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."

Comments

lots of options

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:lots of options

[cayenne8]

I love open source software, and try to use it myself whenever possible...where it fits and is the best tool for the job.

However, on business financials....do NOT skimp on this. You need to track costs, billing, etc.....this is especially true at EOY when having to deal with your CPA, and the IRS. It is tough enough to have to deal with the myriad of laws and regulations the state and feds put on small businesses, go with something that is set up to help you out and accurately track finances, payroll, etc.

I'd recommend going with Quickbooks. It is almost a 'standard'...which makes it easily portable between you and your CPA.

Don't cheap out....get a good CPA to help keep you honest on your taxes....a good one will help you squeeze out every penny to keep for yourself legally, while being conservative enough to keep you off the IRS' radar.

This is business...and $200-$300 invested on this....will help you out in the long run...and hey, you can write the QB purchase off on your taxes.

SQL Ledger

[colenski]

http://www.sql-ledger.com/ ugly as sin but it does *everything* and it's reliable. Good community support.

Re:My first thought

[Shoten]

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...

This is excellent advice, and I would add a bit more to it. Are you looking at Open Source because you're a Linux guru who is used to managing such types of systems, or because you want to save the money that you'd otherwise spend on QuickBooks and Windows licenses? If it's the first, then also consider how much time you'll have to be the sysadmin on top of your other non-IT duties there. If it's the second, then forget OSS. You'll save less than a thousand dollars, in exchange for which you'll have another learning curve thrown at you while trying to open your first restaurant. Restaurants have, as I recall, an 80-90% failure rate in the first year; don't give yourself more to have to deal with to save a tiny bit of money. Your IT infrastructure won't be large, but it MUST be functional and reliable.

Alternatives

[LordThyGod]

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.

Re:Pay for it

[icebraining]

I may be biased, but I have to agree.

I work for a FOSS based software company; we charge for installation, support, training and custom development of a GPL licensed ERP solution.

Our clients get a much cheaper solution and we contribute back to the platform (bug fixes, new FOSS modules, etc).

I won't plug my company, and the restaurant is probably not based on our country anyway, but I'd consider this approach.