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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$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My first thought is that opening a restaurant is one of the hardest things in the world to do. If going open source helps lighten your load or costs in a significant manner and makes the restaurant launch more likely to succeed, then swell.
If however its going to be a case where you cant get support, stuff doesn't work, and nobody is available to help bail you out when fixing your software isn't in the top 50 on your priority list...
Advice on Restaurant Ownership... It's going to be tough, long, and either the wife or friends won't be a wife or friend by the end.
Consider the future, you or someone will bow out. Accountants and/or Lawyers will be involved and they don't know GnuAnything. They know QuickBooks.
You may sell your restaurant as a group, the buyer will likely want to see the accounts in QuickBooks.
You may be successful! congrats! you can now hire an accountant, they'll want QuickBooks.
In short, pool the wife & friend's money, pay the minor entry-fee for QuickBooks and save yourself the time (which you'll need the most now).
Good luck!
http://www.sql-ledger.com/ ugly as sin but it does *everything* and it's reliable. Good community support.
"I'm starting up a restaurant with my wife and a few friends
I don't know if it's wise to risk your investment in your restaurant for the sake of supporting the OS community. When I recommend software, open source or otherwise, I always suggest the very best software available to do the task at hand. It sounds like you are looking for a shortcut and that never pays off.
Here are the steps you should be following:
1) Find best software
2) Is it open source? Then support the product. If not, then buy a license.
3) PROFIT$
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*!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.