Slashdot Mirror
Software for Membership Tracking and Inventory?
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?"
$5000 for an assumed lifecycle of 3 years comes down to about $137 a month. If your customer can't afford that, especially for what is likely to be a piece of business critical software, he should consider a different line of work. My work consists of helping customers evaluate Free / Open Source Software for businesses, and those that only look at FLOSS because it is free as in beer invariably end up not implementing FLOSS. Those who use FLOSS because of other reasons, such as source code availability etc, usually end up as success stories. Yes, FLOSS is a very powerful tool for the small business market, and my customers range from the 2-man-band kinda organisations, as well as the top of the Fortune 100, but if your business isn't worth an investment of less then $200 a month for your core system, you have to reasses your priorities.....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
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.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Goals for a future release: Database Independence.
I've written a point-of-sale system myself, and a fully-featured, relatively bug-free system might cost at least $100,000 to write. It's a LOT more work than it first seems to make it easy to use, for example. Retail operations are far more complex than they first appear.
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.
The open source Clubdata project might be of interest.
boakes.org
I'm not trying to imply that an upgrade *isn't* needed, but you didn't list a single reason in your question for upgrading. Being an old DOS app is fine if it works. Having no support is fine if you aren't having issues, and haven't in ages. Is the software not doing something he needs? Is it broken?
If it's doing the job it may be a good idea to keep it. You'll have the benefit of being able to run on practically free hardware, and no migration costs. Plus, whatever new vendor you find may not be a stupid as the company that sold you the previous software, and they might force you into an upgrade cycle, which is practically the only way a software company that targets such a narrow market can stay in business. Is that new software really just $5000, or are there yearly "maintnence" fees? Do they come out with a new version every 6 months?
Even free software has costs associated with it. It's free as in "freedom," not free as in beer, remember? You're unlikely to find exactly what you need, so how much of your time will you spend building something? How much is it worth to you compared to what you have, and this $5000 option?
If you decide you really do need something, and you don't want to buy a commercial product, a good option may be to find yourself a freshman year computer science student. After their first year they should have all the skills nescicary to build a simple database application for your membership needs, and they'll likely be availble for 3 more years of cheap support. It may cost you about $5000 in the long run, but it won't be all at once, and you'll get something that's tailored perfectly to your needs. When it's done, perhaps you could release it as free software, so the next guy in your situation doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. I know a few small businesses that do this, and it's worked out quite well for them. Also, I did this for a company when I was in college, and it worked out quite well for me too. I don't recommend having a custom built app handle your financials though...
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.
I've spent about six months or so repairing a botched installation of Quickbooks (http://www.quickbooks.com) and setting up an inventory and accounting system for a small distribution/wholesale concern. Aside from the fact that QuickBooks was designed by accountants who obviously hate all techies, and despite the additional badness of possessing an inflexible and proprietary back-end with a five- or ten-seat 'concurrent use' limit, Quickbooks possesses the following serious advantages:
:)
1. Price. A one-year subscription to Quickbooks Pro, including tech support, costs $85 a month, which means that you get the whole accounting package for a little over a grand. (You can cancel your subscription and keep your seats.) That's a steal, especially since I'm computing this in Canadian dollars.
2. QB Pro comes with an SDK, so you can buy third-party extensions to attach your database to ODBC, etc, which mitigates the allergy you might have to proprietariness. Also, people like www.numbercruncher.com have developed very complete sales/invo add-on packages for Quickbooks, which are worth taking a gander at if Quickbooks built-in inventory system is insufficient. (It'll probably be sufficient on its own, however, unless you're doing something weird.)
3. You really, really don't want to roll your own accounting system. Funny thing is that an inventory system must be pretty tightly integrated with an accounting system in order to work well. (ie. inventory adjustments should alter the accountant's info about what assets you have on hand; double-entry bookkeeping dictates that the difference in the asset account must match an occurrent change in an income account; valuation must be performed by averaging the cost of each order of a given inventory item type; etc.) You don't want your client to get to year-end and then find that his books don't make sense. The IRS and Revenue Canada both hate that sort of thing, and your client will likely pass the hatings on to you. Don't leave him up that particular canal without a gondola pole.
4. Quickbooks is really easy for end-users to use. Ease-of-use is paramount when you're going to let the minimum-wagers at the counter enter info.
5. Intuit sells a POS for QuickBooks. Never tried it, but I'm sure it works well.
6. Quickbooks might be too dinky for your client's business, but that's okay: It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try before you buy. If quickbooks isn't enough, go get $10,000 of AccPac like everyone else.
7. Message me for more info about what I've seen work and not work.
- undoware.ca