[clug] Financial Accounting software

[Conrad Canterford]

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 12:19 +1000, Andrew Smith wrote:
> Do any of you good people use accounting software under Linux?  If so, how easy 
> is it to use and setup?  I'm only after a basic replacement for MYOB, so 
> handling payroll and gst as well as the usual invoice things would be good.

I use GnuCash, and run my business on it. Its very good, very stable and
the (long overdue) port to use gnome 2 is only weeks from release
(literally - in 2nd beta as we speak). Once that is done, development
should start to move forward again.
It doesn't do payroll, and it doesn't automatically do GST for you. But
it is trivial to enter and track GST in my experience.

To complete a BAS you will need some basic competence with a calculator
and reading stuff out of the GnuCash reports. Someone could write a
report to do it, but that's not going to be me, as the reports are in
Scheme - and anyway the very little time I have for development work has
been focused on projects other than GnuCash for many years.

I have never used the invoicing system, but I know several people who
do. It works for them, but that probably depends on exactly what and how
you're trying to use it.

The biggest complaint I hear from people converting from using Windoze
accounting software is that it is too hard to understand. Actually, it
is just using basic double-entry bookkeeping principles. Its different,
not difficult.

Happy to answer any GnuCash questions people might have.

Conrad
(former GnuCash contributor, long time user and tester).