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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.
Financial apps are also not of major interest to developers - not only they require the attention to detail noted above, but attention to boring detail. Most developers are interested in development, not the nuts and bolts of small business accounting or something similar. As a result, I think it will be a very long time, if ever, before Linux "catches up." Of course, if more people were writing these apps instead of waiting for others to write them or writing about why others haven't written them, the choices would be much better.
I can see it now:
... maybe some cool drawing software? Or security tools to keep out hax0rz? No, no ... wait, I've got it! Accounting!"
"Well, I'm really interested in starting an open-source project. A game? Naaah
I always thought it was one of the acknowledged shortcomings of open source stuff that it concentrated all the work in the high-profile, high-geek-factor areas?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Open source software will likely never catch up to Quicken / Quickbooks / MS Money.
Even if the basic software functionality was created, you still won't be able to connect with your bank via the software. You won't be able to download cancelled checks, write new ones/pay bills, or any of these other functionalities. You won't be able to because the bank gets a nice kickback from the financial software publishers to open their systems up to them, and the bank has essentially no incentive to work to open it up.
Publishers now have online collaboration tools for this stuff.. open source never will catch up. At most it'll be useful for low-complexity personal accounting, nothing on the scale that satifies enterprise needs.
-Cliff
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!!!!
However, if you read the linked article you'll see that there are actually several good accounting programs available, including some "just as good as -- or possibly better than -- QuickBooks."
It's not about lack of software, it's about "network affects" and the irrationally high premium many people but on avoiding change.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
I maintain a FAQ on a financial forum about open source financial applications. It is mostly geared towards personal users, but there are links and information to business-focused applications as well. There are non-profits & small businesses who do use F/OSS!
There isn't an open source QuickBooks clone. But many F/OSS applications do have features which QuickBooks lack (and vice versa, of course). Rather than looking for a "clone," one should clearly define their requirements & look for the app or apps that may fit those needs. If some are "close," money and/or labor can be spent refining the F/OSS applications. If all are far from your requirements (such as a requirement like "I need software which does exactly what QuickBooks does & has the exact same interface"), then suck it up & purchase QuickBooks. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg! If you find your organization doing this a lot, then re-evaluate your software selection practices--alternative software usually doesn't mean cloned software (whether F/OSS or proprietary) & you will never be able to benefit from very good software which is monetarily cheaper, uses open formats, and is functional.
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.
I went to a presentation by a GNUCash guy a couple months back. They're retooling their backend as SQL to make development easier. This isn't an answer to the question but is probably a necessary first step for gaining developers.
They actually do have some fairly complex accounting in the current versions.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I know that as an OSS developer there are a few reasons that I wouldn't start up or contribute to an open source financial program. The most obvious, and perhaps the most common reason is that accounting software isn't really fun to write- or perhaps its less fun to wright than other things. It's not as though you can really write a new algorithm to figgure up taxes- it's pretty much just the way the IRS wants to do it.
Related to this last point is that there is a lot of obligation related to writing financial software and as a free software developer I really don't want that hanging over my head. Even with the standard "not fit for any purpose" disclaimer, I would be afraid that I would have someone coming after me if some bug in some code I wrote meant that each company paid a few million less in taxes than they were supposed to.
The thing is, the code isn't the hard part of writing financial software, it's dealing with all of the law code stuff.
I think that the best way to bring this sort of software to Linux is to focus on getting companies to port their software, or getting Wine to support it.
Even moreso than with other sorts of software, I don't think that web applications are viable because of security reasons.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Now I think that many of you are overlooking the bigger picture that indeed there are much larger Open Source financial packages such as Compiere (paid support available), ERP5 and ofbiz.org (which has a paid support beta program for their financial module which will be open sourced)h p
http://compiere.org/
http://www.erp5.org/
http://www.ofbiz.org/
http://www.opensourcestrategies.com/ofbiz/index.p
Don't say there aren't any such programs until you've checked out:
http://www.freshmeat.net/
I've had two versions of QuickBooks Pro. Presently, version 2004. I've tried on several occations to get Quickbooks to work under Wine. Along the way, I've heard of people having various levels of success, particularly if they first install it on Windows and then move the files over to the fake windows drive under WINE. However upon reviewing this thread on Slashdot, it dawned on me that there is another huge name in the accounting business. Peach Tree. So I went on over to the AppDB at winehq.com and looked up PeachTree. I was stunned to see only one person had filed a report about it. It looks like version 2005 works fairly well under WINE as reported here:http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId =3817
Now I know it isn't Open Source, but could we sway Peach Tree to make a Linux version using winelib. We can point to the recent port of GoogleEarth as a recent success story. Or maybe we could ask PeachTree to open up their code in exchange for publicity and a huge jump in market share.
There is GNUCash,
KMyMoney
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html
I'm a CPA who works in IT auditing. From an accounting and tax perspective, US-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and the tax code can be very complex. On top of that, there is a GAAP for every country, and there is even an attempt to create international standards. In addition, there are specifics for non-profits and government entities (government accounting is very backwards compared to private business accounting).
I doubt there is a volunteer group with enough programming and accounting skills to write OSS accounting and tax software. I have dabbled in programming and tax is definitely not my strong suit. Remember too that for the big companies, they use systems like Oracle Financials, SAP, etc. Many of these run on Linux or in some sort of *NIX environment. Tons of companies also still keep their General Ledger (G/L) on internally developed mainframe or AS/400 style systems. As other posters have said, there is a lot of money to be made writing a good system and selling it. The flip-side to that coin is that the end-user customer/business has a lot to lose (money, non-compliance with regulations, other reporting requirements, etc.) from having something half-way put together or something that is entirely wrong.
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
I run a one-man software development company in Australia. I've used Quicken Small Business Edition for the past 10 years or so. I don't like it but I've yet to find anything to replace it. Each year Quicken sends me a flyer with a discount for upgrading to version X+1. Each year, I say I'll try to find something else. In then end I go back to Quicken (either with the upgrade or just keeping my current version).
I've tried GnuCash - with version 2.0 approaching, it looks pretty good. But it's not nearly as slick as Quicken. Other alternatives are attractive for various reasons but have other problems.
My needs are very simple! I'd like multi-user access (Quicken doesn't offer this either - GnuCash may to a certain extent but it's not 100%), suitable reports for the Australian Tax Office (I know I can customise my own), fast to open and save its data files (GnuCash is very slow with 20 years of data - the multi-user requirement probably covers this because it uses Postgres), and it's go to be quick to enter invoices, payments etc. (GnuCash is horrible!). I'd prefer cross-platform and/or FOSS. If I'm going to move, it will be to something that has an open format for its data files.
Does anybody have any clues?
Graham
'Mono' and 'Java'.
There is your key for getting application penetration on Linux and Windows.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Wait.. so you mean its not our fault? We're off the hook? Ok back to what you were doing everybody. Phew That was a close one.
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
The SQL Ledger portal offers a double-entry accounting package, supported by a Postgres backend. I've found it to be relatively feature-rich.
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]
Actually, I agree with this.
n for them. If you can't do that, IMO you're a non-starter.
At least as I see it, unless a piece of software interfaces with my bank, it's not worth anything. Once you've used software that just sucks the transactional data directly from your bank and dumps it into your ledger, does all your reconciliation automatically, etc., etc., you can never go back. Ever.
It's the sort of thing that's valuable enough that it would be worth keeping a dedicated PC sitting around to do nothing else, if I had to use computers that couldn't run the package that did it.
From a small-business perspective, it saves hours of work a week, and in some cases might be the difference between just having the business owner do all the books themselves and hiring someone to keep track of receipts/bills/whatever (or perhaps more likely, hiring another regular employee so that they can devote their time to keeping track of the books).
As I understand it, GNUCash will download bank transactions from banks in Europe, because they use a standardized protocol for it. But here in the U.S., the de facto standard is the system used by Quicken, and it's all proprietary or similarly hobbled, thus no Free solutions that will do it. If anyone else can substantiate what the story is, I'd be interested.
But anyway, I agree -- a "general ledger" program that requires the user to input every transaction is not going to satisfy most people anymore. That might have been impressive 10 or 20 years ago, but what most people who use Quicken or Quickbooks want and expect is something that will integrate with their bank, get all their data, and do the balancing/reconciliation/reporting/tax-preparatio
That said, I don't think it's what's keeping people from transitioning to Linux: keeping Quicken going requires that you have ONE Windows PC, somewhere in a corner someplace. It's not the sort of thing that stops you from migrating a business, if you really wanted to switch. (How many businesses only have one computer? Not very many, and the ones that do, aren't very significant.) What I think is keeping people on Windows is inertia, pure and simple. Linux is different, people hate things that are different. You could have replacements for every application on the entire Windows platform and people would still find SOMETHING to keep them from switching, in order to rationalize their basic fear of leaving their comfort zone. The problem isn't that Linux doesn't have application x, the "problem," to a lot of people, is that Linux is not Windows. As long as Linux is not Windows, they will always find reasons not to switch to it. I call these people idiots, but they're a large percentage of the population.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
IMO financial applications are the number one sample why the Linux desktop hasn't gotten more than a few percents market share. Can you really imagine an ordinary dentist ever use GnuCash on his Windows box? Or a carpenter, or a house wife? Can you really think that such people go out, buy or install Linux on their computers? No that won't happen, not until the art of writing FOSS has changed dramatically.
. pdf).
That said financial FOSS applications will only become possible when they are true cross-platform, when they are available on Windows and MacOS as well. Yet that's not sufficient, they also have to look native and they have to feel native on any platform. Else people, who use computer as tools and not as gadgets, won't use them.
Ordinary people don't look with the eyes of a fan, the look with the eyes of an annoyed worker who wants it task done as fast as possible. None of the so far mentioned applications look acceptable in their eyes. At the current state none written in Java or with GTK will satisfy these people. The only choice which produces acceptable results are using the commercial QT or the free wxWidgets toolkit. It may sound harsh but that's the case, just listen to the complains these people bring up against FOSS applications (or read http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005
Yet looking acceptable is only one step towards broad acceptance, the other step is feel acceptable. Sorry, a FOSS application following the Gnome UI guidelines does not feel acceptable on Windows, MacOSX, KDE, etc. If you port a Gnome application to another platform you have to take care of all the little details which are different, which annoy users when the don't fit. These little details are listed in the only cross-platform guidelines wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
To summarize, to make a FOSS financial application successful you have to follow these simple steps:
- Design the application cross-platform, then you get enough market share.
- Write it with an acceptable look anywhere, use QT or wxWidgets.
- Care for acceptable feel anywhere, follow the cross-platform guidelines wyoGuide.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
It's time to take a look at SQL-Ledger in that case. I would list the features here, but it would probably take all day. Suffice to say that for a system which can handle invoicing, inventory, reporting, quotations, POS, customer and supplier tracking, multiple currencies, templated documents (in HTML and LaTeX), etc. it does everything my business requires and then some. There's even a number of working online demo's, so you can try it out with almost zero effort. IMNSHO it is a very high quality system and a beacon for business-ready OSS apps.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
If you think about it, that's actually a good reason to switch to GNUCash! Think what would happen if MS Money stopped working -- you'd be screwed because all your important data is in a proprietary format. And the longer you keep using MS Money, the more data will be lost when that happens. Just like with the government and OpenOffice, you should switch to GNUCash ASAP to preserve your records in an open format.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz