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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?"
GPL'd, web-based, double entry accounting system
for businesses. Full internationalization support
for several languages, currencies and chart of
accounts, written in Perl. Good stuff.
Webpage here
GNUCash is *not* a business accounting system.
It is a *personal* accounting system.
In my experience (manufacturing, specifcially chemcial manufacturing), the accounting software is almost irrelevant. The trick is finding a suitable manufacturing package and then you just use whatever accounting package that works with it.
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!
It might just be me, but in my former experience being a SysAdmin for several junior oil companies, one thing really stood out in the IT and infrastructure areas: These people were extra conservative.
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.
Lacking any traditional desktop software packages, you could always use web-based commercial products like QuickBooks for the Web or Oracle Small Business Suite.
-Entropy [think outside the system]
Our company uses BillMax, but my personal view is that the system was cobbled together without much thought on scalability and is missing a lot of features. We are currently porting the system over to an in-house PHP application.
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.
An "accounting" package is not enough these days. Lets face it, developing relationships with customers is what it's all about. Which means that getting information in and out of your systems in the quickest possible manner is what will win in the face of competition. Enterprise Resource Planning systems from the likes of SAP and Oracle are what give big business the edge. Sure you don't have $250K to spend on solutions from these guys but Appgen, Compiere, and GNU Enterprise are bringing these kind of systems to the masses. The most promising at the moment seems to be Compiere but it does require some up-front costs - (nothing a small business could'nt handle if they were planning on a Windows deployment anyway). Check them out!
He who knows not what his nose knows......
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.
Appgen makes MyBooks, which is very similar to quickbooks, and can be purchased with development modules. This is made by the same people who do Moneydance.
$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
mySAP has been running on ;-).
Linux for quite some time now.
But perhaps that's nothing for small businesses
-- www.linux-laser.org - Open Source Laser Show Software for Linux
Nathan.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
One very very important thing that commercial vendors "get" is the fact that a user of such a package is probably NOT accountant, and needs extensive hand-holding when dealing with accounting matters which often have legal implications.
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.
As I wrote on k5 in October:
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
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
There are a couple of open source apps on slashdot, and Linux already runs commercial db products such as those based on Oracle,DB2 or Progress. The problem for an open source project is that every country has different mandatory and/or statutory accounting rules that need to be followed, so in order to gain the cross-national critical mass that an open source accounting project would need, it would have to recruit experienced accountancy/ERP/CRM programmers from a multitude of different countries, with a project leader from each country assuring that his/her countries requirements are not ignored. This could be the biggest sourceforge project of all time!
Seems like HR / Accounting systems are basically database, and as part of the package the vendor sends along some management clients. The clients are not the core technology, and are probably easilly ported and platform independent of the server.
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.
Troll Like a Champion Today
DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to sell this program, just sharing info on a product I am currently working with.
,"Linux".
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.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
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?
Yeah you dumb fool, this bandwidth could have been put to better use with an article bashing Microsoft.
When we started our ISP seven years ago we almost died in the first few months because we couldn't get the bills out -- off the shelf software was not setup to handle recurring billing models.
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
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
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
He's absolutely right.
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!
You're using her as bait, Master!
You may want to take a look at Hansa Financials, which is now available on Linux. We were looking at it a few years ago as a back-end to integrate with an e-commerc product (never happened).
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).
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
We wrote our own web based accounting system. It works fine. And it wasn't that hard. Really. And it has _exactly_ the features we need.
Programming is fun and easy. Maybe it isn't the solution for you - but too many people dismiss it without really trying.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
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.
Check out the WyattERP project. It is an Open Source ERP for Linux. There is already at least one medium-sized company that runs nothing but WyattERP for all its needs - from the receptionist to invoicing to HR.
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...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
It's written in COBOL and has interfaces to Perl. We used this successfully to handle our webpage when I worked at Affordable Computers.
You can view more info at http://www.samco.com
"How would this sentence be different if pi equaled 3?"
I don't live in the US, and I never will. But from what I have heard, AccPac performs the same role (ubiquitous SME accounting software) that MYOB does in my own beautiful country, Australia.
AccPac have a Linux port.
* 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.
Yes, you will need a database engine behind your custom accounting solution. And it's not really that hard.
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.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
"Dont forget that accounting rules are different in different countries."
:(
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
Sure
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.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Quickbooks on the Web looked very cool on one of my Engineer's browser... until *I* tried it. I run Linux with Netscape and I got redirected to a page that told me I was running the wrong version of MSIE and that their "Web Based" accounting package only works on Win95, Win98, Win2K, ME, and XP. So much for the convenience of using your accounting package from anyplace in the world. Cross off Quickbooks from this list... because they require MSIE 5.0 or better they render themselves out of the running
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
here is a link to their feature matrix 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!
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) 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.
passetspike!
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 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.
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.
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.
I am a CPA in private practice, and for many years I sold accounting software to small and medium sized businesses. At the risk of trolling for flames, I would have to STRONGLY suggest that you not use Linux for accounting in a small to medium sized business environment. (Note: This is defined a company up to $50,000,000 U.S. in revenue) Why?
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?
I'm not really a CPA, I just play one on TV
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
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
As others have pointed out, SQL ledger is really quite nice but you need to be able to "plug it in" to the other business applications that are being used.
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.
Deleted
I agree with one other poster who mentioned Compiere. It is a very complete, robust, and *awesome* ERP/CRM system. http://www.compiere.org
Daniel
Know nothing about it, but looked it up on Google. Might as well share my research:
SQL Ledger
Christopher Browne's List of Free Software for Business Accounting
Mini review of SQL Ledger
Short discussion of SQL Ledger from GNU.ORG
AllCommerce, an ecommerce and fulfillment system
GNU Enterprise
Linux-Kontor is a free ERP (enterprise resource planning) software suite.
Bush's education improvements were
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The web may be the future, but so will flying cars.
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.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Silk Software has a fully integrated accounting, inventory management, POS, rental, payroll, etc, etc software package available for linux. check out the website for more info.
-and.. yes... i of course work for silk
"Nyquil - The stuffy, sneezy, why-the-hell-is-the-room-spinning medicine."
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
Unix accounting software is far more mature and feature complete then this group seems to know. It has been in wide deployment longer then any Windows accounting software. A quick search on google shows many professional and mature Unix accounting/bookkeeping packages that will run on linux. This was one of the areas of initial application development that occurred in the 1970s. Many/Many companies developed internal accounting packages that were made into commercial products. Windows is the newcomer to this...IMIO
Get a free ipod.
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
Most people here seem to be posting wildly about giant enterprise-scale packages. The truth is that most businesses are small businesses. Not only are they flexible, but they can really appreciate the cost savings associated with a free operating system.
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.
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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.
Yes, accountants are extra conservative, in the practical sense. That's what they are paid for, after all.
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-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
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.
At this point it is vapor ware, but we are porting our application to Linux. It was ported this summer to Sun from HP. I think it will be a month. www.mccue.com
Only 'flamers' flame!
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.
It is used quite widely in the NL.
Gerb
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
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.
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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?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The EULA can say whatever it wants, but the law supercedes it.
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.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I use a program called Moneydance for my personal finanace. Moneydance is made by a company called Appgen. Appgen also makes makes software for small to midsized businesses and best of all, it works with Linux. Check it out... http://www.appgen.com/
I read all the posts carefully, because accounting software is an important subject for me.
No one seems to have discussed a MAJOR reason to go to Open Source software: Commercial companies often become self-destructive. Maybe because they want to preserve reasons for future upgrades, they become unwilling to fix problems in their products.
When commercial companies are successful, they will often begin to try to squeeze the user. Look at the quote below about "unrelenting advertisement".
When commercial companies are successful, they often seem to spin out of control. Novell was one. Corel was another.
When commercial companies are successful, they often become arrogant and self-serving. Microsoft is an on-going story of being adversarial toward its customers.
Commercial software is often VERY influenced by the markeplace. From a quote below: Microsoft is "giving away Microsoft Money
I've been hearing about file corruption in Quicken and QuickBooks for years. The quotes below from this Slashdot story show that the problems have not been cured. Have the good people left Intuit, the manufacturer of QuickBooks? My experience of Open Source software it that major problems are fixed quickly.
QuickBooks is counter-intuitive, lacks backward file compatibility, and fixing some types of transactions is virtually impossible: 2718237
QuickBooks has a poor interface, there is often data corruption, and it is "slooooooooow": 2720211
QuickBooks has "frequently lost entire days worth of data": 2718998
"I hate the QuickBooks UI and its inconsistencies", GNU Cash is better: 2717131
QuickBook's "Web Based" accounting package only works on Windows: 2717244
"QuickBooks 2001 Pro is cranky - it misnumbers printed checks, sometimes. It will let you delete a reconciled check without warning on some systems, but not others. The invoicing sometimes deletes descriptions but keeps amounts.
"Plus, [QuickBooks 2001 Pro is] an unrelenting advertisement for online plus-charged checking, charge cards, investment accounts, you name it. QB is just a loss leader for the online services.
"... [Microsoft] is giving away Microsoft Money. The
The above three paragraphs are quoted from: 2717209
"I use Vmware [under Linux] to run QuickBooks for my business and Quicken for my personal stuff. They are in two different VMs and it runs great. When Quicken/QuickBooks decides to crash the OS, I just restart the Virtual Machine": 2716999"
Someone from Intuit posted a comment: KaiserSoze, a "member of the QuickBooks team" -- 2717731
This is counter-intuitive, but commercial software is often or unwilling to serve the needs of its users. Open Source software has no other purpose.
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The U.S. government causes problems, then pretends to solve them by creating more: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
I agree completely, BSD does hold the top spots.
I have a Linux box which, had I not chosen to upgrade the kernel to 2.2.18 last September and thus reboot it, would also be on that list.
I guess I did the Linux geeks a disservice!
Please don't get me wrong, I am not knocking BSD, AIX or anything (except Win). I'm just crowing about Linux because it has been my experience and I prefer not to hype what I don't know.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics