Agony Accounting: An Update

The attention my original post got — and continues to get, is rather astounding, actually. I’m still getting comments from Linux business owners who, like me, have been rather frustrated by the offerings available to them.

And of course, those attempting to justify their reasons for calling of their shareware or crippleware “open source” just had to weigh in. (Read the rather interesting comments by the folks from Compiere. That their rhetoric impressed nobody says a great deal, I think.)

Anyway, I promised an update, so here it is:

Since I wrote the first article I have come full circle, it seems. I did try (and try and try and try) to make OpenBravo work. It’s yet another Compiere fork that’s been out in the world long enough to be fairly mature. For two weeks I worked the software over. I setup the inventory, I setup payables and receivables, and I tried to make their rather impressive work order control system work the way it was advertised. I finally lost patience with the whole affair when I discovered that, to pay the office light bill I had to first create an inventory item for the electricity, enter the bill as inventory, receive it, processes it, and mill it into flour before I could pay the bloody thing!

The program was deleted shortly thereafter. (OpenBravo’s online documentation is basically a regurgitation of the arcane and pointless “help file” from Compiere; their tutorials are either out of date incomplete, wrong, or all three.)

I had never deleted GnuCash from my system, since it was the only program I had that contained more or less complete records of account. And that is the program I’m –uh, stuck with.

At least it’s easy to use. And it holds so much promise. I’ve since learned some of its shortcuts that make it even easier to use than it already was — but that in no way mitigates its shortcomings, which will catch up with me about the time someone wants an audit.

One of the most perplexing problems I’ve run across is GnuCash’s ability to create accounting information out of thin air. After completing the input of my biggest vendor, I noticed that GnuCash had decided they owed me over a thousand dollars!

Perplexed, I printed out the vendor’s history and ran a tape on the transactions the old fashioned way: With an adding machine. Everything on the print out added up like (I and the vendor said) it was supposed to, but there it was, in the 30/60/90 day boxes: Strange numbers that match nothing. Even more troubling, on the “bills due” reminder, GnuCash says I still owe them money for the same bills it infers in the 30/60/90 boxes I’ve over-paid! (That said, the other vendor and customer accounts seem to balance just fine. I dont’ know what’s wrong with this one. I can find nothing out of place. The only difference is, this vendor account was the first on created.)

So in the final analysis, and like it or not, GnuCash is the only game in town for the small business owner who runs Linux, and who can’t afford a full time computer graduate to explain the arcanum of Compiere and its many forks (and if you can, just have them write you your own program) — unless, of course, you want to dive into the world of CrossOver Office and Quicken.

I’ve even added a Palm Treo to my work saving arsenal and am checking out a snazzy looking program called Pocket Quicken, one of two programs available to Linux users who spend more time away from their desktop than at it. (The other program, which is actually recommended on the GnuCash forums, is PocketMoney. But for whatever reason, PocketMoney won’t run on my Treo.)

PocketMoney has apparently been used successfully by other GnuCash users. It’s not fully functional since, like most Palm applications, a Windoze application is required to make full synchronization possible. But the application apparently exports new transactions to either QIF or OFX (I forget which) format, either of which can then be readily imported into GnuCash.

The jury is still out on Pocket Quicken, but in the menus it seems to offer the same functionality. My problem so far has been getting a chart of accounts loaded into the program that will allow me to input transactions for later transfer to GnuCash.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

So there it is. That’s where things stand in the Linux user’s agony of accounting (software).

Technorati Tags: Compiere, OpenBravo, GnuCash, accounting, PocketMoney, Pocket Quicken

I Quit — For a Minute

For a few days, actually. I’ve carried 3/4s of the load for eighteen months without a break. Work, transportation, supplier of heat, problem solver, Mr. Fixit… And then there are the requests for “entertainment”, which is supposed to be relaxing, I understand, but when it turns into a demand, it’s just another J.O.B.

So I’m tired. And it’s not the kind of tired a night’s sleep can make go away. Nor is it the kind of tired that a few hours of entertaining someone else for (their) pleasure (fulfillment, whatever) can erase. Actually, if you get right down to it, it’s the kind of tired that a week or so of being left the fuck alone to do whatever the hell I want to do (and maybe even to be catered to a bit along the way) heals — but that’s not entirely probable. At least, not without so much drama that it’s not worth it.

In any event, I’ve got two contracts nagging at me and a couple of other people who want estimates. And then there’s the never ending book-keeping which I’m so far behind on I’m not even remotely likely to get it done by tax time. So fuck it!

In the great tradition of Loki’s interesting humor, I’m taking the rest of the week off.