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Well this is the one I've been meaning to test out for a while http://www.linuxcanada.com/ just never got around to it but now its the time.

Yes they are pretty expensive my current one ACE Retail was around $1400 for one computer. I looked at oithers and the prices were insane if you wanted anything not DOS looking like. I did go with ACE as this is what I was use to for the previous 4 years but its amazing how the same bugs have been in the system for the last 6 years and old bugs just pop up out of the blue even though they were suppose to be fixed.

I now have found a Linux based POS http://linuxcanada.com/ that seems quite good and will be testing it out shortly

Quasar Accounting and Point of Sale System: http://linuxcanada.com/

We have been using it to run a gift shop for many years (in USA), including ordering, invoicing, inventory management, accounting, sales, and the register.... and all under Linux.

It is not free, but it is multiplatform, GUI, affordable, and source is available. It used to be mostly open source, but they couldn't make the model work.

Quasar?
http://linuxcanada.com/pos.shtml

Have you looked at Quasar Accounting? Looks like they also have a PoS app as well.

http://www.linuxcanada.com/pos.shtml

It's Here

Have a look at Quasar, from Linux Canada. It's an integrated business accounting suite that has a POS module for it's commercially licensed version.

http://www.linuxcanada.com/pos.shtml

LinuxCanada has an POS system and an open source accounting system similar to Quickbooks. Both are reasonably priced for small businesses. http://www.linuxcanada.com/

http://www.linuxcanada.com/

It's rather a strange user interface, but it's all OpenSource so you can change it.

They could have done the support community bit somewhat better, and you do need to be a middle-rank guru to set it up.

I use Quasar accounting and point-of-sale (GPL) for a small retail business, and I have no complaints.
http://www.linuxcanada.com/

Quasar at http://www.linuxcanada.com/ does exactly what you want and I believe is or has been converted to GPL and is open source now.

A wonderful accounting package but also includes addons for POS and possibly some others.

Have you seen their products?

http://www.linuxcanada.com/pos.shtml

I am not affiliated, just been aware of them for 3-4 years now.

I don't know about TurboTax, but we use Quasar Accounting (GPL) for a medium-complexity business, and it works very well. I like knowing that my data is sitting in a database I trust like Postgres rather than in QuickBooks backup files which we've had bad experiences with trying to move from version to version.

Their website seems to be offline this morning-- too bad.

SMB's who are interested in OSS but want something that doesn't require as much hand holding should check out Quasar Accounting. http://www.linuxcanada.com/ Quasar is GPL, has Windows and Linux graphical clients, and is as easy to use as Quickbooks. It also has most of the features of QuickBooks Enterprise and can handle very sophisticated inventory controls. It's being used to keep the books on a chain of 70+ convenience stores, as well as others. http://www.linuxcanda.com/

>A good Quickbooks replacement that wasn't even free but ran on Linux, would go a long way toward us being able to ditch Windows.

Free help. It might feel old, but damn, its worked well for my business 3 years when it was mine. And back then, you had to pay for it. And none of that double entry crap to fix mistakes, either, unless you like the masochism. Handles thousands of entries quickly, too, so you don't have to delete your old data each year. And lets not forget that it was intended to be networked from day one. None of the "shared file" BS that makes the competition suck.

But that's just my opinion. And the opinion of the guy that took over the store. He switched the accounting over to simply accounting, and later, quickbooks because he felt quasar was too much of a learning curve. Two months of hell with those applications and he decided quasar really was better. It made him learn to use linux, too. :)

Have you tried Quasar?

1. Quasar Accounting. Much like QuickBooks, includes AR, AP, GL,
Inventory, Fixed Assets (if I remember right). Written in C++ with a
Linux server (talks to Postgres or Firebird or Sybase) and a C++ GUI
client based on QT (so it runs Windows and Linux). Drawback: they are
good at supporting it - esp if you buy a support contract - but they've
been promising the next major upgrade (1.5 from 1.4.7) "any day now" for a
few months. It's GPL, though. http://www.linuxcanada.com/

2. OpenBravo. This is a Spanish ERP solution, based on Java (tomcat or
jboss) and presents a web interface. Has GL, AP, AR, as well as CRM.
I've only played with this a bit but the learning curve is much closer to
vertical here. http://www.openbravo.org/

The only thing missing from those solutions is HR / Payroll, but for that
you could go to an outside company. There are payroll companies that
handle enterprises of all sizes, from 2 employees on up to tens of
thousands.

My point was, if we are going to tell people, "We appreciate your interest in Linux, but we just can't help you unless you convince the CIO of your company to redo all of their backoffice.", how are we going to grow Linux's userbase? We need to convert the IT and the business people, but lets not neglect the users while we're doing it.

Target new businesses, more than converting existing businesses. Same with individuals. If you know someone getting their first computer and you think linux would be good for them, offer to help them. Help them choose hardware that works, recommend and install a distro for them, configure any third party software repositories for them. Everything it takes to get it ready for them to use.

For people starting businesses, vendor lock in is easy to explain. Monopoly prices on commodities are easy to explain. Business case for why companies release software Free/Open Source is easy to explain (tie in to vendor lock-in effects) and is necessary so the FOSS makes sense to them so they're not suspicious. The fact that they don't have existing IT infrastructure makes a lot of things easier. There are many businesses that don't need to exchange MS Office files at all, such as many tradespeople, handymen, small shops etc. http://www.linuxcanada.com/ has an accounting package called quasar which I haven't had time to test yet, but looks promising.

Yes, there is good accounting and POS software, IF YOU LOOK FOR IT.

http://www.linuxcanada.com/

Their base package (GL, Recievable, Payable, etc) is free and compares featurewise with QuickBooks Enterprise. Their point of sale is also excellent but costs, albeit very reasonable at $1k + $250/terminal. Server runs on Linux only and needs Postgres or Sybase or Firebird; clients are graphical and run on Linux or Windows.

Disclaimer: I work for Linux Canada Inc.

You may want to look at the Quasar accounting and point-of-sale suite at http://www.linuxcanada.com/ The accounting suite itself is available under the GPL. The point-of-sale part is under a commercial license but includes the source code. Version 1.4.7 is currently available but 1.5 should be released shortly and contains many significant changes.

(which *was* around 2003 or so) jPOS looked to be the best avaiable OSS solution. We were looking at a big custom development job anyway, though, and that appeared to be the best (open or closed) platform for custom development. If you're looking for something a bit more "out of the box", we never found anything open that went that direction. This looks promising, though.

Linux Canada has an open source business accounting package called Quasar.

I'll throw down with Quasar.

It has a few more features than you're looking for, but it does inventory tracking pretty well.

It's also GPL'ed.

>>Accounting: Quickbooks? There IS no replacement.

Please look at MoneyDance for personal finance a la Quicken Pro and Quasar for business accounting.

Quasar - http://www.linuxcanada.com/quasar.shtml
Moneydance - http://www.moneydance.com/

by the way, moneydance platform support is Win/Lin/Mac ;)

If your thinking something like QuickBooks, then you're in luck because these programs already exist. Check out these projects:

Quasar:

http://www.linuxcanada.com/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/quasar/

Compiere:

http://www.compiere.org/

and of course there is GNU Cash:

http://www.gnucash.org/

1. Forgive me for the obvious links:

http://www.moneydance.com/
http://www.linuxcanada.com/
http://www.linuxledgers.com/

I know nothing about Accounting and do not know if these may help you or not.

2. Fedora has excellent ATI drivers, Livna Repository I believe. Very good stuff but only works with Fedora.

The only quickbooks that I have used was a version for DOS back in 1995, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I haven't used this product myself, but Linux Canada makes Quasar a GPL'd accounting program. If you need it, you can buy tech support from them & if necessary you can buy the close source edition too.

The only quickbooks that I have used was a version for DOS back in 1995, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I haven't used this product myself, but Linux Canada makes Quasar a GPL'd accounting program. If you need it, you can buy tech support from them & if necessary you can buy the close source edition too.

The only quickbooks that I have used was a version for DOS back in 1995, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I haven't used this product myself, but Linux Canada makes Quasar a GPL'd accounting program. If you need it, you can buy tech support from them & if necessary you can buy the close source edition too.

For business accounting on Linux there is Quasar, which is a "full function, stand-alone business accounting package." It has both a GPL and commercial licenses.

Quasar is the linux equivalent of Simply Accounting. For a 5 man business, it would probably be enough. It's not specifically designed to do Purchase Orders, but it's there, buried somewhere.

my community food co-op
has been using this for years now

linux canada quasar pos

Point of sale system, right. You don't do that open source because there's no point. Who'd use it that doesn't have a purchasing department and thus can be expected to outlay a little dough?

How about any small business that is trying to get their systems up to the current century. I've been looking at FOSS POS systems. Few work, some think the web is the answer to everything. The best I have found so far is Quasar, (not free, but reasonably priced) and it doesn't quite meet my clients needs. So if I choose it, I'll end up making modifications or writing extra utilities. I need it to tie into a PostgreSQL server and integrate with some warranty systems/part lookup systems.

Not the sexiest project to work on, but I'll bet you could feed your family supporting it.

My non-technical family has been running Red Hat for 2 years now, with good success. I actually taught my mom how to run a "dialup" script that I wrote, and she can connect to the Internet just fine.

They actually have two computers: a Win98 box and the RH box. The RH box is running SAMBA, and when each of my family members logs into his/her account on the Win98 side, his/her userspace is automatically mounted as drive X: (or something).

They have OpenOffice and Firebird on both machines.

Just this past Christmas, I upgraded my in-laws from W2K to Mandrake 9.2. They've been having a grand time (the games are a real winner), except that just today Evolution started giving them problems when they try to send mail.

My family has a hardware modem that I bought specifically for them, and they use wvdial in RH 9.0 (now). My in-laws have a winmodem that we bought (gasp!) a driver for from linuxant.com. I must admit, KPPP is very nice, and it beats my dialup script any day. :)

I'm planning to switch my family from GNOME/RH 9.0 to Mandrake/KDE next time I'm out there. I hadn't tried Mandrake until just before Christmas, but I must admit that I now recommend it as the best choice for my non-technical friends & relatives.

I recently installed Mandrake 9.2 on another friend's machine, and so far she's doing fine, too.

In fact, as I type I'm working on a laptop to send to my Dad. I've got Mandrake 9.2 on it and configured nicely (with Quasar, Firebird, and Acroread installed), but I just joined the Mandrake club so I can put 10.0 on it instead.

My experience has been that if you make sure people can do the things they want to do (i.e., not run MS Flight Sim, but email, surf the Web, word processes, etc.), and those people are willing to learn something new (or don't know any better), they can do just fine with something like Mandrake.

I've also started demonstrating Linux for people using MandrakeMove (KNOPPIX would work as well, I'm sure, but I haven't tried it yet). It's great to be able to pop in a CD, tell them none of their data is being touched, tell them a "real installation would be faster", and see how impressed they are.

Short of pushing someone all the way to Linux, I think the next best thing is to give them something like TheOpenCD.

</rambling>

...like this? Doesn't look like free-as-in-speech but it's only $200 so I'd say it qualifies as "cheap". This outfit is pretty local (to me anyways) and has been offering a POS system of some kind on Linux for a few years now.

As for OPEN SOURCE...POS seems to be an area lacking in a high profile solution (where OS has Linux and BSD, WWW has Apache, DBMS has MySQL and PostgreSQL). There is one aspect of a POS system where you may run into legal barriers in releasing source code and that is direct interfacing with credit/debit card systems (POSpad hardware, Datapac networks and so on).

You can legally reverse engineer the comms but in order to use the system on a live network it needs to be approved by the financial institution. To be approved requires you to obtain the specs and sample user-acceptance-test scripts prior to development. To obtain (ie. **BORROW** since you must return these on demand and cannot copy them without permission) these materials you must sign an NDA which could possibly close up a portion of your system's code (you'd have to make it modular and do the NVidia-type idea).

Once development is complete you must perform the U.A.T. under the bank's supervision, and if you score 100% you are granted access to the real system with a proper merchant ID and Terminal ID(s) set up on their mainframes to work with the MAC ID's burned into the firmware of your POSPads and modems.

Not a very hack-friendly system. Of course, the NDA may allow the software to be open-source, but if anyone so much as changes one byte and recompiles (such that the checksum of the binary files differ) that party must sign the same NDA and do the entire U.A.T. AGAIN.

Sooooo....cheap/free/Free POS is a good idea, but integrated credit or debit support would be a PITA (FYI = Pain In The A$$). Perhaps a bank has a gateway interface for CC auth that is open source but I'm not aware of it. That is definitely not the case when interfacing with retail POSpads that I'm aware of.

= 9J =

A search from msn.ca on the term "linux" gave some reasonable results I think. There was Linux.com as the first, followed by sites like linuxcanada.com, some provincial/city linux organizations from places like Edmonton, BC and Alberta, some links to online linux certification classes.

Doesn't seem too unreasonable to me and it was interesting to see how tailored the results were given there were a lot of canadian sites up there and canadian area linux organization links. I have to say I was actually impressed given what I was ready to see from the headline of this article

It's not to hard to find. I typed dos accounting package into google and found this

the one I have seen that is the best of the lot is Champion controller. for intel/windows and it looks like they made a windows client for their software package. Remember you do NEED to actually start learning and understanding your business accounting to use the aoftware packages that are more powerful. you do need to understand the basics and a little bit of the advanced accounting (taxes lie squarely in the advanced, but are not too difficult if you take your time and learn a bit of the accounting... I do my 1040 long every year, and I did moy 1040 long form when I had my business.)

you don't need a $75,000.00 a year accountant, not even Fortune 500 companies hire that expensive of an accountant. you really DO need one during tax time no matter what software you use.

Linux based accounting.... it does exist....

this is a non-open-source accounting package. I have not used it. I personally absolutely loved the package for Sco Xenix called Excalibur Premiere. it was a $1000.00 per module package that allowed you to create any form possible plus used a real SQL backend, but I do not know if it exists anymore.... they may have made a dos/windows version of it now.

Basically, I have seen that almost every company that is serious about their accounting package they do NOT use any of the windows based products. many of the larger businesses still use thier Unix accounting systems they bought in the early 80's.

There are a few alternatives (having just opened a retail business, I've looked). We couldn't find a commercial Linux solution for our business that could handle what we needed our POS system to do, but for that matter the solutions that did exist on the Windows side were very expensive per site, and for us not cost-effective. So like many companies, we had to get a custom-made POS system up & running. Unfortunately, the programmers I knew were only comfortable with Windows systems - and therefore that's what we went with. I'm sure this situation has happened for many businesses: despite us being aware of the cost benefits of non-Windows systems (and quite frankly, most busness decision makers are not) and actively looking for an OSS solution, we had to roll our own on Windows.

Some of the best *nix POS solutions out there:

Viewtouch, the original makers or touchscreens, with FreeBSD/Linux systems

IBM, with some Linux-based solutions (mostly for medium to larger businesses), but recently successful

Quasar POS from Linux Canada - a great, professional & full-featured POS solution with integrated accounting (based on the OS Firebird db). Growing fast.

MacPOS with so many solutions on the Mac platform to choose from (and many being migrated to MacOS X) it's almost as bewidering as looking for a Windows solution.

We would have gone with a MacOSX or Linux solution if we had only found a programmer that was comfortable working with them. Long-term, either would have been cost-effective.

Linux Canada makes an accounting package and a POS package.

The one thing I still look for in a accounting package is the ability to do batch imports into the journals like AccPac (at least the dos version).

Linux Canada makes an accounting package and a POS package.

The one thing I still look for in a accounting package is the ability to do batch imports into the journals like AccPac (at least the dos version).

http://www.linuxcanada.com/linux_pos.html .

Can't say what the quality of it is, though...

------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.

It's not very obvious from their feature-oriented web site, but Apropos uses Linux. See how LinuxPOS or Simple Simon meet your needs.

As for the POS software you're looking for, there are quite a few options available.

Samco has an extensive offering of business accounting applications that work with Linux, including POS. Check out the screenshots of their POS module. J.S. Software provides accounting and POS software, and they support Linux. LinuxPOS from Linux Canada is also available.

Funny how all three of these companies are Canadian. Don't worry about accounting tax differences too much, though--Canadian companies (have to) create software with other countries' tax laws in mind.