Open source MYOB needed.

[Conrad Canterford]

On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 14:28, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> Look at gnucash, it's come a very long way and it perfectly usable for
> accounting. However, if you're looking for small business features like in
> MYOB, I beleive they only exist as a patch and even then may not do what
> you.

Small business features currently consist of a mostly-implemented
Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable implementation. It is currently
being actively worked on, but is only in the CVS tree and is very not
reccommended for real data.
The other thing to remember is that gnucash is a general accounting
program, and does not have a pretty "click this button to do this
function" style interface. If you are used to the MYOB or Quickbooks
style interfaces you will find it very different.

> Well, MYOB is only for australia whereas gnucash works anywhere, as such it
> doesn't have much intelligence about local tax laws. If you know scheme
> however, you can create new reports to produce anything you like.

I would be very keen for people to write and submit au suitable reports.
I can practically guarantee that they will be accepted.

> It's even possible to use postgresql as the backend, meaning you can use any
> SQL query engine to extract results. I beleive it's also possible then to
> add more columns to keep track of stuff that it doesn't do itself.

Postgresql is working for single-user access only at this stage (and the
same applies to gnucash generally). This may or may not be an issue for
you. The Postgresql implementation is viewed as beta software, but I do
know of a number of people using it and it appears to be quite stable.

> MYOB dat files? I doubt most gnucash developers have even seen one :) I'm
> sure they'd appreciate a patch.

Not quite true. I know at least one of the developers has looked at it,
but nothing was implemented and he is currently busy doing his PhD and
not working on gnucash stuff. Again, if you wanted, we'd very happily
accept a patch.

If you are interested, subscribe to the gnucash-devel mailing list. Its
a mailman list and hopefully you can find the subscription page off
www.gnucash.org (I've been subscribed since before it became a mailman
list, so I don't remember the invocation to use, sorry).
You may also try the irc channel #gnucash on irc.gnome.org (local access
through irc.au.gnome.org) but be warned that most people on that list
are in the US and I am working during the day so you may not get
questions answered quickly.

Generally speaking the gnucash community is very keen for user-submitted
patches. Unfortunately the major developers are off earning money at the
moment, so feature suggestions are unlikely to be implemented before
they get forgotten about.


Conrad.
-- 
Conrad Canterford  (conrad at mail.watersprite.com.au)
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