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Ask Slashdot: How To Run a Small Business With Open Source Software?
First time accepted submitter ahree writes "I'm starting up a restaurant with my wife and a few friends and, well, I'd like to support the OS community and hope that this is a way to do it. Simply put, we need to take care of bookkeeping, accounting & payroll and I'd rather not use QuickBooks. I've heard of some options that are open source (GnuCash), some that are cheaper & simpler (WaveAccounting), but I'm wondering what your experience with them (and others) has been like."
The best way to support the Open Source community is to contribute; not just to get free software.
I would say most small businesses I know actually don't use any specific financial software, but do everything in a spreadsheet package. Excel rules the small-business world in a lot more ways than you might expect. You can probably do most similar things in LibreOffice. Now whether this is a good idea varies. The con is that you can end up with a sprawling spreadsheet-and-macros mess, but the pro is some flexibility in doing complex things, and simplicity in doing easy things.
GnuCash is not a bad option either, but it works best if your processes map on cleanly to one of its default processes. It does standard double-entry bookkeeping just fine. Its documentation is pretty good, also. But if you want to be doing significant scripting or customized report-generation, I find spreadsheets easier than dealing with GnuCash scripting+reports.
Depends on what kind of business to some extent. For example, if you need to interface with shopping-cart software or something of that sort, you may have more specific requirements.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My first thought is that opening a restaurant is one of the hardest things in the world to do. If going open source helps lighten your load or costs in a significant manner and makes the restaurant launch more likely to succeed, then swell.
If however its going to be a case where you cant get support, stuff doesn't work, and nobody is available to help bail you out when fixing your software isn't in the top 50 on your priority list...
You didn't build that.
No matter what you do, you owe your success to the government because you drove or traveled on a road once. If you make any money, the government has first claim to all of it.
Advice on Restaurant Ownership... It's going to be tough, long, and either the wife or friends won't be a wife or friend by the end.
Consider the future, you or someone will bow out. Accountants and/or Lawyers will be involved and they don't know GnuAnything. They know QuickBooks.
You may sell your restaurant as a group, the buyer will likely want to see the accounts in QuickBooks.
You may be successful! congrats! you can now hire an accountant, they'll want QuickBooks.
In short, pool the wife & friend's money, pay the minor entry-fee for QuickBooks and save yourself the time (which you'll need the most now).
Good luck!
http://www.sql-ledger.com/ ugly as sin but it does *everything* and it's reliable. Good community support.
Not completely related. Recently I switched to ubuntu at work for the sake of convenience (everyone else uses ubuntu). My experience with libreoffice spreadsheet is that it's really good. The interface is not as pretty as Excel sure, but its got all the functions that you would expect from a powerful spreadsheeting tool including pivots and advanced graphs.
Where it does fall short is there are no VB macros. That, however, doesn't matter to me, and probably won't make a difference to you.
A word of advice before committing to GnuCash, and really any FOSS software: get a feel of how active the users and (if possible) the developer community is. If there are a lot of people using and developing it, chances are your usecase is already taken care of. Also, the best test is actually trying it out in day to day work for a month.
Best of luck!
"I'm starting up a restaurant with my wife and a few friends
I don't know if it's wise to risk your investment in your restaurant for the sake of supporting the OS community. When I recommend software, open source or otherwise, I always suggest the very best software available to do the task at hand. It sounds like you are looking for a shortcut and that never pays off.
Here are the steps you should be following:
1) Find best software
2) Is it open source? Then support the product. If not, then buy a license.
3) PROFIT$
Contact Restaurant Impossible because you are putting focus on open source software to save a few hundred dollars when customer focus, a great menu, and marketing is what you need now.
This site gives you links to a number of FOSS accounting solutions: http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/5-best-open-source-accounting-software-for-small-business-.html
Myself, I use GnuCash for my consulting business. Works well for me. Restaurants are another kettle of fish (sic) entirely, so look at what the capabilities of each package is with respect to your needs as a restaurateur.
First of all, I've been using GnuCash for my personal finances for 10 years now, and I'm very happy with it. It taught me double entry book keeping, and basic accounting concepts that I found useful in other situations.
Having said that, I would not recommend GnuCash for your business because:
1. You will need to share your data with your accountant, and they understand QuickBooks or PeachTree only.
2. GnuCash's business functions (invoicing, inventory, paychecks for your employees, loans, etc) are woefully inadequate.
3. GnuCash's reporting functions are inadequate.
I would say go with PeachTree, and support open source software in some other way (say donating some of your profits).
Good luck
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
the same way you do with closed source software, having a good business model, product ideas and customer base is important. Software is just software
If the OSS software you find is inadequate or if some features are missing, consider complaining (politely) to the appropriate mailing list or forum. User experiences is a very important information for software developers and most will welcome your insights. Even if you end up giving up on OSS, please send an email to the dev of the solution saying "well, I gave up on your software because I can't easily separate weekday sales and weekend sales". It can really help improve the overall quality.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I've been involved in the bookkeeping end of several small businesses. My suggestions .... as to payroll, do not do this in house. Its a PITA, and you will wind up either making mistakes you will come to regret, or spend more time on it that you might be able to use more wisely somewhere else. Keeping up with local tax districts, who lives where, when the govt(s) (assuming you are US) decide to make some subtle change to tax regulations. Penny wise, pound foolish to do this in house for most small businesses.
As to basic accounting and booking, I am not aware of anything that does the sheer number of things that QuickBooks can do, or as well. But I haven't tried everything. This sounds to me like the kind of thing that is hard for free / open source projects to compete with. Maybe your needs are very simple? I would suggest some of the SaS products like FreshBooks. These may not meet your critieria of open source projects per se, but many of these have open API's which is a step in the right direction. Also, these are likely built with open source projects, eg Apache, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, Python and so on, so there is some second hand support of open source that way. They also free you from the local installation situation, and can be accessed via mobile or remote locations (ie work from home), with zero hassle. I have used FreshBooks for accts receivable situations, and found it very nice. Compared to QuickBooks, I would opt for FreshBooks for billing and invoicing easily. I have not looked at with acct payables or general ledger in mind though.
Whats your time worth to you? Customers are not paying you to play with software. THey are paying you to get a job done. You need to be a dick to yourself if you want to successful as customers only care about what you can do and nothing else. If Quickbooks works pay for it. Use a spreadsheet in LibreOffice if it is small and just need to keep track of a few assets and expenses.
Remember you are not being paid to be an idealist. You are paid to produce. If you want to spend extra time with a FOSS go for it. To me quickbooks is a great product for a small company as it means you work a ton of hours as it is right now. If you can come home at a reasonable hour then its worth it.
As others pointed you have no idea how the other solutions will work when you have a deadline to pay those bills. Quickbooks has support.
http://saveie6.com/
As someone who has used Linux for 15+ years and who has run a small business, there is nothing out there that can match what QuickBooks will do for your business. It is a time saver and has capability beyond what any open source package has. I understand your fundamental want to use OSS, but honestly, you pick the right tool for the business. Maybe GnuCash will work for you, but QuickBooks will work so much better. It's probably the best $200 I ever spent on my business.
on KDE there is this pretty good open source alternative to gnu-cash
I find it more intuitive
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/
also make sure your bank's ledgers export is supported by some of the plugins in AQbanking
Get quickbooks POS edition.
I watch Restaurant Impossible on the foodnetwork and the first mistake any struggling restaurant makes is not knowing costs, revenue, and profit per item. The second is poor food quality.
A POS system with a restaurant add-on will keep track of EVERYTHING. It does so automatically as long as you put the costs in your waitress will print the bill and all this information is updated automatically. Free software? Come on you have a business to run and need to know numbers.
Customers are paying you for a service. Not for you to play with FOSS and the better you know what you are doing right and where you are messing up and spending too much time the better your company performs. If you have extra time I would highly recommend a finance and accounting class 101. You will learn a ton and your accountant would appreciate it. You can have the most awesome food in the world yet go broke otherwise! It does happen as many restaurants spend half their time in catering and not know the costs lose money every month thinking they are getting rich from the revenues of it, yet not knowing the profits. If you do not know the difference between a revenue and a profit then another reason to use quickbooks to handle it though your cash registers and take a finance 101.
http://saveie6.com/
LedgerSMB seems comprehensive enough to examin. And has active development suport. Might be worth alook.
When you do your numbers at the end of the year with your accountant, they'll be like "WTF is this piece of shit accounting package you used? It'll take me a month to have someone re-enter all this info into Quickbooks, and I'll charge you $20/hr for it."
Don't bother. Do you really want to take the chance that some developer did your payroll tax calculations correctly -and- updated the forms that you needed for the latest tax year? Do you really want to be the one that finds the bug in the quarterly payroll tax submission code?
You're already going to be in a tough spot opening your business. Debugging your accounting software is something you should leave to professionals.
Accounting software that someone else has written just gets in the way and will never meet your needs exactly. Just use vim, and perl to do your accounting. If you need to print a check, write a postscript file and | to lp. If your accountant doesn't like it, give them an O'Reilly book.
In all seriousness, that's what I'll probably do someday. However like everyone else says, that might be unwise. Might be smarter to wait until your restaurant has been running for a few years. Right now you can use Linux on a WRT54g to run your free restaurant wifi (or maybe implement a netreg system), and a fileserver for your backups (which I hope are going to be synced offsite), and also a webserver so people can read your menu and maybe even place takeout/delivery orders online.
You can keep a Windows box around for specific tasks while running the bulk of your system on open source.
I run the bulk of my current business on Ubuntu, but keep a Windows box around for my one client that wants to use Word and some other Windows only software.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It does not sound like you are planning to contribute changes to the mentioned programs or sponsor developments for your use case financially, so it does not look like you are actually planning to support the "OS community" rather than rely on them. If you are not saving money worth the time you are likely to spend for making this work for you, it will be a net loss for you while not actually supporting anything or anybody.
So put off your rose-tinted glasses and do the evaluation. If the Open Source solutions fall short, can you provide yourself what it takes to make them meet the line, and contribute that back? If not, you are doing nobody a favor by pretending otherwise.
Productivity:
--Ubuntu (base OS)
--Openoffice (office tasks)
--Gimp (photo editing, photoshop alternative, lacks CMYK though)
--Inkscape (vector editing, illustrator alternative)
--Scribus (book/graphic design, vector+photos on multi pages, indesign alternative)
--Gmail (email)
--Google apps (professional gmail, sending from yourdomain.com vs. gmail)
--Simple webpage for reservation system (if you take reservations)
The biggest issue on top of this is the POS and accounting functions. I haven't researched open source tools for this and you don't want to mess these up. I'd pay for something decent in this area.
A few years back I was the sole tech for a hair salon and the major problem with pos was tipping. Usi g quickbooks pos at the time was woefull inept at handling tips. We had to devise a work around for 2 years the. Was forced to purchase another 3 copies of the new version that handled tips. I had found an open source pos at the time (bananaPos I believe) that allowed tips had record keeping we needed but didn't work with our financial service providers tech. It's can be painful on both ends.
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
As other have said, don't take chances with the accounting - bite the bullet and go quickbooks. When my wife and I started our law firm 20 years ago, we did our own accounting and it was not ideal at all. After the business grew we hired a CPA to take care of everything and that is where we moved to Quickbooks. Quickbooks makes it much easier to integrate with other businesses and government agencies than some homegrown set of spreadsheets and such. That being said, there's more to running a business than accounting.
You will need a phone system. Phone systems don't require much maintenance, but when they go down, you need to get them back up immediately. My best investment was to learn the open-source Asterisk PBX system. Take an old pc, get a card with some phone jacks for connecting your analog phone lines (Or get a voip provider assuming you have reliable and adequate bandwidth), go buy some phones that do SIP (I've been happy with Grandstream devices) and you're good to go. No need to run separate phone lines - just run ethernet and have data and phone.
Asterisk is a relatively easy system to program, and there are appliance distributions like AsteriskNow that greatly simplify things. Over the years, I've been able to integrate xmpp/jabber messaging, video messaging, integration with customer records for incoming calls, etc. I even integrated a front-door intercom that rings reception with the ability to unlock the door with the press of the star key. So far, every idea I have had for improving office communications has been readily handled by Asterisk. Asterisk is one of those amazing open source projects like Apache that provide such a robust framework while still maintaining simplicity of use.
Quasar Accounting and Point of Sale System: http://linuxcanada.com/
We have been using it to run a gift shop for many years (in USA), including ordering, invoicing, inventory management, accounting, sales, and the register.... and all under Linux.
It is not free, but it is multiplatform, GUI, affordable, and source is available. It used to be mostly open source, but they couldn't make the model work.
Have you considered just paying a bookkeeping service to do payroll for you? As a small business owner, I recommend doing that. It's especially true if you need to do anything like garnishments. I think you'll find the cost to have them do just your payroll is a no brainer.
Second, depending on your business structure, what you most likely need to generate out of your financial software is a P&L - profit and loss statement. When it comes tax time, your tax person should be able to use that regardless of which system it came from. Most accountants know how to work with Quickbooks though, and if you use Quickbooks you can just do a simple export and hand that file over to them. You'll get the best tax analysis that way.
I think if you have a simple business, then you probably have a lot of options. If your business is planning on expanding rapidly with lots of complicated accounting or inventory management or job costing or a myriad of other things, you really might want to consider Quickbooks.
See this article from LWN in 2009 on the state of open source accounting systems. It's probably not that out of date: http://lwn.net/Articles/314577/
----- obSig
...there's a gap in what's available. For personal finance you have GnuCash, and for the big end there are packages like Adempiere, OpenERP etc... that do much more than accounting, but ERP packages are arcane toolkits for building your own system rather than an off-the-shelf solution.
I'd love an open source "franchise in a box", and I'm actually involved with a project (Fusion Directory) that could be a fantastic base for something like that. FD handles deployment of workstations and servers, deployment of software and management of many generic network services via LDAP. An open source POS + accounting framework would be great to tie into this, but none of us are ERP nerds so some collaboration on this kind of thing would be great - anyone??? We're at #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (IRC).
As for your specific problem... there are no off the shelf answers that I'm aware of at the moment unfortunately, and anything else (eg. cobbling something together wtih an ERP solution) looks like a LOT of work. It's not something I'd suggest attempting unless you're interested, no, passionate! ...and have ERP expertise or are willing to burn much time on learning the arcana. If you're getting into this soon then it's probably too late in any case.
for accounting - go buy an accounting ledger. Write entries in. balance weekly and monthly. About as open source as it gets.
In reality, tho, go with quickbooks online.
DO NOT PROCESS YOUR OWN PAYROLL. People do it but it's a huge risk and not worth it. If you mess something up there's criminal liability, not just civil. There's payroll services out there that are quite reliable and cheap. You'll get direct deposit, IRA/401k deductions, federal income tax, state income tax, unemployment insurance, all sorts of stuff. On the other hand, use open source tools for any document creation you need, creating work schedules, even tracking hours worked if you want. But do yourself a big favor and avoid handling your own stuff internally for payroll.
You need an accountant. Your accountant will support one or more packages. Pick one and use it.
You can try to find an accountant who supports open source. It might work!
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
One thing you want to b sure of is that whatever files your package produces can be used by your bookkeeper. I'd see what other restaurants use and what your bookkeeper recommends; the last thing you want or need is to unravel a years worth of journal entries while starting up a restaurant. Use OSS to design menus and flyers, where the penalty for a mistake is small,to start is my humble addition to the discussion.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
works well with freshbooks and google apps, and best of all it is free!
So, OSS is a nice idea, but realistically, you cannot run a true business on it, period.
Hmm. I guess my 13-year-old small software company is not a true business, then.
We run entirely on OSS. Asterisk for our phones, SugarCRM for CRM and Ledger-SMB for accounting. Linux on the desktop for everyone, including non-technical staff.
That being said: Accounting is the weak point. We outsource payroll, and when it comes time to file taxes, I give a couple of boxes of paper to my accountant and he does his magic with whatever proprietary software he likes.
I have a slide deck about our software infrastructure, mostly concentrating on Asterisk but also mentioning the other software we use.
Sad but true, +1 insightful please.
Those idealists who think open source is a godsend have sadly not realized that commercial proprietary software has already entrenched itself in the market and is quite willing to fight dirty to keep it that way.
The only thing valid in your screed is Quickbooks and that's because it's considered an industry standard for accounts. Your account is likely to require Quickbooks. That requirement is really out of your hands.
The rest is just stupid FUD cliches.
Acrobat just for exporting to PDF? Really...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
2: Exchange. I'm sorry, but there is nothing else out there. You HAVE to have Exchange/Outlook because clients want dedicated send/receive connectors oftentimes (a lot of clients use homegrown root certs so a hacked CA in Elbonia can't cause E-mail to be divulged.) Exchange isn't great, but the rule of thumb is "you use Exchange in your business, or else you don't have a business."
You should open your eyes and look around if you think Exchange is the only mail/calendaring solution out there. I'm not sure why a hacked CA in Elbonia can cause email to be divulged but having my own CA will prevent that - is a small business owner really going to install his own trusted certs on every computer and device that accesses his exchange server, or is he just going to tell employees "Ignore certificate warnings when you check email since I'm using self-signed certs".
I moved a 500 person company to Zimbra with great success -- saved a significant amount of money on licensing and it was more reliable than their old Exchange server. Many enterprises have migrated to Google Apps - Genentech has 13,000 employees on that platform.
If I were starting a small business, I'd definitely use something like Google Apps for email and calendaring, plus it can handle just about all of the word processing and spreadsheets that a small business needs while letting employees have full access from home or work.
But for accounting software, I'd go with commercial software that my accountant is familiar with.
I'd like to support the OS community and hope that this is a way to do it.
Why?
Can't take credit anyway
You've got to remember that using FOSS software doesn't mean that you aren't going to have an expense for this. One of the downsides of FOSS is that it is generally software that "scratches the itch" of those willing to develop code for it. It doesn't mean that the software is lower quality, just that they may not have covered everything you need. Also, it may not be the easiest thing to install. If you aren't a Linux geek, or you now don't have time to be since you are running a restaurant, make sure you have some competent local support lined up. Proper install, setup, and security is important and can't just be swept under the rug.
Also, another somewhat obvious suggestion is to make sure you can line up an accountant that is familiar (or willing to become so) with the software you choose for the books. If you find one that actually uses some FOSS, they would have better advice on what packages to use, since they are more familiar with the accounting/regulations side of things.
Be aware that regional corporate and finance laws may be different than those of the software developers'. Commercial software has a general business requirement to keep up with those and supply the necessary patches. In absence of the commercial incentive to "not get sued over missing a patch" you will need to make sure that you have that covered. A few dollars of support to a local programmer (in conjunction with the aforementioned accountant to keep things moving in the right direction) will keep you out of the legal ditches as well as ACTUALLY support FOSS software.
In general, there is a price to pay for freedom. There always has been. If you want software that isn't locked up by greedy or laconic software corporations, you can't be greedy either. You still need to pay for the expertise to keep things on track and actually support the free environment that you wish to take advantage of. Costs are still there. They just shift. If you go in with open eyes, it won't shock you. It's still worth the investment. It just takes a slightly thicker skin to (hopefully) get a slightly cheaper and more customized outcome.
I like FLOSS, but you need to consider the business impact.
Take your business partners and discuss the tech side of the business. Find out what they're comfortable with. Are they only comfortable with using Windows? Are they open to using a LTS release of Linux? They're using the system too, so the point is to make everyone as comfortable with using the system as possible.
You also have to weigh cost vs productivity. Does it really save you money going FLOSS, or will you get a return on investment going with an off the shelf package that is proven and well supported? As a business owner, you cannot get locked into any one mindset. You have to find and do what is best for the business; even if you have to compromise with your own beliefs a bit.
An Open Source Quickbooks .....
If you are wasting time on what open source software to use, your business has already failed. The cost of this type of software is minuscule, use what works already; invest more time into your core business.
Give your food away for free.
Talk to your lawyer, your accountant, your banker.
Trade association. Small business advisor.
The odds are pretty damn good that the professionals you will be working with will know QuickBooks. That they will know the right customized versions and add-ons for QuickBooks you will need.
The same will be true for MS Office and so on.
These people have a stake in the success of your business. Listen to them.
2: Exchange.
The LAST thing most small businesses should be doing is running their own fucking mailserver. Serious waste of fucking time and huge liability when it inevitably goes down/gets hacked/gets blacklisted. Run Exchange if you'd like, but outsource the fucking thing. (Oh and smartphone support will likely be more important than the Outhouse client.)
We owned a few fast casual and take out places with nothing but OSS, running things like touch screen tills, receipt/ticket printers, SMS order queues to drivers, automated SMS specials, and we just faxed the call-in sheet to one of our partner's personal friends, a CPA, nightly. Unfortunately, we had to let her go after we found out she'd funnelled out about $100K from the busness accounts and $50k from him over the course of that first year. That, plus the stress and long hours, wrecked his marriage when his wife of a decade left him, and he spent a year trying to get custody of his kids. I was lucky to have been young and single, but like many have said, the restaurant business is not a place for friends or spouses.
Whatever you choose, you're going to have to have to put in the time to tailor it for your business's needs yourself, but there are many options. I tried several POS OSSs before landing on OpenBravo, which I ran off linux live USB drives for the touch screen thin client tills in the front and had the server in the back for managing the database, viewing reports, handling software ACH, etc. Setting it up to automatically track inventory was a nightmare, and I never got the products receiving to work exactly right for calculating ideal vs actual inventory, but it was excellent for the cashiers and I had a tremendous amount of control over the reports, which was all I needed anyway.
As far as the accounting, if you've got a small place that grosses less than $10k a week and you know how to do your taxes and payroll, you're probably more than capable of managing it entirely yourself. I can't remember which application I was using that could do it, but GnuCash might be able to export in a QuickBooks readable format. If not, for all the work you'll have done to make the money, it wouldn't kill the bean counters to enter it manually.
The biggest secrets to happiness and success when running a resaurant: hiring bright young people who don't know what they're worth and making them do everything, never telling anyone anything more than they have to know to get their job done, and $15 kitchen shoes from Wal-Mart.
As someone who used to work for a payroll company that specialized in the food and hospitality industry, let me share some insight.
Opening a restaurant means LONG LONG LONG hours with little return for the first few years. But you don't want to be penny wise and pound short. Certain things, like integration of your POS, time clock and payroll, will help you keep your sanity.
First off - talk to your state's restaurant association. These organizations normally want you to become a memeber, but they also promote you and are a wealth of information for advice of veterans that actually know what they are doing. (The firm I worked for was in Maryland, and the people at RAM were top notch.)
Next - talk to a payroll company. Actually, talk to several. There's the big guys like Paychex and ADP, but you'll probably get better customer service from the mid-sized regional providers. (The really small providers tend to not be as quick on the ball with hospitality payroll law changes, nor usually have the ability to offer integrated products.) Also, talk to your restaurant association if they have a preferred provider. Usually the preferred providers offer discounts to members of sponsored trade associations, usually a substantial figure. When you talk to the payroll company's salesperson, tell them you are looking for the whole financial system, POS and everything. The salesmen should be able to offer you solution ideas other than Micros, Posi-Touch, Digital-Dining or any of the other big guys. Sometimes they even have systems you can rent, so you don't have to shell out the money up front.
Sometimes there are ways to help the open source community, but if you want to keep your wife and friends, this isn't the best way to do it. Restaurant finances can be a tricky thing. You have tips, blended wages, various tax rates that constantly change, various minimum wage rates and laws that constantly change, inventory, cost analyses.... you don't want to muck them up from the start.
..would certainly vouch for that. Except that billion-dollar enterprises like Deutsche Börse/Eurex, Google, Facebook, CERN would not touch Windows in the server room with the proverbial ten-foot-pole. They are all already on Linux or transitioning to it. Not from Windows, but from Solaris and VMS.
I have a small business and going all FOSS seems very difficult.
Linux on the desktop + Openoffice + GIMP has made life a lot better. Less Windows issues, less viruses. Particularly when an employee plugs in a USB device 'just to charge it'.
Zoneminder (newest version) on Ubuntu desktop works well for our needs (with AXIS cameras). Zoneminder is really a cost issue-- I've installed some of the commercial software for managing 40+ cameras on windows servers. Software was very expensive. But also a LOT easier to use, and easier to search and view. Using zoneminder takes probably twice as much time as good commercial software.
Wine: use it to run a very old windows application a vendor uses for ordering. Not perfect in implementation.
Windows: I have windows on an old laptop. Sometimes someone sends me a tricked out excel spreadsheet and nothing in FOSS works with it right. The application to talk to my Sharp cash register only works on windows.
I would love to use a linux based full POS system, but can't find one that makes sense. May go MerchantOS next year.
Accounting: I absolutely hate Quickbooks on the desktop. Constant data corruption issues when you have multiple users. That being said, we use Quickbooks Online. Not that expensive to do our own payroll and can write checks at work/home easily. Constant warnings "does not support Linux" but it's fine.
Not true, and my salary proves it.
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Haven't we read recently here that QB is a piece of polished excrement; no relational DB; proprietary and often-failing data formats ??
So maybe an OS-oriented strategy could be:
A) Get in touch with a local open source developer and talk to him about:
B) Le the developer create a very simple system for capturing orders. Probably you don't need mobile entry devices; use paper to carry orders to the capturing machine. The capturing machine should be using ASCII terminal technology instead of a fancy and expensive GUI. Touch is even more expensive and even less necessary.
C) Record all orders+tips properly, so that they can be handed over to an accounting office. Let them do the tax calculations, payroll etc. The open source developer has to work out a (probably csv) format for monthly transmission to them.
E) Keep It Simple And Stupid. Never try to do fancy stuff. That only makes it buggy and very, very expensive. All exceptional stuff should be done manually.
F) Demand that you get all source and that it will be nicely documented and variables, procedures nicely named. Require FreePascal, Perl or Python.
Why you should avoid commercial-ware:
It is true that there exists well-featured commercial-ware like QuickBooks. At first, it will simply look like a "good business decision" to use it, as it will do lots of things for you. But after a few weeks you will realize that it contains many nasty bugs; you will realize they will never fix those bugs; one day your whole history of two years of orders will vaporize because the QuickBooks Apes don't use a proper transactional database. The latter would allow people to get out of vendor-lock in, so they avoid it like the plague.
I am forced to use a hairball of commercial-ware, because I work for a large corporation who is deep in love with MS Office and I can tell you they would save a ton of money, runtime, re-runs, bugs and headaches if they dropped that for open standards like SVG, HTML, JS, LaTeX and so on. It is exactly this group-think of "real business must use commercial software to be successful", which creates all these issues.
But don't expect to find an Open-Source replacement for the QB hairball.
Google Mail? It might be good, but companies better check their contracts. Since the small companies usually don't have public stock, Sarbanes-Oxley may not be an issue, but with clients is may be. To boot, not all mail providers be able to furnish documentation of SOX compliance. Come audit time, you really want that stuff ready to go when the auditor is present and requesting documentation.
Finally, who is the customer with Google Apps, the people using it... or the advertisers? Google might have a conflict of interest in that department. I'd rather stick with a mail provider paid for completely by the end user.
Zimbra may be good enough for a college student to get their latest Facebook confirmation E-mail, but in a professional environment, it is not up to the task. This isn't to say OWA is perfect, but there are a lot of business functions that are Exchange-only:
Connectors. Yes, these are nothing more than just TLS connections with known certificates, but a lot of companies feel better when their clients are able to have a dedicated, encrypted connection.
Policies. Almost all devices work with Exchange, and fewer and fewer lie to it about capabilities. If a device went missing, triggering a remote erase will work regardless of which maker or OS is on the device. No other E-mail system has this in place.
Data at rest encryption. Exchange can pretty much guarantee that any device touching it either lies convincingly about encryption (like earlier Android versions), or actually implements it. If one wants to play GSA contracts, this might be a major factor for state or Federal business.
Expect a Freelance Developer to cost about 300 dollars/euros per day at least. Some cost up to 1000$. That dictates that your requirements are very, very simple, I guess. The developer must be able to do all of it in a week's time.
That sounds much as compared to QB, but you will have the actual opportunity to fix bugs yourself or by a person you hire. Don't underestimate the importance of that.
and went with a package called Nolapro. I've not regretted it.
They have a lot of options for you as far as hosting/self etc.. just my opinion.
You need to watch your employees like a hawk, because they'll eat and drink you out of house and home - especially the bartenders giving free drinks to their buddies.
I would strongly urge you to invest in a tamper-proof alcohol portion control system - and you need to physically be there whenever the place is open, watching.
I've been in the restaurant business for a little over a decade now, and it wasn't until I realized after my first year that it was the employees who were running the business into the ground, and that I or my business partner needed to be there at all times watching the surveillance cameras.
All of the other restaurant owners in town (we meet regularly to discuss topics pertinent to our survival) have had the same issues. And yes, you do need to find the consortium of owners in your area and join their business group.
do what is best for your business starting a business is so much harder then you think, and the odds are so stacked against you, that anything you do that isn't 100% focused on getting the biz up and running will kill you. decide what software you need; do not waste 1 second on open source if it ain't right
GNUCash is better suited for home.
For a business you want something like SQL/SMBLeger or project open.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Honestly I can't tell if you are serious or not. postscript and lp? Is this 1988?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
seriously it a resturant,
1. POS is normally a hardware/software package, you get what you get, same with the accountant use what he uses, inventory software universally sucks FOSS sucks, proprietary sucks and most of the time the effort put in setup exceedes the effort of doing it manually;
2. email server, use google and put the time you save not BSing a mailserver use on your resturant's facebook page;
3. Seriously it's a resurant making a menu once in a while is probably the biggest workout office is likely to get, beside liberoffice/openoffice reads Word documents as well or better than Word reads non-current version of Word documents.
4. liberoffice/openoffice can save in PDF format natively and there are boatloads of FOSS for scanning to pdf.
the majority of the transactions with vendors are going to be hand-written invoices paid either with cash or the Debit card.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If at all possible, see if you can afford an accountant who does the work for you, but still check your books regularly (never trust anyone 100% with your money, and that includes banks - if you can possibly avoid being dependent on your bank, please do).
As for the rest (POS, possible menu management etc), decide if you want to run an IT shop or a restaurant - either is a full job. Go for what works, not for something that matches someone's religion, because there are only 24 hours in the day. On that topic, don't be shy to take something on trial because everything works wonderful on a laptop and in a showroom, but when Real Life hits you will soon find if it's a dog or delight.
If you still want to go "Open", reserve that for year 2. Year 1 will be spent getting the business stable and building a reputation, client base and a way to keep an eye on staff (expect a few iterations there too). About the only Open Source tactic I would keep an eye on from day 1 is that you choose stuff you can swap out, so if something stores files and data in a way you don't have access to it, think very hard before using it.
Insert
And the term is again "F.U.D." You can indeed backup Gmail using a simple script every week; You can become a Google Mail customer who will pay Google and have your own Domain - e.g. joe.miller@littlecorp.com.
Yes, your data will be open to something like 25 USG agencies without court warrant required. So, you can take Eudora+GPG+Qmail and that will be actually secure as opposed to being riddled with Microsoft backdoors and security lapses.
That will not look as polished as Outlook, Office and so on. It will be ugly-looking, efficient and secure. But yeah, sex sells and it distributes Sexual Transmitted Diseases. Have fun with those Acrobat and Powerpoint viruses !
Expert software users have abandoned Oracle, MS, Solaris, HPUX, VMS a long time ago and moved fully into open source. Google, FB, Eurex - these are all thriving on OS. It is not just the money they save from non-existent licensing; it is the fact that they don't depend on the PHBs at Oracle and MS who are only experts in one thing - politics. That means you are stuffed if they cannot be fucked to fix a bug that gives you a major headache.
Only idiot companies of the rust-belt type still believe in commercialware - think GM, Daimler, BASF, Lockheed Martin. That is because they are idiots in the sense that they haven't much expertise in software. For them it is a secondary aspect and they think it is best to trust into MS instead of acquiring own competence.
For Deutsche Boerse, software is a key thing and they all hate Oracle and Mr Larry. They would rather seriously fund Postgresql developers than sending money to Larry. They have kernel developers in their ranks and they know how shitty windows is.
Starting a new business is reallly hard. Why make it more complicated by trying to piece together a bunch of software that sort-of works. You didn't say what kind of business you're starting, but for a 5 employee or fewer business quickbook is really pretty good. And there is no reason to do payroll your self. It's really just too hard to get right, and you can get it almost for free from Quicken or your bank.
If you think you might be looking for a credit facility (aka a loan) your bank will be looking for specific items in your financial statements. They will not be impressed that you're supporting the FOSS community.
I'd look for the software that meets your needs--if it helps your business prosper and if costs a few hundred bucks it's a good investment. A license for Office is about $200, quickbook pro (with payroll) is about $40 per month.
In starting a business, your time is probably the most valuable thing you have. Get out there and sell!
...then you haven't got enough capital to run a restaurant. My advice would be *don't* - don't do your own books. Get yourself an external bookkeeper or accountant and use whatever tool they recommend. Use them to create your P&L and balance sheet, and you focus on driving the restaurant to make the numbers on those reports improve. In addition, you have a bigger issue than your accounting system - and that is your restaurant employee scheduling, and your forecasting/purchasing system. Do those two things correctly, and you will have a much higher probability of actually having some profits to count!
Make sure you and all of your stakeholders know why open source is part of your requirement. This is essential. You need to make a business case.
If you have two accountants that can/is willing to do GnuCash, do it. GnuCash is used by real businesses to do real things :), don't let the rest of slashdot get you down on this. You want to find two, just in case.
Running Windows on PoS certainly causes a lot of pain, if I was starting a business I would want better reliability than I have seen from Windows PoS systems.
I own a small business and I had similar ideas of using FOSS, but when I evaluated I decided that I first need to do what is best for my business, and that ended up being to use software created by Intuit and Microsoft.
The compromise I made is that when things are going smoothly enough and I well know my business processes, I will work with developers who are experienced with the appropriate FOSS projects and create a system that will work well for me. I think this will end up being better because when I am contributing, I will be doing it as an experienced business owner in that category, and this will help out others even more than trying to push the square block through the round hole while my business crumbles.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Google Mail? It might be good, but companies better check their contracts. Since the small companies usually don't have public stock, Sarbanes-Oxley may not be an issue, but with clients is may be. To boot, not all mail providers be able to furnish documentation of SOX compliance. Come audit time, you really want that stuff ready to go when the auditor is present and requesting documentation.
You would think that a company like Genentech with 11,000 employees would know a thing or two about whether or not their Google Apps email solution meets all of the regulatory requirements they are subject to.
Finally, who is the customer with Google Apps, the people using it... or the advertisers? Google might have a conflict of interest in that department. I'd rather stick with a mail provider paid for completely by the end user.
You seem to be confusing the free version of Google mail with the paid Google Apps for Business which defaults to not serving ads.
Zimbra may be good enough for a college student to get their latest Facebook confirmation E-mail, but in a professional environment, it is not up to the task. This isn't to say OWA is perfect, but there are a lot of business functions that are Exchange-only:
Zimbra has Outlook and mobile device integration, all secured by TLS/SSL
Connectors. Yes, these are nothing more than just TLS connections with known certificates, but a lot of companies feel better when their clients are able to have a dedicated, encrypted connection.
I don't even know what that means in the context of an email server? Are you talking about a persistant connection between Outlook and the email backend or a VPN?
In any case, Zimbra can do more than deliver Facebook status messages, they have a pretty broad customer list
Policies. Almost all devices work with Exchange, and fewer and fewer lie to it about capabilities. If a device went missing, triggering a remote erase will work regardless of which maker or OS is on the device. No other E-mail system has this in place.
Data at rest encryption. Exchange can pretty much guarantee that any device touching it either lies convincingly about encryption (like earlier Android versions), or actually implements it.
Zimbra has had remote wipe for years. Even Google Apps has remote wipe capability. And they can also enforce encryption and other ActiveSync security policies.
If one wants to play GSA contracts, this might be a major factor for state or Federal business.
Maybe Google doesn't know anything about the government sector.
Believe it or not, there is competition in the email server market, but most companies don't bother because once they buy the CALs and build a server infrastructure to run their other Microsoft applications, Exchange doesn't add much more to their Microsoft cost. But some companies are still finding it cost effective.
The free google apps is advertising supported, and will use your data for targeted advertising (although this is automated, no human will ever read your data)..
The paid google apps is a paid app, your subscription pays for the service so they have no reason to push advertising on you, or to mine your data.
If you want to use the free service, you have to accept the compromises. Software can be provided for free, but a service cannot because it costs money to keep the servers running.
I would rather have a TLS connection with a known certificate, than a proprietary connection where i have no idea how it works.
If a device works with exchange, it will work with an open source activesync implementation like z-push too...
As for at-rest encryption, as you pointed out the device can simply lie to the server. You therefore can never rely on what the server says, and must inspect the device yourself if you care about it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Perhaps you should worry more about the quality of your food, your chefs and servers, decor, location, advertising and the myriad of other factors important to a restaurant's success instead of your accounting software.
bookkeeping, accounting & payroll
OpenERP does that. Also Point Of Sale (there is a special restaurant POS module too), asset management, stock management, HR, CRM, and 500 other (optional) things including (hotel) restaurant management.
It's written in Python, backed by PostgreSQL and has both web and standalone clients. It will happily run on one PC or scale to dozens, even hundreds, of users. Or you can use it online for a modest fee: demo.
It is Free and Open Source supported by a commercial company based in Belgium, with offices in the US and India, and an international network of partners; 10 in the US. Being FOSS you don't need to be an official partner to be able to support it.
I use it for factory operations (using my own custom modules) and think it's well worth consideration by any SME that's looking for this kind of thing.
What a crock!
There are area's which you could be taking a risk using open source software, Accounting is probably one area where you could be taking a risk.
why would you need exchange for a restaurant? You probably want a .com for the business for advertising and a professional looking email address.
Document formatting is not really an issue when most documents are for your internal use. As for acrobat whats the problem with printing to pdf or even scanning to pdf?
You probably don't need the expense of photoshop, logo's will be best produced as vector graphics, rather than bitmap you will always need to scale them. Web size will not look good in print.
Openbravo is a possible for your POS ,the backend software can be tricky (if you need it?) Credit card processing can be a thorny issue but you can opt out using the credit card terminals separate to the POS. You pay a lot for POS that can handle credit cards securely. Spreadsheets can be useful for working out costs and margins.
Probably in year 2 you will want to do things differently but year one is trying not to lose too much money while building up your business. Internet advertising is useful but don't advertise too far from your location. You pay for the clicks so make sure that you are not advertising to people who wouldn't be a customer not many people will travel further than a taxi ride to a restaurant.
Finally are you really sure you want to do this, you are likely to lose friends and get divorced and maybe go bankrupt. It pays to have limited liability If the company goes under you don't want to lose your house.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
The first thing you should do is find a good CPA, that you are comfortable with. Then sit down with him and go over what he expects from you in the way of reporting and see what he recommends for a software package. You may be surprise as I have noticed more and more CPAs are including opensource packages on their list of packages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_accounting_software
I took a quick look at gnucash and couldn't find anything on payroll. Accountant's copy was not found either.
As for the restaurant itself, you may have a touch time finding Point of Sale (POS) software.
Quickbooks is good, but you may also want to consider Simply Accounting. For some, the multiple currency is great (extra for Quickbooks). Some differences in pricing.
I would be careful of online software. Gets expensive paying every month and you are at the mercy of the provider.
Backup your data.
As some have suggested, use software on the market and donate to open source.
I work for a major fast food chain. I am not speaking for them, but I do work for them. I'm in IT that supports restaurants with in-restaurant technology, so I know a lot of the restaurant business folks.
Your #1 focus needs to be a POS system, suitable for and designed for your type of restaurant. The POS McDonald's uses, for example, wouldn't be right for a diner, and a diner's POS might not be right for a fancy restaurant, or a restaurant with a bar.
Your #2 focus needs to be on labor. People are extremely expensive, but not having enough of them is expensive too if it costs you sales. You have to get your employee work schedule right. It will take you a while to understand the sales patterns in your restaurant. There is software that can help with this, or you can figure it out in Excel. The models aren't that complicated to figure out. Once you've been open a year you can factor in seasonal trends too. But make sure you take notes of what happened each day, including the weather, so when you're trying to estimate based on past sales you know what was impacting those past sales.
Your #3 focus needs to be on food cost tracking. Where you make or lose it in a restaurant is on percentage of food cost - good ole cost of goods sold - which in turn is largely based on getting correct portion sizes and on eliminating waste. If you based your price for mashed potatoes on a serving being 4 ounces, but the kitchen is serving out 6 ounces, that's hurting your bottom line.
You should be looking at food cost in as real-time a manner as possible, because the sooner you know the sooner you can fix.
Make sure you've got good raw material inventory. Know how much of each goes into each menu item. Figure out how much of the main ingredients your restaurant uses should have been used every night, and check against a physical inventory. Inventory some stuff every night. Do some other stuff ever week. The rest, do every month. Otherwise you can't know when the portion sizes are being messed up (or when someone's stealing burger patties.)
None of this is secret.
But you need specialized restaurant software to deal with this stuff in a useful and usable fashion. A restaurant is just a small manufacturing plant with on-site customers. Treat it like that - raw material, bills of material, labor costs, etc - and you can make money.
You need good food, good service, and a good location, but you can't make money if you don't treat it like a a business.
Do you need accounting? Sure. QuickBooks is fairly reliable, extremely cheap, and universally accepted. Use it.
Don't get sucked into "supporting OS" or whatever. The open source community doesn't care about your restaurant. Most of them wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. Some of them would pour on gasoline and giggle. Put on your big boy pants and buy the tools you need.
It's not accounting software, but it's what holds everything together at my bar: PMWiki (http://www.pmwiki.org/). There are other wiki systems out there; PMWiki happens to be the one I picked 7 years ago, and I'm still happy with it, FWIW.
The wiki is the collective memory for my business (and believe me, any business is too complex for one person to remember everything). It's got:
* Staff contact list.
* Staff schedule.
* Current shift changes (employee maintained!).
* Job descriptions.
* Employee disciplinary history, password protected.
* The employee manual.
* A "how to" manual for common tasks.
* Official recipe book for the kitchen.
* Current beer & liquor orders.
* Trouble & repair history for every piece of equipment.
* List of DJs, contact & payout info.
* Current passwords for social networking sites.
* Local media contacts.
* Much, much more.
I can't imagine operating a business without a wiki. Installing it was the best business decision I ever made!
It doesn't matter what accounting package you use as long as you can produce a trial balance and general ledger that is supported by your sales receipts and vendor invoices. That is what an IRS agent will ask for. They won't ask you for a quickbooks file.
The software in this area is cheap. The accounting knowledge of how to put together a trial balance and general ledger is what you pay for. The Quickbooks claim to fame is that is gets you a trial balance and general ledger without having accounting knowledge. That is a slippery slope.
If you don't know what a trial balance and general ledger are then you should expect to pay 3-10K a year for bookkeeping services depending on the size of your restaurant.
I do bookkeeping for my company and my personal stuff using "beancount", which is a rewrite of Ledger.
http://furius.ca/beancount
It's fine for simple bookkeeping, but if you have payroll and such and you want to automate, it's probably not suitable.
If you want something simple and light to do bookkeeping, it's simple and it just reads from a single file.
As a CPA for over 24 years, I've seen and used dozens of off-the shelf and homegrown systems. Although QB now costs closer to $500 than $300, but has specific features that make the expense pay for itself quickly. (no pun intended) Use OS spreadsheet software to analyze vendor invoices or schedule labor.
1) QB integrates CC processing at competitive rates streamlining your point of sale credit card sales to the bank and books and helping you go after charge-backs. 2) QB keeps up-to-date sales tax and payroll tax tables for all federal, state and local jurisdictions and automatically computes accurate tax liabilities and reminds you to pay on time to avoid late penalties and fines for underpayments.
3) QB also has an AI feature for bank reconciliations that mid to large ERP systems want hundreds to thousands a month for. QB downloads your bank and/or CC transactions and you teach it the first time which vendor is for which expense bucket. Next month, it remembers what you taught it and offers you a choice of riding with previous codings, reviewing and editing previous codings or re-doing previous codings from scratch.
4) Financial statements from QB are also faster than using a spreadsheet which will help when seeking financing to fund new equipment or locations.
If the restaurant succeeds, you can always upgrade to an open source custom platform once the business generates enough cash to afford the luxury.
If the restaurant fails, you'll have wasted less time in stuck in the back office that could have been spent trying to grow traffic count, controlling labor productivity and monitoring vendor invoicing for over-billings or un-credited returns.
Consider Quasar. It's not just an accounting program but a Point-Of-Sale system too. While I find Quickbooks to be nice it's a PITA. I'm running into a problem with it now. And to get support in fixing a problem I have to remove it and reinstall. However I'm running into problems during an uninstall! No doubt I will have to pay for support just to do an uninstall.