing FileMaker databases. We have certified developers from FileMaker 7 to the latest version. Learn more about our custom development services.

Absolutely. Whether you have your own IT department or are doing it all yourself, Codence can help set up your own server and deploy your FileMaker solution.

FileMaker Cloud runs on Amazon Web Services, but has been configured for ease of use. It provides a turn-key hosting option for the FileMaker platform, but is somewhat limited when compared to a full AWS installation. For more information on which option is best for you, please speak with your Codence consultant.

Yes, absolutely. There are a lot of options for deploying FileMaker solutions, with various pros and cons. We’ve deployed on private servers, Amazon Web Services, and FileMaker Cloud, as well as with third party hosting. Often we'll make use of Remote Desktop or AppStream technologies to provide optimal performance. We strongly encourage our clients to deploy Genesis on the same server as their other FileMaker solutions. We review server specifications and Internet connectivity before determining a hosting plan. Please explore the options with our team.

Technically yes, but in practice it depends. Genesis Financial Suite is available for Mac and Windows, and we generally recommend using Terminal Services or AWS Desktop and App Streaming to maximize performance. While technically FileMaker can work well via WAN, Mobile, and the Web, and some of our clients do choose to deploy Genesis (or portions of the solution) in such ways, we recommend that you speak with one of our knowledgeable consultants about what you need.

The three modules of Genesis Financial Suite are: Genesis Accounting, Genesis Business Metrics, and Genesis Transactions. Genesis Accounting is a full-fledged accounting solution built natively in FileMaker. Genesis Business Metrics provides advanced financial reporting, business intelligence, and budgeting capabilities for any accounting software. Genesis Transactions is a framework for building common business functions like contacts, jobs, invoicing, inventory, and more. It has unlimited extensibility on the FileMaker platform and allows your business to get a significant head start on its own custom business apps.

Genesis Business Metrics , through its advanced financial reports, dashboards, and business intelligence capabilities, lets you drill down to the underlying details that drive your business. You can demystify your financial data with visuals, slice and dice your data to see every facet of your finances, and make data-driven decisions.

Genesis Accounting provides real-time, seamless linking to the rest of your FileMaker system. You save information transfer time, gain accuracy, and get instant feedback on the financial position of your company. These benefits are powerfully clear once you experience them.

Not by itself. There are many payroll applications and services that are excellent and cost effective. We designed Genesis Accounting to take advantage of these services. Some of our clients import an Excel file provided by their payroll service each pay period to automatically create a journal entry in Genesis, while others have built API-driven integrations that work at the push of a button.

Beyond Genesis Transactions’ ease of use and ability to handle large volumes of data, the biggest benefit to having Genesis Transactions is its ability to be fully customized to fit whatever you need, while at the same time not requiring starting from scratch. It is already fully integrated with Genesis Accounting and Genesis Business Metrics and offers a ton of functionality right out of the box.

Genesis protects data while maintaining strict accounting protocols. We make use of FileMaker's encryption and SSL support, Genesis provides both complete and central control of user privileges, and our unique transactional integrity architecture is a cornerstone of the products.

FileMaker plays well with others. One of the most powerful things about FileMaker is its ability to integrate with other applications, often through the use of APIs, External SQL Data Sources, and ODBC/JDBC connections. It offers multiple ways to publish to the Web, has extensive import/export capabilities, and can be extended through plugins.

You can work with whomever you choose. We’re happy to assist in-house or other FileMaker developers to integrate Genesis into your existing FileMaker solutions, or we can tackle it for you. We do have an expert team available if you need a hand (either with Genesis or custom FileMaker development in general), but an experienced developer can manage the integration with instruction from us. Do know that most often our clients choose to have us do the integration, as we’re pretty well-versed in the process.

To some degree, yes. Genesis Financial Suite includes certain modules that are fully accessible to a developer to extend its functionality and tie it into your custom FileMaker apps. Certain core files are locked to protect our intellectual property and to protect the integrity of the solution. In all modules, the client has full access to layout mode to modify the appearance of Genesis and to integrate features.

Yes. We only use scripting and other FileMaker development techniques to integrate; no REST APIs, SQL, or plug-ins needed!

Genesis makes use of native FileMaker techniques and both file and object references to stitch together connections between your solution and its data files. It all passes through what we call a “link” file that essentially maps your architecture to that of the Genesis files. It’s important to note that that’s not the only option: built on FileMaker, we can customize and integrate in a variety of ways. On your first free consultation , we can explore your needs.