Conservative Choice for Linux Accounting Software?

mikosullivan asks: "I'm a programmer for the Roanoke Rescue Mission in Roanoke, VA. The mission provides meals, shelter, and other help to the homeless. We're looking at upgrading the mission's information systems to a Linux-based network, from server to desktop. One of the major wrinkles in our plans is finding a good accounting system for Linux. My manager strongly feels (and I sympathize) that they should stick to accounting software that is already used by established accounting firms. There are certainly a plethora of Linux and open source accounting packages out there, but she wants to stay away from the bleeding edge, at least for accounting. She wants a tried-and-true, established, conservative choice for accounting software. What accounting software for Linux is most accepted and established in the marble and wood-paneled world of conservative bean counters? It doesn't have to be open source, but cost is a major issue, and open source is, of course, preferred."

Comments

Try Kapital

[motorsabbath]

Try kapital:

http://www.thekompany.com/products/kapital

My girfriend loves it, I prefer a good spreadsheet (Applix)...

JB

Re:I want

[g4dget]

The protocol is open and standardized now: OFX (link down right now). It's based on XML. In theory, it should not require relations between the software vendor and the bank; the end user should be able to get all the necessary information. Reality may be different, however.

*Grumble*

[jsse]

Do you really care to do a little research, before Ask:Slashdot?!

The main page of Christopher Browne's "Finances, Linux, and Stuff" is here!

Click to that little "2. Linux-based Financial Software" you can find what you need.

*grumble*

Kapital

[Michael Wardle]

I asked myself the same question only a few weeks ago. I came to the conclusion that Kapital from theKompany was the best option. You'll probably need KDE and Linux or FreeBSD to run it.

Somewhat ironically, I'm using GnuCash until I can afford to buy it. :-/

Both Kapital and GnuCash claim to be able to import Quicken data files, which is a very handy feature.

Kapital is reviewed here.

Freshmeat also has a brief review that compares many Linux/Unix financial products.

If none of these seems sufficient, maybe Quicken runs under WINE. Has anybody tried doing so?

Re:Kapital

[Dr. Cam]

Quicken is reported to run _very well_ under Wine. I cannot verify this myself, as I switched to Gnucash. It lacks a little bit of the functionality of Quicken, but it offers a good deal more.

Because my wife and I have some real estate investments, and she runs a sole proprietorship, we need to make use of a "real" financial package. Quicken's use of single-entry bookkeeping used to drive me nuts at times, because some things were very complicated to set up. Gnucash is a true double-entry system.

As for getting your bank statements, unless the bank is using the newer Quicken format, downloading is trivially easy. Quicken developed the QIF format, and this is used still by a large number of financial institutions. Gnucash will sort out the duplications for you, and allow you to classify entries it cannot identify.

I won't go back.

Quicken

[JDeFontes]

Quicken 2002 on OS X. *wink*

But seriously...

I used to work for Intuit, and at one time there was an initiative to do an online version of Quicken. Some of that work seems to have shown up in their My Finances offering:

"Track checking, savings and cash accounts here. You can download balances from your financial institution..."

One hitch

[rakeswell]

Exactly right.OFX is slated for inclusion into Gnucash.

There is one hitch, however: download method. Some financial institutions require your application (MS Money/Quicken) to download the information from your bank, while others provide a browser-based hyperlink download of the qif/ofx file for you to import into your application. As long as your app supports the file formats provided, no vendor/financial institution is needed.You can curently import qif files into Gnucash.

The setup in which you download the files with your fincance application requires your app to first connect to the vendor's "branding" server, which then redirects you to your financial institution to begin the download -- this is where vendor involvement with the financial institution gets involved.

I suppose that if someone knew the address to their FI's download servlet, their application could be written to go directly there and bypass the branding servers. However, I don't think that FI's usually publish the URI for their download servlets so getting this info could be a challenge (though tech support should be able to tell you).

I've found that this interactive download method is more error-prone and resource-intensive (for the FI) than the browser-based options.

Here's a comment on building an OFX parser found on the Gnucash project goals pags:

There are two ways to build an OFX parser. One way is to build a compile-time DTD parser that treats the DTD as if it were an IDL, and generates C language stubs for a parser. This approach was attempted and abandoned because it leads to fragile C code and a very large binary.

• The parser is fragile because minor DTD non-compliances are hard to parse, handle and recover from.
• The parser is huge because the DTD results in hundreds of (C++) objects being generated.

The other method would be to perform run-time DTD parsing. This is attractive particularly because it is a more commonly-used approach; there are a variety of XML tools available that provide this function.

Quicken = Personal Finances

[alexhmit01]

Quickbooks does corporate/business accounting. If you want double-entry accounting, buy Quickbooks. You don't need the Pro version for real estate and most small businesses.

Complaining about Quicken's single-entry bookkeeping is the most retarded complaint, no offense. You're complaining that the personal finance stuff doesn't do business style accounting? That would be a valid complaint except the SAME company offers a business version cheaply (it's less than $200) that does what you want.

I use Quicken Deluxe for my personal finances where I don't want double-entry and other garbage. I use Quickbooks for my corporate accounting where I need to do invoicing, credit memos, various accounts, etc.

My personal accounting consists of a checking account, investment account, and some credit cards. My corporate accounting is more complicated and needs to be more complicated.

Alex

GnuCash

[charlie763]

Try GNUCash. It comes with most distros, its open source, and it is probably the best accounting software I have used. GNUCash is arguably as good as Quicken.

Take a look at some screen shots.

Here are some links:

[Futurepower(R)]

I'm very interested in this subject, also. Here are some links:

SQL Ledger Accounting

Hansa Business Solutions

Compiere

Cheap & easy business accounting with Linux

Nola

STFB

Open source Java projects for business and accounting. But... Is Java slow and with non-standard GUIs? A prisoner of Sun politics?

Open Systems Accounting Software

GNU Cash. Impressive.

Slashdot discussed personal finance packages. Thoughts: Where does "personal finance" end and business finance begin? Wouldn't it be better just to have one package for all accounting, so that you didn't have to learn more than one? But business accounting software has been difficult to use. Accounting software requires much more learning than word processing software. Learning more than one may reduce the quality of your life, not raise it.

Accpac

[Kent_Franken]

Accpac has a great accounting package and has been around in commercial distribution for a long time (I knew someone who used the Windows version back in the late 1980s). It was recently released for Linux.

Armor Advantage

[waldoj]

This topic came up on Kuro5hin in October of 2001. Though no doubt the options have changed since then, it might be worth reading through the comments posted there. Also, as I wrote at the time:

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.

Unfortunately, I know nothing more about Advantage on Linux now than I did at the time.

-Waldo Jaquith

ThinSoft Accounting

[himynameisbrak]

Unique Systems, Inc. has a product called ThinSoft Accounting. It's a native UNIX/Linux modular accounting package written in Informix-4GL. According to their website, "ThinSoft is now free and in the process of being converted to OpenSource. It will be the first Enterprise Accounting System in the world that is OpenSource."

It currently relies on some commercial products, but that fact that the accounting package itself will be Open Source is a big thing.

The people at USI will customize the product for you. You will wind up spending less than half what you'd spend buying a comparable commercial solution, though.

To address your primary concern, ThinSoft has a long history and is extremely stable and reliable.