Accounting Systems on Linux? 399
cuebei asks: "OK, Slashdotters -
let's talk accounting systems for small-mid sized businesses. With
the popularity of Linux servers running various e-business services
such as web, directory, mail, commerce, etc, it only makes sense for
Linux to become a more mainstream platform in the business
world. One of the areas where I can foresee Linux being used
extensively is in the area of accounting. Linux is both reliable and
scalable, two key requirements for any accounting package. So who uses
Linux for HR/Accounting? What options are out there? Open-source or
commercial? If you were starting your own business and standardized
on Linux as a platform, what accounting package would you use and why?"
SQL Ledger (Score:5, Informative)
for businesses. Full internationalization support
for several languages, currencies and chart of
accounts, written in Perl. Good stuff.
Webpage here [sql-ledger.com]
GNUCash is *not* a business accounting system.
It is a *personal* accounting system.
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2, Informative)
Um, I think they would disagree [gnucash.org]. One of their stated goals is to allow small business accounting, kind of at the same scale as QuickBooks. Whether they've achieved that is open to debate, and you can argue about how large a business they could support, but I don't think you can completely dismiss the product.
Same scale as QB? (Score:2)
Hey if we want quickbooks, it's my understanding that it runs under wine anyways. Yes a small business is much more like an enterprise than most imagine.
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2, Informative)
You're right that Gnucash is not a business accounting package as it stands.
However, significant amounts of development effort are going to make it useful in a business environment. Right now, the most active part of that effort is the OpenCheckout [linuxdevel.com] point of sale project. It's not a general-purpose business accounting system, but the features we're adding and redesigning to make the Gnucash core work as a point-of-sale accounting engine and management interface are part of what needs to be done to make a more general-purpose system.
My company (Linux Developers Group) employs most of the core Gnucash developers, and we are working hard to make money from POS and other vertical applications of the Gnucash code base. We have a lot of interest from grocery, hobby, and government clients, and it's likely that POS and inventory management will drive the development done by paid developers of Gnucash for some time to come.
Also, several volunteer developers are working on business infrastructure for Gnucash.
Since Gnucash has been the #1 or #2 most active Gnome project (by the Gnome Hacking Activity measure) since the Gnome Summary started including our stats, I think it's fair to say that we are working very hard on that and we have some prolific hackers.
So, while it's true that you can't use Gnucash for your business right now, don't write it off.
Thanks,
Bill Gribble
grib@linuxdevel.com
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:5, Informative)
SQL-Ledger: Rocks. VERY easy to set up, documentation is complete, and from what my client tells me, theres more modules available than most of the commercial stuff he's looked at. Its running on a Debian Potato system, and almost everything is stock (read: stable). All I added was a source install of pgsql, and added the couple of Perl modules via the CPAN perl shell. I think I had the entire thing runnin in less than an hour, from poppin in the 2.2r4 cd to firing up Moz on my other box.
NOLA: An absolute bitch to set up. Not only does all the documentation end in
Welp, there's my $0.02. Like I said..I'm the admin who's settin it all up...I haven't really used either of them, but a lot of times you can tell how good of a project it is by how easy it is to set up (ie: how good the documentation is).
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:5, Informative)
Installing solely from the source tarball is currently much more difficult than need be. We do however provide an iso image file in our downloads section with a complete installer for Apache/PHP/MySQL for both Windows and Linux/Unix servers.
Also, our UI is currently undergoing extensive changes, and things are changing nightly.
Thanks for checking it out!
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds to me like the best reason of all not to put this into use in a business environment.
SQL-Ledger vs NOLA & DB backends (Score:3, Informative)
From the posts, SQL-Ledger uses a pgsql backend and NOLA uses a MySQL backend.
I'm not sure what others think, but I for one would be very scared about using MySQL as a mission-critical backend.
Several articles comparing the two (a good one here [webtechniques.com]) have come up with the same basic complaints, MySQL might be fast in overall, but it fails 3 out of 4 of the basic ACID tests (Consistency, Isolation, and Durability). So it's extremely fault intolerent.
PostgreSQL is fully ACID compliant and is thus a more reliable backend.
Yes, there are plug-in table managers for MySQL that are ACID compliant, but it's nicer to know that the core product already meets these basic requirements for a robust database.
So be sure you take a look at technology behind the systems before committing your critical systems to them.
Re:SQL-Ledger vs NOLA & DB backends (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm surprised you'd say that accounting systems are a class of application that can do without transactions! In fact, they're commonly used to illustrate the importance of transactions: an interrupted balance transfer transaction either means your customer loses money or gains money erroneously.
Ease of Installation is important (Score:5, Insightful)
A prime problem with GnuCash vis-a-vis trying to get the "bleeding edge" functionality is that it is an absolute pain to get compiled. The functionality may be worth it, but if it's daunting to build, that's a problem.
In exactly the same manner, there are all sorts of projects out there to build some really cool JavaEnterprize-Foo-Beans- Coffee-Espresso-Transactional- EE goodness; if it takes someone who's an expert in all of:
Excuse me if I don't jump up and down cheering at the vast complexity of this.
In contrast, SQL-Ledger is indeed quite straightforward to set up. A bit more manually-involved than I'd like, but certainly not badly so.
Re:Ease of Installation is important (Score:2)
For me installing Gnucash 1.6 (the same day I saw the /. article saying it was impossible to build) was as simple as:
apt-get install gnucash.
The cutting edge Gnome libraries of today are going to be the old staid ncurses of tomorrow. I personally am glad that GnuCash is reusing this software instead of re-inventing the wheel. It's tricky to compile now, but these software components are forming the building blocks of tomorrow's applications.
That being said, you certainly are correct when you point out that sometimes the Perl + Apache solution just makes sense. I don't use SQL-Ledger, but it seems to be easy to set up and relatively full featured. Adding nifty new technologies sometimes just makes things more difficult.
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, even in C++ or Java you could get a fool casting a (int)float_var;
It's not the language, brother... It's the brain using the tool that matters.
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2)
It surprises me that there actually is an accounting product available under the GPL license. What sets SQL-Ledger apart from a product like Broadcast 2000, which recently halted their updates for legal reasons? Too many people were using the product for big-bucks work and were failing. Could this not happen with an account app?
In any case, I am absolutely against the kind of legal mumbo-jumbo that could put a legitimate, free product on the lawyer's chopping block, just because some people who are using it complain that it doesn't do what it's supposed to (late in the project by the sounds of it), when there were no guarantees in the first place - clearly stated in the license agreement. Try a new product (or version of a product) out thoroughly before using it for mission critical applications, for crying out loud!
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2)
Solomon IV (www.solomon.com), written entirely in VB 4. Be afraid, be very afraid.
use what you are now - AccPac on Linux (Score:4, Informative)
AccPac have a Linux port. [accpac.com]
* It seems to be software you can get competant accountant with many years experience using, minimising training costs and staff overtime while necessary to move to a new system
* It has a fairly good reputation and large amounts of existing systems
* it can import data in a wide variety of formats from its competitors.
It's not Open Source, but it might be the best tool for the job, which should be any competant technical persons criteria for selecting software.
Re:use what you are now - AccPac on Linux (Score:2)
"Best tool for the job" == Linux, not matter what.
Instead of buying accounting software, you should code your own in Ruby and GPL it. Put it up on sourceforge and make the world a better place.
SQL Ledger and Security. (Score:5, Informative)
However, please Do Not use it as a remote administration / accounting tool that serves over the internet. Its place is inside the firewall.
The reasons is that it doesn't have a session control-related audits. Any user that types in http://hostname/sql-ledger/ir.pl?login=admin&path= bin/mozilla could get into the syste under the name 'admin', given the attacker knows the username "admin" (not hard), and regardless of that account's permission. indeed the same scheme is workable on any other .pl program.
You can apply This patch [autrijus.org] to fix it, if you don't worry about shared proxies.
And yes, this patch has been sent to the author. His comment was more along the line of accountants are not script kiddies, so we don't need to worry too much. That is probably reasonable, too.
Re:SQL Ledger and Security. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Accountants are worse than script kiddies. When they go bad they know exactly what they're looking for, and they know how to manipulate the data to hide any unusual transactions. Maybe the mythical bad accountant doesn't personally have the skillz to crack a system, but -- I assure you -- they are more than capable of finding a partner to help them.
I've been doing SAP R/3 security for a handful of years, and I could tell stories that would make every CFO in the world crap their pants.
You have to realize that we're talking about being able to manipulate real money. You can't treat it like monopoly money because it's just a bunch of numbers on a UI. You need to control (and be able to audit) access to an enterprise accounting system just like you would protect and audit access to a giant pile of dollar bills that is equivalent to your company's net worth. You've also got to realize that admin-style access to an accounting system means that you can make changes to things that happened in the past. So I could go back two months ago and insert a bogus purchase order for $99.00 (or any other small amount that misses the executive-approval-radar). Then, this month, I could pay it -- to that anonymous bank account I have. I could do this over and over with multiple fake purchase orders for months and months. And since no one could audit the transactions, they would only know that they were missing an ass-load of $99.00 transactions. (The real-world implementation is a bit more complicated, but you get the idea).
If your company has $500,000 of revenue a year, and the two accounting people are personal friends, you probably don't need to worry about embezzelment, fraud, fake purchase orders, etc. (I personally would worry about them, but I'm a paranoid security guy).
If your company is pulling in a few million dollars a year, and you hire random accounting people then, yes, you need to be able to audit their activities.
SQL Ledger (Score:3)
Know nothing about it, but looked it up on Google. Might as well share my research:
SQL Ledger [sql-ledger.com]
Christopher Browne's List of Free Software for Business Accounting [cbbrowne.com]
Mini review of SQL Ledger [hotscripts.com]
Short discussion of SQL Ledger from GNU.ORG [gnu.org]
AllCommerce, an ecommerce and fulfillment system [sourceforge.net]
GNU Enterprise [gnu.org]
Linux-Kontor is a free ERP (enterprise resource planning) software suite. [sourceforge.net]
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:2)
Accounting is not the driving software package! (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said I'd be ecstatic if there was good process manufacturing software available for Linux! But the gamut of features would be rather daunting- solid flexible modules for inventory with lot tracking, formulations, hazmat and environmental reporting as well as MSDS and labelling, production BOM, scheduling, heck throw in HR...and of course the mentioned accounting package.
Heh, give me all of this and our company switches to Linux!
Re:Accounting is not the driving software package! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to me like a webservices core may be able to be developed, which serves extermal user iterface modules. Maybe J2EE core (running in JBOSS), webservices exposed through Apache SOAP. You can then write interfaces in many different languages in different user interface, FAT GUI, thin jsp/php/perl. Ahh, I have real stuff to work on. Don't have time to keep thinking and rambling on about this.
-Pete
Re:Accounting is not the driving software package! (Score:2, Interesting)
Beacuse JBoss impements an ORB it would not be to difficult to have nice gui client but also the web client would be relativly easy to build with jsp/tag lib. Also the datasouce abstarction is so good.
Just my two cents.
Re:Accounting is not the driving software package! (Score:2)
If you are doing manufacturing, then chances are good you don't really qualify as a "small business." There are plenty of businesses that just need accounting software. Even some big businesses don't need a manufacturing package, because surprise they don't manufacture anything.
Free Software accounting packages are likely to take off for the same reason that PCs did. When Lotus 1-2-3 came out only the smallest of small businesses could do their books with a PC, and yet Lotus was literally swamped with orders. It wasn't too long before nearly all businesses used these toys to do at least some of their accounting.
Re:Accounting is not the driving software package! (Score:2)
If you cannot bill you cannot make payroll... (Score:2, Interesting)
What we ended up doing was writting a custom web-based billing system that is now in its third iteration all in PERL and Postgresql
Its like George Clason extolled through his protagonist "Arkad" in the Richest Man in Babylon -- pay yourself
If you cannot bill your clients accurately and timely, you cannot make payroll
Look at how McLeodUSA is dying a horrible (and well deserved) nasty death -- ever since they took over Ovation here locally in the Twin Cities, they have yet to get a single invoice correct -- its so bad we had to switch to another provider in order to get their attention.
The Last impression is often a lasting impression -- your billing is an almost free marketing channel to your clients
Make it work for you
Accounting and HR on Linux? Yikes. (Score:5, Informative)
Whereas the exploration group was running on really nice (for the time) new SGI machines, the production group was being more reserved with Sparc/SUN solutions and the accounting department was positively in the dark ages with an old AS/400 mainframe. It was considered quite radical when they migrated to a bunch of AIX boxes and they were terrified to do it.
Don't misunderstand me, I'd love to see the adoption of linux and open-source solutions in this arena, but I feel that this is likely an area that will meet with substantial resistance.
Re:Accounting and HR on Linux? Yikes. (Score:2)
About the only ways to get post-60's/70's into most backend business systems is to either start with it (still get same out-of-date problem in five, ten or fifteen years) or to have the higher-ups declare that a particular system will be used. Too bad a lot of Linux companies are getting a bad rap. If the hype had kept going, a lot of higher-ups would probably have switched to *Open Source* systems just to be the first in their country club [commoncause.org] to have all-Linux accounting department.
Sorry about the cynicism but I've worked with migrating few small inventory and accounting systems to something from the 90's and none of them were pretty from the personal or technical point of view. Sometimes it's all about culture [auxillium.com].
Re:Accounting and HR on Linux? Yikes. (Score:2)
These people are also cheap!
Seriously, every accountant that I ever meant was a major tightwad. For example, I knew this one accountant that refused to get cheese on his daily $2.99 "budget" hamburger combo. I once asked him why, and got this long winded speech about how saving the 25 cents a day will give him an extra $4,000 of retirement savings! He even wrote down on a napkin his formula on how the compound interest will multiply his ~$50 a year savings over the years. I left the lunch room amazed this the amount of thought that he put into to this. Some people are thrify, but this man raised it to an art form.
So, back to my point. When given the choice of paying $99 for Quickbooks or downloading and installing SQL Ledger for free, which choice is this crusty old accountant going to go for? You know that he'll be going for cheaper option, because it gives him a few more bucks to scrape together for retirement. Sure, he'll never spend a penny of it once he retires, but at least his kids will be rich when he dies.
I disagree. Reliability is partly the OS. (Score:2)
However, reliability is the key. The simple reality of Linux' stability is a selling point beyond compare.
Add to that the fact that they could not care less what OS it runs on, so long as it is always available, and never looses data, and you have a perfect match in Linux and a journaling file system.
Beyond that, the OS itself doesn't buy you anything. It's the application that does the real work. Without trust in your app, nothing matters at all.
Bob-
Web-based Accounting Packages (Score:4, Funny)
"Access anytime, anywhere..." but only with MSIE (Score:2)
BillMax (Score:3, Informative)
I suggest staying away from BillMax unless you really want to adapt your company to it instead of the other way around (as it should be)
Anonymous for a reason.
Go all the way with ERP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Go all the way with ERP (Score:2)
The thing I find most attractive is the automated forms and report generators. Businesses like doctor's offices pay out thousands to get software that automatically generates patient reports. GNUEnterprise lets them keep track of day-to-day operations along with the financials. This way no matter what the business unit's title: Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Sales, RnD, Manufacturing,... they can all use the same suite of software. IT loves this.
Re:Go all the way with ERP (Score:2)
It will be a long, long time (if ever) before there's anything in the open source world that's even remotely good enough to run a business on...
Compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
The one problem with an open-source accounting package is that accounting standards are constantly changing and the software would often have to be changed to reflect new standards. Anyone working on such a project would have to be well-versed in each of the new SFAS (Statements of Financial Accounting Standards) as they come out. That's not a fun project for a CPA let alone a layperson.
Re:Compliance (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds very much like what I was told in the 70's when I was in a start up trying to sell microcomputer turnkey accounting software to small businesses: no one will ever trust a micro, and you're delusional if you think otherwise.
Our main problem turned out to be keeping up with demand and managing explosive growth.
-- MarkusQ
Appgen's MyBooks for Linux / Windows /Mac (Score:2, Informative)
$99 for 5 users -- I have a detailed list of questions about this product submitted to Appgen, which I am currently evaluating as a possible recommendation for clients. So far, the demo looks good.
www.appgen.com
What about SAP ? (Score:5, Informative)
Linux for quite some time now.
But perhaps that's nothing for small businesses
Re:What about SAP ? (Score:4, Insightful)
We are in phase 2 of an SAP Enterprise Implementations and FI, HR and CRM modules live, it's cost us approx $21million AU to get to this point and we run everything on SCO UNIX for stability - im sorry guys never in a million years would a company spend 17-20 million and then put it all on Linux to save some money.
HR / Corp Finance are governance and control systems and as such they are not the sort of thing a large corporate would ever consider replacing with open source products - even less likely when you consider the fights, schisms and almost religious wars fought amongst the cogniscenti. Companies need legally to have stable systems that work in these areas and a clear and responsible vendor who owns the system (someone to sue if it all goes down).
The area open source can thrive in is Small Business/ Home office - but i warn you that it means developing open source software for a windows platform as well as linux as you cannot simply expect everyone to use linux (lets be realistic here ok !)
Re:What about SAP ? (Score:2)
SAP-DB as DBMS (Score:5, Interesting)
The one problem with SAP-DB at this point, from the "can we make it ubiquitous" perspective, is that it's a real pain to compile.
It was coded on mainframes, and the suite of compilation tools are based on that approach. Thus the code base (and compile process) is "cryptic upper-case 8 character names everywhere."
It's a desparate pain to try to compile it, so it has not quickly moved towards being ubiquitously available. Red Hat doesn't include it in trivially-installable manner in the manner of MySQL or PostgreSQL. Debian folk can't do apt-get install sapdb .
Give it some more time, and get some more public input, and it'll get more attention.
Of course, that would merely bring us to the point where it would start being an interesting "data storage" substrate for an accounting application. Then comes the 'real" work of determining what tables, fields, relationships, and such exist, and how to manage UIs...
Re:What about SAP ? (Score:2)
Re:Are there any other alternatives? (Score:2)
Call Ersnt Young, Anderson etc - you dont buy a system like this off the shelf it is built for your from the ground up.
Alternatives
JD Edwards
Peoplesoft
Jade
Oracle Financials
All have fleas and all cost a shitload and all are serious big time scaleable systems - not toys and not small business tools - a basic SAP is 10-15 Million $US and thats REALLY basic.
Oracle Applications (Score:2)
One benefit to Oracle Applications is that it runs entirely as Java Applets over a web browser, requiring no more on the client than a browser bookmark.
It does use several keyboard accelerators which I've never figured out how to hit under Linux or Solaris JVMs, though.
KBooks (Score:5, Interesting)
Nathan.
Ease-of-use! (Score:4, Interesting)
Commercial packages understand this. QB will offer to set up a chart of accounts based on 'interview'. QB will warn you if you are entering things that don't make sense from accounting standpoint.
Writing a ledger app is very easy. Writing an easy-to-use app which provides assistance at every step of the way is not.
This is probably the only case where I think that hand-holding is essential for a product, and why QB is still the only commercial software I use now.
Actually, now that I have acquired more familiarity with accounting concepts, I may migrate to SQL-Ledger, however, these are things that matter for me:
a) Payroll. Its a real pain to compute all the various taxes by hand. Its a real pain to track all changes to tax law for your state to be in full compliance. Now, if sql-ledger guys wanted to do payroll, they'd need to track law changes across all 50 states. Somehow, I don't think it'll ever happen.
b) Compliance (which relates to payroll). Certain reports (941,W2,940, state forms,etc) have to be _right_. Most of them are payroll-tax-related. The penalties are severe and "your honour/officer, my linux software made a mistake" does not cut it.
Re:Ease-of-use! (Score:2)
Re:Ease-of-use! (Score:2)
You need to break down taxes withheld by particular subaccount (Fed/state/city withholding, FSA plans (sec 129), UI, Disability Insurance, and 5 other things).
If you outsource this to the bank, you need to either enter all these things by hand, or have an interface to download all that from the bank. I don't know any bank that does this.
If you don't break down taxes by category, you'll run into problems later on.
Armor Systems' Advantage / Premiere (Score:2)
Armor Systems' Advantage and Premiere, both fine accounting packages (I gather -- I don't use them) both run on Unix. I don't know anything about their feature set, or even the difference between the two, but my girlfriend's mother (an accountant) runs them on her network, though on DOS, and she likes 'em fine. I've had to paw through the manual on a number of occasions when figuring out the whole multi-user setup, and there are constant references to making it run properly under Windows/DOS, Novell and Unix. Presumably it would be possible to get it to run under Linux.
-Waldo Jaquith
My Thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
You want my honest opinion? (And I know I'm going to get flamed for saying this.) I wouldn't use Linux at all.
Don't get me wrong--I'm not anti-Linux by any means. Linux remains an important learning tool for CompSci students and others interested in learning about hacking together an operation system from scratch. But I can't recommend Linux for business use.
Here's my experience. I run a fairly successful business with a mid-sized accounting department. My employees have years of experience with Windows and Windows-based accounting software. It would simply not make sense to re-train them to use Linux.
The same goes for someone starting a business. Don't ignore basic business sense. There are more potential employees out there who are already trained with Windows. If you do decide to go with Linux, whether out of short-sighted greed or out of the desire to support some vaguely defined set of principles, prepare to spend righteously on your training budget. Linux still has a long ways to go, as far as usability.
--
I support a US first strike [slashdot.org]
Mods/Flamers on crack! (Score:2, Funny)
It's quite obvious to me that none of you "flamers" have ever actually had to deal with an accounting department. Accountants are miserable, cantankerous, and best left totally alone! What that means kiddies, is if your accountant has an old 486 running 3.1 and he's happy with it...you don't fuck around with it! Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can somehow enlighten your accountant or make his life better by giving him what you think is "new and improved". You will just confuse the hell out of him, piss him off, and leave him thinking even more that you (and all techies for that matter) are just a useless bunch who do nothing but screw things up and cost the company money. Newsflash: This this is the guy that signs your paychecks...do you really want him pissed off at you? Also in many companies, accountants wield considerable influence. Not someone you want to have badmouthing you now is it? For God's sake, do yourselves a favour and leave the accounting department alone as much as possible!
Re:My Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, some background: I'm currently working as a network admin (and jr. sw/ engineer) for a small (~10peep) company that has a small quotient of (extremely) technically-proficient people and a lot of very wonderful people whose expertise is in other fields. I mean, *really* *way* other fields. No offense -- these people are all great -- but they have the combined computer know-how of my cat. I mean, some of these people get confused when they accidentally collapse one of the 'folder-branches' in Outlook ("hey! I can't find my inbox!") These people have a hard time using Windows, let alone using linux. However -- and this is the important bit -- they only use about
Re:My Thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
The instance Joe from accounting asks his buddy Bob who works at Company X how he does something, and Bob sends him a sample Excel spreadsheet that doesn't work on Joe's computer... someone is going to ask "Why aren't we using standard software?"
For a company I worked at back in 1996 that was standardized on OS/2 and Lotus Smartsuite, this is what pushed them into migration to NT4 with Office 97.
That and the HR people had a hard time finding people trained in AmiPro, but no problem finding people already trained in Word.
Good luck with your migration plan, but I hope you have a backout strategy already devised.
Re:My Thoughts (Score:2)
Secondly:
See, Gnumeric and AbiWord are actually pretty good at handling basic
Also -- and I should be clear about this -- *I* *am* the entire IT department for this company. They'll all be using standard software, because I set the standard. Bob from accounting doesn't have an option. If he really really really really needs to use windows for some reason, he'll be using AbiWord to communicate with the rest of the company, point finale.
Re:My Thoughts (Score:2)
The good thing about deploying Linux is that since it plays nicely with others, I don't have to migrate people who would be hurt by the move. Our accountants are used to Peachtree, so why change them? The print server they use is now a Linux box, but they have no idea anything changed. The shipper has UPS's custom Windows app on his machine, and that's fine. The Win95 box is on will remain usable until it burns out eventually, no need to change anything.
Especially in this economic climate, my smallish company cannot afford Windows/Office licenses. With Linux, we're upgrading our technological presence at minimum cost. I can buy Athlon barebones kits and create top-of-the-line workstations for under $600 and save nearly $400 each by not using Microsoft for anything.
You know nothing of support... (Score:2)
I am working at a company that is moving off of green screen terminals to windows based systems for communications between franchises and headquarters. Let me tell you something, these franshizees are not interested in learning how to use a computer, they aren't interested in changing from their existing platform and they don't want to spend any money.
So, they attempt to network a Windows NT or Windows 2000 machine themselves. They then attempt to install this terrible, terrible software. These people just want to sell their product. They have no desire to become computer geeks or even know how to do more than simply plugin their sales and orders.
Don't even start with, "Why don't they use Windows XP or something." This is a large corporation, if you have never worked in a large corporation, you won't understand. However, it is mandated that they only use those two Operating Systems.
With the way things used to be, the average call time was 5 to 10 minutes. Nowadays, the average support call can stretch into 45 minutes or longer hand-holding someone that has no desire to setup a computer system.
What they should have done to modernize things and through a GUI on top of everything. Was to setup simple thin-clients running a very limited set of applications. A central Linux server with several thin-clients running off of it that only allow the users to access a web browser, perhaps a word processor and maybe one or more other applications.
Most of the franchises have in-house accounting systems that run on some form of UNIX, so they could very easily tie into those and get all the "benefits" of super-slow intranet connection...
Of course, if they did that, then they wouldn't be being fair to their business partner, Microsoft.
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Re:My Thoughts (Score:2)
Then put KDE on the machines and just re-train them for the accounts package.
I can't stand KDE for the same reason it would solve your objection: it's so like Windows that users frequently can't tell the difference. I've had several temps in here using Star Office under KDE that have never realised that they were using anything other than Windows 98.
TWW
Re:My Thoughts, Linux training (Score:2)
congatulations, you can now use Linux® better than most people can use windows®!
When is the last time you saw a windows user logining off or screen locking their computer when leaving it idle?
The problem open-source accounting apps. (Score:4, Interesting)
HRIS / Payroll Accounting (Score:2, Informative)
For the database you have the standard choices, (Oracle, DB2, some others). The clients are kind of independent of the server.
I am not answering the question, I am just speculating that there is a bit more to the choice than which vendor. If you are buying an HRIS or accounting system, and your definition of mid-sized company and my definition of mid-sized company mesh, than I would imagine that the platform will not be a big deal. This is not consumer software, this is server software, and my impression is that the playing field is a bit more level.
Now as for an open source alternative, that looks like a shame. A quick search does not turn up much for HRIS projects that are open sourced. Does not seem like such a tough task to tackle. Right -- lets just whip up a MySQL object model, store information about employees and have a PHP interface and XML and java [catching my breath]. These systems tend to be pretty complex, fairly specific (to the business processes that they fit in place with). Also, there are all kinds of legalities that go along with HR and accounting for mid-sized businesses.
So basically my answer is: PeopleSoft or Ceridian or IBM (just three quickies off the top of my head) would probably love to sell you a Linux HRIS. Maybe I am wrong, but this sort of thing was probably migrated to Windows from Unix back in the day, not the other way around. The key word above is sell.
I can not wait to see what Open Source solutions turn up here, but it is a difficult problem to solve, an my expectations are low.
Appgen for Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been setting up Appgen's beancounter software. Can't say much about it, because I'm currently installing, importing files, and configuring it (I'm working on a client/server version), but the client can run on Win**, Mac, Linux, and Unix (*BSD, Solaris, SCO. YMMV). The server program runs on *nix (even on things like AIX, RS/6000, AT&T, and NCR) and NT/2000. If you want to run it just on one workstation, you can do that too. The Linux server program is not the prettiest thing (vt100 based), but it takes up very little of your precious resources. The Linux client program for KDE and Gnome is *VERY* nice looking and easy to work with (though I don't know squat about accounting). It could convince people that Linux might just have a place on a non-tech's desktop. I was impressed and I'm not very easily impressed.
It's not open source in the GNU sense, but it does come with the full sources and a C tool kit. I didn't have to sign an NDA, so make of it what you will.
Check out http://www.appgen.com. They're a *very* Linux friendly company and actually have tech support that doesn't freak out when you say
btw, It's not nearly as expensive as some beancounter programs I've seen out there.
Ask your CFO (Score:2, Insightful)
If you were starting your own business and standardized on Linux as a platform, what accounting package would you use and why?
Whatever the accountant/CFO/treasurer was most familiar with. The cost of the manpower is going to greatly exceed the cost of the software, in this instance.
This may make sense but it isn't realistic (Score:2, Insightful)
You may feel this way but many financial types do not, and have very strong preferences between packages. The original post is consistent with my experience. Another factor is training and support of accounting staff. A bunch of clerks familiar with (say) MAS-90 will have a learning hurdle going to any new package. With some packages the transition is sharper than others.
Re:This may make sense but it isn't realistic (Score:2, Insightful)
The issues are always in the reports.
I also have very strong preferences in my apps. If the app uses the TAB to advance to the next field instead of the ENTER key, I will spend money to replace it. But the MOST important consideration of an accounting app is that it's always working. No DOWNTIME.
Re:Ask your CFO (Score:2)
Chances are he is not doing the work but rather verifying it.
Spend the Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost: Yes, commercial accounting systems are incredibly expensive. Unfortunately, fucking up your financials is far, far more expensive than investing money in good, supported software. Call a few lawyers and accountings who do auditing and ask for quotes on hourly rates if you're not sure. Bad accounting will ruin a business very, very quickly. [cbsnews.com]
Reliability: I believe in the basic cathedral/bazaar theory, but there just aren't enough people writing and using open source enterprise accounting packages for the theory to apply. Unless there are tens of thousands of users, I have to assume that there are bugs in the system and I don't know where they are. See costs, above.
Personnel: if I need to hire someone from a temp agency to sit at a workstation and do AR for a few days, I don't want to spend half the time I'm paying an outrageous fee training them on an obscure system or how to use their damn operating system. If I need to have someone set up the system (as I am not an accountant), and pay truly outrageous amounts for their time, I sure don't want to spend thousands of dollars getting them familiarized with the system. Especially when they will still be punting on decisions that can affect the system years later.
Everything that I've said isn't true if there's an open source solution that becomes widely used...but accounting is really the last area of your business where you want to be on the bleeding edge of software development. In other areas, the bleeding edge might give you a competitive advantage, but in accounting, you will just plain bleed.
Hansa (Score:3, Informative)
The nice parts are that the system has a documented client/server protocol (which they call "Open TCP/IP" for no good reason). Can run on Windows, Mac and Linux. Fairly sensible licensing, from memory. Nice people.
From my limited experience (I'm no accountant), it did what you'd expect, but you saw a lot more of the database directly than you do with Sage Line 50 (the other package I know a bit about).
Write your own. (Score:2)
Programming is fun and easy. Maybe it isn't the solution for you - but too many people dismiss it without really trying.
What I would use (Score:2)
I'd write my own using MySQL, and HTML::Embperl.
If it's your own business, and you want to do things right, your software should be written to match your way of doing business. Computers exist to make the procesess better. If you taylor the software to the processes (no canned 'solutions' for business running stuff), you can focus on what it is you are actually selling, as opposed to figuring out 'how do I do that with this software?' For anything I'd run myself, I could write the code in a couple of days, and the fact that you can look at the stuff using nothing more than a browser is a big plus, especially as you grow and have people other than yourself interacting with your data.
Re:What I would use (Score:2)
One upon a time I made my living writing and maintaining client-specific accounting programs, and I can tell you from that experience that unless you're an accountant, you cannot do this properly yourself.
Just as a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, so too with accounting software.
The problem isn't in making the software work as your business requires; it's in making it work as the auditors will require.
WyattERP (Score:3, Informative)
SAMCO (Score:2)
You can view more info at http://www.samco.com [samco.com]
MyBooks from AppGen (Score:2, Informative)
here is a link to their feature matrix [appgen.com] as compared to quick books.
oh, and best of all, MyBooks runs on whatever platform you choose. Their developers actually listen to customer requests, and you can get tech support without forking out your credit card number!
Small businesses (Score:2, Insightful)
I have worked with many small offices that use from one to ten computers. I was doing on-site tech work, mainly fixing hardware and killing viruses. I learned how to use several accounting and inventory packages because the customer didn't know how to use it fully. From changing a template in Quickbooks for a one-man office, to specifying which LPT port to send various reports and billings to in Raintree, and then doing print capture to send LPT2, LPT3, and LPT4 to other stations for laserjet, color inkjet, or dotmatrix. I learned how to do this with each package in about 15 minutes.
This would be a good area to specialize in if you were going to start a business supporting it. Find a nice Linux accounting app, have basic hardware knowledge so you can replace hard drives, install a network if needed, and get a tape drive for daily backups. (No insult meant there, just some computer gurus only know the OS, not the hardware; you have to be able to troubleshoot and repair problems in both areas for this.) Install linux on each system, and show the customer how easy it is to use. Get a clientelle of about 50 small businesses, and you're set off to a good start.
Also, from what I have seen, I would rather have a DOS-style than a Windows-style accounting program. Less overhead on the computer and network, and more stable. And as another poster said, make sure it uses the ENTER key, not the stinking TAB to switch fields. Punching in numbers with one hand while turning pages with the other is much easier that way.
Finally, a Slashdot topic I know too much about (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Unless you are blessed with outside accountants like me who read Slashdot and know the difference between Debian and Mandrake, your choice may create significant problems at month/year end when one of my many slightly to nearmost completely computer illiterate colleagues tries to either download/extract your data or wants you to generate a file that to import into either Excel or their audit/trial balance package. Reason: 99.9999% of tax programs/CPA audit software/CPA trial balance software is written in Windows, and all of it takes an Excel file. (Hint: Not being able to do this quickly/easily = higher costs (annually)).
2. Your CFO/controller will have a lot easier time finding people who can work in the Windows environment to do the basic grunt work of entering invoices, bills, and time so the system can print checks (including your own paycheck). In some 15 years in public accounting, highly computer literate, easily trained, low cost clerks are about as easy to find as naturally occurring penguins in the Sahara. Not everybody runs (or wants to run Linux). Most everybody knows Windows, and your clerks will also know some Excel and at least one or two Windows accounting packages.
3. As much value as I see in open source, I would have a very hard time accepting an open source accounting solution as a CPA auditing a set of books. Unless the company is one of the Generals (Foods, Tire, Motors) or equivalent and possesses the internal programming staff and the full time accounting staff to verify that the stuff works right, it's not worth the risk to be a beta site and discover the bugs. Folks, were talking about real money here, and most of my colleagues would be real skittish about any system that "somebody downloaded from the Internet" (It's bad enough to do that with established, old-line accounting sofware companies, and I've got the scars to prove it.) And if you can't convince us that the books aren't bogus (intentionally or otherwise), good luck with the banker.
In short, yes, accountants are conservative and prefer things that we KNOW will work consistently and correctly all of the time. We also like things that have a low total cost of ownership, and unfortunately, Linux and accounting packages don't have it right now. My "as close as I'm gonna get to a professional recommendation without sending a bill" is live with an off-the-shelf, low cost, Windows (there, I've said it) package such as DacEasy, Best BusinessWorks, or Peachtree. Just promise me no QuickBooks, OK?
Re:Finally, a Slashdot topic I know too much about (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, in our company we have a system [fastbase.co.nz] that will run on pretty much any unix OS. I've run it (in production) on Openbsd, although its currently running on Linux. However 90% of the client machines are Compaq iPAQ running Windows 2000 and accessing the system via ssh.
Result, an easy to maintain cost-effective server system that I can maintain from anywhere I might be and usual doesn't give me security concerns.
I've accessed our system secure on whim from client sites by ssh.
In terms of transfering files to Windows, Samba and well position shares are your friends.
With regards to (3), I agree. At the end of the day OSS is nice because it allows the system to exist beyound the life of the entity that produces it. However, the main cost of a good ERP system is not the initial licensing, but the on going support costs. We pay our accounting system people a reasonable amount of money to be avaliable 8/5 for minor problems and custom upgrades. Sometimes even quicj calls in the weekends.
For something as critical as an accounting system the best thing is not to be concerned about software ethics, but the cost-benefit of each particular system you might use.
Go with what works for you.
All that said there is starting to be a good selection of systems that will run on Linux. Some of them (mentioned above) are even OSS.
Re:Finally, a Slashdot topic I know too much about (Score:3, Informative)
1. Frequent database corruption and no way to repair the database. Since whole shebang is one db file this is scary. We backup twice daily.
2. Scalability. If you have a small customer database then it maybe fast enough, but we have several thousand customers it bogs down and becomes sloooooow. Current single file db is around 50 Mbytes.
3. And foremost the database is inaccessible with no published API. I tried a while back with Quickbooks 2000 to import orders (transactions) from a flat file. Forget it. After hours of work I was able to get customers to import, but the documentation was incomplete and I had to find trick from the usenet to make it work.
Accounting's only part of it - you need middleware (Score:3, Informative)
So you either write SQL ledger modules for *everything* or you use some sort of middleware. I have a short document which describes why you need middleware:
http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/middleware/
There's lots of very expensive and proprietary middleware systems from such companies as IBM and WebMethods. Something open would be handy.
Compiere is what you want (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Compiere is what you want (Score:2)
Maybe so, but I get worried when their web site does not work.
It says, "Useful POS Links", but there is no link:
http://www.compiere.org/pos.html
Re: (Score:2)
Silk Software (Score:2, Informative)
-and.. yes... i of course work for silk
Many Unix programs have been ported to Linux. (Score:2, Interesting)
Go for it! (Score:2)
I don't know what's available in the open source realm, but if you're ok with a commercial package, you might want to try ACCPAC. This is a mature package, originally from the DOS/Windows world, and recently migrated to Linux. It's got all the usual stuff: accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger... this is a package that I've seen CFO's really enjoy working with, to the point where they detest having to use anything else. Give it a try.
commercial.. the company I work for.. (Score:2)
FreeMoney (Score:3, Informative)
It has been designed by people who really do know what they are doing and quite a lot of effort has gone into it recently.
"Cash" for Linux (Score:2, Informative)
It is used quite widely in the NL.
Gerb
Appgen might have what you are looking for. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:+1 Informative (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah you dumb fool, this bandwidth could have been put to better use with an article bashing Microsoft.
Re:What about a database? (Score:2)
You do need to make sure that you have a programmer that understands enough accounting to do what you need to do. Accounting terms can sound scary, but usually are fairly simple from a programming perspective.
A decent programmer won't have any trouble making reports. Unless they're out of their element in accounting.
Re:What about a database? (Score:2, Informative)
I stumbed across this article, thought yeah these linux based solutions are great! (im a part time accountant in a small accounting practise and my boss wants to move to computer based software that will cost in the region of £2,000 - £4,000 per year)
Then I started to check it out, it just wouldnt work for the UK. The legal systems are so different, I doubt that there is a UK based linux suite out there
/the search continues
Re:At the heart of the matter... (Score:2)
bzztt..
Sorry. Wrong.
*Don't* bother to try again.
If you had bothered to read most of the posts and take any of the links offered, you'd see that there are a lot of serious options available, all with support, not a bit of which is performed by hippies on Usenet.
I think your agenda's showing, through yon Window...
t_t_b
Re:At the heart of the matter... (Score:2, Insightful)
How can anyone even bother to rate this as insightful?
Don't you read the Agreements you click through when you install your software? I must admit that I often skim through the provisions of the EULA's for most of the apps I install, but I've read a few. AFAIK, I have yet to see a software provider that makes ANY claims as to the ability of the software to perform any task at any time. Most EULA's, in fact, expressly attempt to shield the authors from any liability whatsoever.
Of course, the situation may be different when you're spending a few million or so on a custom SAP job, but as far as the average (even mid size) business is concerned, you are on your own.
The GPL, of course, is no exception. Read the "No Warranty Clause" of the GPL (similar clauses appear in other Open Licenses) which you can find at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ [gnu.org]. It's pretty clear that all risks are beared by the user.
But don't think that it's just the Open Source developers. IANAL, but it would seem that any contract worth the paper it's printed on would try and get the developer out of as much liability as possible. For Microsoft's part, I haven't been able to dig up an online version of their recent EULA's for any of their products. Found a link at http://nl.linux.org/geldterug/license.html [linux.org] which shows the Win98 License, and wouldn't you be surprised to know they have a VERY SIMILAR CLAUSE. As far as I could tell, the only difference was that Microsoft will refund the cost of the software.
[sarcasm] Thanks. [/sarcasm]
The truth appears to be that all software vendors try to limit their liability just as every other product vendor does. It's a weird incentive built into the marketplace, since it appears that it's more economical to lobby for legislation like UCITA and it's cousins (which help shield software developers from some forms of legal liability) than it is to spend the money to develop software that really works.
I am not saying Open Source is right for every application. Clearly it has its strengths and weaknesses. But I whould never base any enterprise software decision on the "who am i gonna sue?" argument. Evaluate your apps on how well they solve your particular business needs.
bjh
Re:At the heart of the matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
The same fucking person you sue when your closed-source app running on Windows fails: NOBODY. Jesus, have you ever read a EULA? You sue absolutely NOBODY. This comment needs to be rated -1 Troll or -1 Total Idiot immediately.
Re:At the heart of the matter... (Score:2)
I can write in a EULA that you must sacrifice sheep in order to keep running my software; that doesn't mean that any court would hold you to that.
My organization has sued Microsoft & IBM successfully several times in the last 5 years over software issues. It happens all the time.
Re:Web is the future... Duh! (Score:2)
What I mean, is that web-based applications are the future, but they are a long ways off, probably not in the next 5 years. I have used over 30 web applications for a very large corporation in several different environments on a fast network with good servers, and web-based programs such as accounting, etc. are just too slow and cumbersome.
it is just too difficult to do everything a speicalied application needs to do in a web brower. Web browers are a univeral app.
Possibly when backend database servers are more robust (or cheaper to allow for more), and we have gigabit pipes everywhere instead of 100Mbit, they will be feasible.
Afterall, web-base software rukes for expandability and support, but we need the horsepower and fat pipes to make it happen in the average business.
Open Source the package! Quick! (Score:2, Insightful)
Your in-house guys are already going to be spending time debugging, so it's not like your company has anything to loose. If it's good, you get free testers every time someone decides to implement the system, providing feedback and making your own product better.
Eric S. Raymond [tuxedo.org] mentions in his Homesteading the Noosphere [tuxedo.org], there is no value lost to your company, only benefit to be gained.
Bob-