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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."
I use MoneyDance. It's Java based, so it runs on Linux, Win32, MacOS X, etc...
What do you know I wrote a novel
I have actually poked at each release of GnuCash, but consistently it lacks one feature that I am rather addicted to: scheduling income and expenses, and combining this into a budget forecast for the next N months. With something like this, correctly setup, I not only know how much money I have an any account *right now*, but I will have a reasonable ball-park figure for how much money I will have in three months, six months, etc. A nifty line-plot is handy to see where, when, and how bad the next "low point" is going to be, and as necessary I can adjust funds to deal with it gracefully before it has a chance to bite my sorry a$$. Very useful planning tool that, now, I cannot do without. This is the one single feature keeping a '98 partition hanging around my house.
;)
Now, I'm not too bad writing bits of code and what-not (it's a tangential part of my day job), and I appreciate that, to some extent, linux money applications can be scripted and stuff; maybe I could roll my own forecaster this way, but I really don't want to feel like I need to kludge together such a relatively 'big' feature when I don't have the time and interest after getting home. (Maybe it's just me, and, yes, I'm a bit lazy once I'm off the clock.
I probably haven't looked into all possible alternatives for a linux-based financial program, but so far I haven't noticed one that really handles this.
I agree with the above post. PeachTree is an awesome package and unless you plan on doing hundreds of thousands of line-items, you will not hit the limits of the PeachTree System, it is also easy to use.
Now, the interesting bit is peachtree has a "pure online" version of its software (http://www.peachtree.com/epeachtree/) but it says you need to use "IE" to work on it. I don't know if this is a true limit, or just a limit on what they are willing to support, but it may be worth looking into.
Understood. If you decide to run Peach with Wine or some other win emulator, or for that matter, in Win be aware of a dirty little Peachtree secret. Peach uses the Btrieve database engine and it wants it all to itself. We've been totally unsuccessful at getting Peach and Xilinx design tools (which also need Btrieve with a whole different set of registry entries) to work together. Since the engineers need Peach for bills of materials and part descriptions and Xilinx to design chips, they each need 2 machines.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Peachtree is robust, Win98 works and nobody other than the slashdot and Apple crowds would find fault with your decision.
Actually, speaking as a charter member of the Apple crowd, I'd like to say that I support this recommendation completely. Accounting software is the closest most businesses come to something truly mission-critical. If the accounting software fails, nobody will die, but nobody will get paid or billed either, and that's about as bad as it gets for a business.
Pardon the coarse language, but don't fuck around with your accounting software. Use the best product for your particular needs, regardless of platform or-- within reason-- cost.
I write in my journal
It all depends on how complex you want to allow the exercise to become, and how many transactions you will be processing. You don't say, so I can't advise properly, but I'd probably go with Appgen Professional. I looked over some products from them a few years ago and was really impressed. Not cheap, but a fair price for a quality product. Runs on several platforms including Linux.
Your best list will be at:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/269/
It is a little dated (2001), but I don't think that the offerings have changed substantially... perhaps just a few more features, also anything regarded as slow may now be faster due to moore's law