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Accounting Systems on Linux?
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?"
Open source accounting/HR software is a great idea. Not only could your company get useful software for next to nothing (having to pay someone to modify it for their company would be the cost), but if they wanted to expand it in the future to include other areas of interest, they could just modify their code to do it, preferebly paying the same person to code in a new part of it. The only problems I would see with it would be trying to train the staff on its use.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Requirements are not only that they are reliable and stable. That doesn't even begin to touch it.
How about a capable accounting system and billing package rolled into one capable of being deployed TODAY?
RH's Interchange is a good start, but still isn't enough to compete with the big boys.
I know that there are several accounting packages out there that support Linux (Computron being one) but they are mostly expensive.
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.
If you were starting your own business and standardized on Linux as a platform, what accounting package would you use and why?
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
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.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I spent a lot of time last year looking for open source accounting software. I'm not happy about it, but I would not recommend open source enterprise accounting to anyone who wants to keep their job/business.
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.
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.
If you know one accounting app you know them all -- MeNeXT
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.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Yes thats correct but you CANNOT compare SAP to open source - it runs on linux because they promote it as multi platform but it is so commercially protected and copyrighted that never in a million years could it be open source.
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 !)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
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.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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.
I used to be anti MySQL for similar reasons, but I think a lot of that stuff is irrelevant now. The ideas of ACID and such were developed when DBs were being used more as a programming environment as well as a persistence layer. For example, if your system only ever used basic CRUD functionality, on a row-by-row basis (like a huge amount of systems), you wouldn't even need transactions at the db layer at all.
MySQL is fast, stable, and somewhat simple. It is an excellent persistence layer for someone who is implementing business logic and other things in a real programming language instead of SQL92. Taking unnecessary complexity out of the database and changing it back to something that stores tables of rows is a good thing.
An accounting system isn't exactly a demanding data environment. Sure, you can't lose the data. It's of mission-critical import, but MySQL isn't going to explode your tables any more than MSSQL. Think about how people did accounting without computers: ledgers. Books. That's it. There are never more than two related writes going on at a time (one credit for each debit and vice versa). MySQL is fine.
Too bad this couldn't have been two separate questions, one for small businesses, one for medium sized ones. So many of the very negative answers are based on someone's 'experience' in a mid to large sized business.
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.
piece of infrastructure in most companies.
And this differs from visual basic in what way?
:-)
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.
Also, our UI is currently undergoing extensive changes, and things are changing nightly
Sounds to me like the best reason of all not to put this into use in a business environment.
Sanbukid, your company already has programmers on staff, right? Then put this home-built package into OpenSource ASAP!
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 mentions in his Homesteading the Noosphere, there is no value lost to your company, only benefit to be gained.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
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/. 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 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
Bryan "BJ" Hoffpauir
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.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
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.
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.
With regards to (2), at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the back end is running on as long as the interface is usable.
For instance, in our company we have a system 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.
Heh - Yeah - we have a business of 14 people, and Oracle wanted $1 million over 4 years, and we wouldn't own the software at the end of it. And this was their "small business solution". Before they came up with that they said to us "which side of $50 million is your turnover", and when we laughed and said "well below" they pretty much walked out. Unless Oracle have totally changed their tune in the last 9 months, I'd discount them totally (no pun intended).
Anonymous because I'm pretty certain I'm not supposed to disclose Oracle's obscene pricing.
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.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.