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When Will OSS Financial Apps Catch Up?
RomulusNR asks: "One sticking issue preventing small groups such as small business and nonprofits from wholly migrating to Linux, or even open-source application software, is the sub-adequate feature scope of accounting applications. QuickBooks is the standard, easier for non-technical people to learn, and is free or extremely cheap for nonprofits, and comes built-in with nearly every tax form and chartered accounting reports imaginable. Open source software seems like a natural fit for nonprofits, but if they can't fulfill their legal financial obligations with it, it's a non-starter. Add to that the fact that most people are not terribly tech savvy, and some have spent a lot of time learning the few aspects of QuickBooks that are most relevant to them; retraining on a totally different app is not a practical endeavor. Is there any hope that the field of OSS accounting apps will catch up to the practical needs of those who would theoretically best benefit from them?"
The linked article is from Newsforge which, like Slashdot, is owned by OSTG.
My fiance and I use crossover office with quicken. To me it shouldn't be that hard, another option is wine. Yes you could write a finacial app, but migrating books from exsisting apps would be a bear as well. There are options, its just none are for the non tech savvy. Maybe in the near future? :D
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
I would imagine that most programmers are trying to forget about taxes for most of the year. However, we are constantly writing documents, browsing the Internet, etc. There is not much incentive for most programmers to dedicate time to writing financial software, unfortunately.
As soon as you write it.
Probably just a little after you start writing all those AAA game titles for linux.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Do you want accounting software for Linux?
Or do you want open-source accounting software?
Your question is worded so that it only make sense if we pretend that the only software available for linux is open source.
Slightly off-topic, but there are a lot of business areas ignored in the OSS world. Finance is also among things like inventory control and warehouse management solutions. I'm sure there is plenty of custom code running on Linux or BSD boxes out there - but a good option doesn't exist unless it's in Windows. I'm sure there are other business itches that could be scratched.
What you'll have to do is reverse-engineer and emulate the protocol one of the apps you mentioned uses.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
tax information has to be updated every year.
So the Gub'mint should make it available in machine-readable form. This way, all you need to do is feed it into your program and everything works.
But hey, we don't live in a reality where stuff works in a sensible manner...
ARE YOU KIDDING ME> When my bank and Credit cards interface with QUICKBOOKS. My Account uses Quickbooks. I click a button and all my accounts update automatically from the web, Bank accounts and charge cards. So I don't really care if something else is free when it cost me more then the software cost in time and a bookkeeper just to input the data.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
What got me started using GnuCash was the documentation. No kidding. I was absolutely bored on a flight with a Windows laptop, and decided to boot Knoppix just to fiddle around. Discovered GnuCash and started reading what I thought was just a help file or some tutorial on using the software. Wow, it taught me how to use the double-entry accounting system, the difference between Assets, Liabilities and Equity, and organized my thinking in how to think about money. I think whoever wrote the GnuCash docs deserves kudos. Wait, lemme see ...
Here we go:
Carol Champagne
Email: carol@io.com
Chris Lyttle
Affiliation: GnuCash Documentation Team
Email: chris@wilddev.net
Jon Lapham
Affiliation: GnuCash Documentation Team
Email: lapham@extracta.com.br
Many thanks, Carol, Chris and Jon.
If you haven't tried tracking your own finances, give it a whirl. I found, to my surprise, that it not only gave me a sense of power to know everything about my money (I learned a few surprising things about my spending), but it actually made it enjoyable to be stingy. The less I splurged, the better I felt because I could see the effect of my money being saved. It sure beats seeing how much disk space I saved by compressing my files.
I did end up having to spend about 20-30 hours writing a Python program to help massage my GnuCash files; thank goodness GnuCash uses a completely transparent XML format. (A true geek would probably have been able to do it in half the time.) This is because, I have to admit, I use GnuCash the lazy way.
What's supposed to happen is that, every day before I climb into bed, I enter all the transactions I made that day: $1.49 for the hamburger, $35.18 for the book I bought, $999.99 for the tank of gasoline, etc. Later that month, I download my bank statement and credit card statement from my bank's web site (QFX/OFX format), and import it into GnuCash. GnuCash checks that the statement matches with what I've entered, and marks each entry as reconciled.
Well, I have better things to do than to enter transactions every day. So, instead, I just let GnuCash do it for me by importing my bank statements and credit card statements. GnuCash says for each transaction: "What's this?? $1.49 from 'MCDONALDS FOODLIKE SUBSTANCE CORP'? I never saw this entry before!" and so on for each entry. My Python program looks at the entry description to figure out where it should be categorized; e.g. if it matches "(?i).*mcdonald'*s.*", then it classifies it under the "fast food, unhealthy" account. And so I can see exactly how much I've spent for groceries, transportation, entertainment, etc.
I did try KMyMoney, since I am a KDE fan (thank you to KStrauser for pointing it out), but I found GnuCash to be a more mature application. Incidentally, my wife bought Microsoft Money, tried it out but found it confusing, couldn't think of a good reason why that program kept wanting to connect to the Internet (blocked by ZoneAlarm), and decided not to trust it.
I agree with my sibling poster that Mandrake is no longer a great distro to use. I used it previously, and have switched to Ubuntu Dapper where I happily compute away, really using the desktop rather than having to tinker with it. So, load up your k/Ubuntu (it's a live CD now, for those of you clinging to Windows) and give GnuCash a whirl.
Umm... did I go a bit off topic?
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]