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Software for Membership Tracking and Inventory?

Posted by Cliff on from the running-a-business-on-free-software dept.

ZeLonewolf asks: "I'm a consultant to a customer who owns two franchises of a fitness gym. The computers they use to keep track of members and inventory run DOS programs written in the early 90's by a company that has long since gone out of business. My customer needs an upgrade badly. Replacement software to keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data, costs $5,000 and up, so a free software solution is desirable. Does GnuCash do the job? Have Slashdot readers successfully set a small business up with Free/Open Software? What software have you had success with?"

4 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. It's late and my head hurts by jm92956n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    GNU Cash isn't all that extensible.

    Have you looked at commercial database programs? There's lots of open source programs database programs, but they tend to be difficult to use for the end user (you could write a nice php front end for MySQL, but it may be time consuming). Rather, why not try (I shudder to recommend a MS product, but...) Access or the newly released FileMaker Pro 7? I can attest to FileMaker's ease of use (though I'm still on version 6) and its relative performance. Granted, it's not free, but at $300, it's not too overpriced.

    --
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  2. Re:Cheapskate! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's worth noting that depending on how much inventory they'd do (got a juice bar? want one? sell towles, water, dvd's, knicknacks?) there are other considerations. If's it's just all manual, and there's not that much in the way of flow and storage, maybe that's fine. But a telxon gun or two, and attendant system might have a say in which route their going, and bring in a fair amount of labor saving. Maybe it'd be nice to have a system that automatically reordered very popular items when inventory dipped below some threshold.

  3. GnuCash and BananaPOS by Chilltowner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I ran my software consulting business on GnuCash. It was really pretty great, actually. Once you follow the tutorial and get a handle on basic accounting practices, I was able to handle all my expenses, invoicing, accounts payable/receivable, etc. Good stuff.

    A lot of people kind of react poorly to GnuCash because it isn't a simple checkbook app. In my experience, that's a shame. It CAN be used that way--I run my personal finances on GnuCash, too. But it's powerful enough to run a mid-sized business on.

    If your client is looking more for a POS app, take a peek at Banana POS. I don't know that much about it, but it is F/OSS and might be closer to a tracking application than GnuCash.

  4. some options I've seen by myz24 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As an IT worker for a YMCA we've recently been looking at software to replace our aging DOS application as well. I've looked at quite a few different packages and I'ved listed them below along with websites. Many of them are YMCA centric but they might still be of help.

    * Aphelion (http://www.aphelion.net)
    * Christensen Computer Company (http://www.cccsoft.com/)
    * Class (http://www.classinfo.com/)
    * CSI (http://www.csisoftwareusa.com/)
    * Daxko (http://www.daxko.com)
    * Finesstri (http://www.finesstri.com/)

    Those are a few that I've found during my search. I've personally seen Aphelion, CCC, Daxko and Finesstri. Daxko's pricing is revenue based where most of the others set a rate on number of users or other factors that might suit a small place well.