Accounts software under Linux?

Accounts software under Linux?

Didn't find your answer?

I wondered if there was any movement towards accounts software under Linux or is the whole country under the thrall of Bill Gates?
John Collins

Replies (37)

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By jmc001
27th Jun 2006 12:00

I did actually start writing it...
... about 18 months ago

I created a MySQL Database and wrote some modules to copy all the Sage data to it which I got working.

I wrote some interface modules for updating Customers and Suppliers and some transaction reporting modules.

I was going to do the reporting by generating HTML and having every total a link which you could click on in your browser and be taken to a further report breaking down that total - like Quickbooks - but using your browser (with passwords of course) instead.

It even provides for Multicurrency which is more than Sage can do.

I had the idea of integrating it with OpenOffice so that you could do the invoices and such with that and have the accounts posted for you.

The only reasons I didn't finish it were (a) pressure of other work and (b) I thought someone else I know was going to do it first.

He did produce a very good Open Source payroll incorporating some of my software with HMRC-approved fully automatic EOY filing (which is more than Sage or anyone else can do).

So as it happens I was just looking at it. I had a play with GnuCash but it doesn't have proper reporting and it puts the whole lot in a massive XML file. And of course it doesn't understand VAT (not that anyone else does I know). Odd penny VAT rounding is a nightmare with it too.

I'll try and find time to finish mine off later this year.

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By Martyn.Shiner
27th Jun 2006 15:32

WebERP
Neil

WebERP is another option PHP/MySQL based.

Try http://www.weberp.org/

Written by a guy in NZ.

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By Martyn.Shiner
27th Jun 2006 15:30

Take this off line?
Chaps,

I too have modules defined (in firebird/postgresql) and am looking at integrating with a web based CRM system that is already written (PHP/postgresql) and in use.

We should take this one off line as I'm not sure AWEB is the right forum.

If you want more details mail me - martyn dot shiner at severndelta dot co dot uk.

M

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By Martyn.Shiner
29th Jun 2006 12:27

Neil - you working on somethig?
Neil,

Just re-read your comment. The wink suggests you are working on something. If so, care to share?

M

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By NeilW
27th Jun 2006 13:39

SQL-Ledger
www.sql-ledger.org
www.tiny-accounting.org

and you never know something else might pop up soon ;-)

NeilW

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By Martyn.Shiner
27th Jun 2006 09:20

Anybody out there on AWEB want to revisit an OS accounting solut
Anybody out there on AWEB want to revisit a Free/Open Source accounting solution?

We talked about it 5 years ago and nothing happened. Still don't see too much out there that is UK biased and wondered if anybody is interested.

M

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
05th Sep 2001 23:03

John, Colin, Jay, Neil et al
I've been watching this thread develop with some interest, but been too busy elsewhere to intervene. Colin Stickland beat me to it with the revelation about Aw.co.uk and Linux. In the interest of complete openness and transparency, I belive our accounts system is Coda, running under Unix.

But don't let that deter your quest. If you search on AccountingWEB for "Linux", you should uncover articles mentioning Linux accounting applicaitons from Maconomy, Hansa and Accpac. These are big, serious developers who feel it is worth supporting an open source, non-MS operating system. If I'm not mistaken, IBM and "New" HP (including Compaq) are also keen.

Good luch with your hunt.

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 16:53

Mailing List
John, Colin et al

I agree geography might be a problem - but we have a solution here at AW in the form of discussion groups where people can contribute ideas. Once we've got the baiscs then we should definately meet up somewhere.

Martyn

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 11:50

Hmmmmm
I wasn't really meaning profit-making. But someone would have to be responsible for coordinating patches and publishing them on this or another website in good time and that someone would reasonably expect to at least have his/her expenses met.

I think most people would feel that an accounts system that didn't include payroll wasn't much of an accounts system.I certainly find it by far the most tedious and boring aspect of accounts with the most opportunities for hard-to-recover-from errors combined with tighter deadlines. Yet all of the employees I've dealt with seem to think it's by far the most important aspect of the accounts for some reason.

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By Accounting WEB
06th Sep 2001 17:25

OK I'm game
Well I'm prepared to help with the project. I'm but a lowly C/C++ hacker with about 20 years Unix experience but I am (painfully!) familiar with accounts software.

I was thinking today that you could probably lash up something looking like about 90% of Sage (for instance) with Perl5 using the TK interface and GDBM database in about a week of concentrated hackery and then progressively recode in C++. Wouldn't be hard to put on a CGI interface so people could view with their favourite web browser. But I wouldn't want it to look much like Sage (what I find amusing is that Sage clearly don't use their stuff for their own accounts!).

If people want to do any of that, can I suggest a meeting to decide who does what, what the thing will look like, boring details about marketing the thing and pocketing all the loot we'll make? I'm sure all you accountant people know much more than I do about most of those (especially the last bit!).

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By jstuckey
07th Sep 2001 07:41

Linux and accounting systems
I am a new user to Linux as I wished to have server software which was not constantly being changed for changes sake rather than a gradual improvement. Linux offers this option.

Incidently viruses are written for Windoze so to avoid them use another OS.

I feel a project to write an accounting system could start with SQL Ledger or equivalent.

I would be happy to join in with any project.

The big question is which type of software is needed.

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By AnonymousUser
07th Sep 2001 10:14

AWEB community software project.
Well I would be happy to collabarate on such a software project. I'm a long time Linux user and professional software developer, however I must admit I know next to nothing about accounting software.

The Perl rapid prototype idea is a very good one, but might I suggest gtk-perl as an alternative to Tk as the interface toolkit?

Glade will generate GTK+ interfaces with perl bindings ready for you to fill in the application logic. And GTK+ is a pretty widely accepted look and feel in the linux desktop area these days.

One proviso, however I would be unwilling to contribute to a project unless it was licensed under some widely accepted Free( as in Open Source ) license such as BSD or GPL.

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 11:09

Comments on recent suggestions
I think it's putting the cart before the horse discussing finer details of interface implementation on the one hand and suggesting using SQL on the other.

I don't agree about using SQL myself. I think that's a long way round.

I think it would be a mistake to make it free and/or under the GPL for a number of reasons.

Firstly you need to be able to offer it as a serious product and people are suspicious of free products. Freedom to hack the source code is great for people like me but daunting for someone who sees a line like "
ostream& operator<<(ostream &, const stringvec &);" and runs screaming in terror.

Secondly, particularly with the GPL, there is no warranty for any particular purpose. People rightly want to pay money for something that has a warranty for a particular purpose.

Thirdly, something like accounts software needs a fair amount of support infrastructure. Payroll software in particular needs to be updated at very short notice and exactly the right time in response to our friend Gordon's whims each March whom we understand produces sneaky tricks particularly with NI "The Tax that dare not speak its name" in the small print of budget statements. Without an income stream you can't provide that.

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 11:20

Warranty what warranty
Warranty, fit for purpose?

MS Office has no warranty, and you have NO recource to Microsoft if a bug is a showstopper for your organisation. Same goes for vitually every pice of commercial software on the market - but we all shell out good money for said software and they pay for support, upgrades and bug fixes on top.

Yes, I agree a GPL'd payroll package is probably a non-starter, but in my experience most people use a different (specialist/best of breed) payroll package from their regular accounts system.

Under GPL you'd get community support and bug fixes. I'm not trying to force this issue and don't want to start a flame war but I think we'd find it very difficult to co-ordinate a profit seeking venture.

Martyn

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By AnonymousUser
07th Sep 2001 15:45

Geography might be a problem..
For a physical meeting. Maybe we should set up a mailing list or a new AccountingWEB topic to hammer out some finer details ?

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By AnonymousUser
07th Sep 2001 11:46

Licensing issues.
Well for this particular developer the license would be a crucial factor in deciding whether or not to contribute or not.

Not only are my politics very strongly in line with the Free Software movement but there are also contractual concerns for some of us such as employer liability and copyright assumptions.

I am a firm believer in the potential superiority of Free (as in speech , not beer) software and the community support infrastructure model. Its a commonly observed fact that for many software vendors patches, bugfixes and updates make it to market far slower than their equivalent open source alternatives would have, often in extremely critical areas such as security.

With regards to warranties, most commercial software does come with a click through licence that removes vendor liability ( MS Office et al ) Also note that a huge amount of the internet infrastructure is currently running on such "warranty free" Open Source software and shows no signs of migrating away from it.

Also note that support infrastructure is still entirely valid as a business model regardless of whether the end user has the source code or not. Why else is IBM investing in Linux and promoting it so heavily ?

All developers are of course free to chose their own software licenses but I personally would not want to contribute to yet another closed-source package. Give something back to the Open Source Community rather than just take.

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By AnonymousUser
07th Sep 2001 12:52

Ah yes funding..
Always one of the trickier issues to resolve. Yet many large Open Source projects seem to materialise and prosper nonetheless.

Myself I am happy to chip in to OS projects in my spare time, coding is one of the things that I simply enjoy doing. However that time is obviously a finite resource.
Sponsorship is one option. Also some companies are enlightened/brave/foolish enough to pay developers to work full time on OS work.

Sometimes companies open the source to already existing products in order to get community involvement.

With regards to infrastructure , even if AccountingWEB were not willing to offer support resources there are plenty of other resources such as sourceforge that provide the hosting and management infrastructure for Free projects for nothing.

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 13:27

Let's meet up then
We'd better have some sort of get-together to thrash out all thse points before we go too much further.

Can I suggest w.b. 17th? Then the question is the venue, close of course to some hostelry as us Unix hackers are known throughout the universe as expert p**s-artists....

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By Accounting WEB
07th Sep 2001 11:09

AWEB community software project
I seem not to have been flamed for my suggestion of a Linux based community developed accounting system.

John's idea of a meeting to set some parameters would be good (any of the AW chaps prepared to agree to host such a meeting at Sift HQ?). I also agree also with Colin that it ought to be gtk based, avoiding the qt licencing problem, and should be under the GPL so we can all benefit. FWIW I'd suggest:

SQL based back-end (perhaps MySQL or PostgreSQL)
Application logic in C for speed
Front-end in Perl-gtk or Python?

Since Linux is all about choice, and the source would be available, then people could develop their own front-ends in any tool they choose (Kylix perhaps), so long as they release the source back to the community.

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By AnonymousUser
06th Sep 2001 11:11

Another point about UNIX desktop systems..
It is probably worth mentioning that a significant computer company whose market share is entirely focused on the desktop user, and who are famous for their commitment to non-nerd "normal users" is in the process of migrating their entire product line over to a version of UNIX.

I am of course referring to Apple whose "next generation" operating system OS X is derived from BSD unix ,via what is in my opinion the finest desktop operating system produced to date, NEXTSTEP.

NEXTSTEP was particularly popular with financial institutions during its lifetime , and there is an ongoing project to replicate the entire NEXTSTEP environment on Linux.

Even Microsoft is commited to porting its desktop applications to Mac OS X and because of its NEXSTEP / Unix roots there is considerable synergy between the new Macintosh and Linux - they share many of the same components and tools "under the hood"

Linux versions of mainstream desktop accounting systems may well be closer to market than you suspect.

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By Accounting WEB
05th Sep 2001 23:47

John Stokdyk - thanks for your timely intervention
Hi all,

As to Compaq/HP, they have just brought out a 64 bit enterprise sever on which you can run (apparently) Unix, Windows 2000, OpenVMS, NSK and Linux - all on the same infrastructure simultaneously. It is powered by itanium processor family architecture.

I still need to be convinced that Linux is here and likely to replace the windows environment.

I shall certainly try installing [ Red Hat ] Linux on my 128 MB Dell inspiron to see if it is a strong contender for the next generation business environment.

The question is when will John Collins bring out his accounting package for Linux. If he is really determined then perhaps he is the person to talk to seriously. There is a need for a new accounting package.

I am working on Microsoft SQL server to see if Oracle Financials type package can be developed to compete with Oracle but running on MS server. the project is very much at an embryonic stage but we have got the prototype working on a small scale.

Jay Tanna

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By Accounting WEB
05th Sep 2001 17:39

Recent comments
I only asked if there was accounting software, it was someone else who said I was silly using Linux.

I didn't know about Gnucash but it was there on my Linux machines all the time... Seems quite good and 100% cheaper than the nearest equivalent Windross product.

There are times when I consider writing a Linux version of Sage myself but alas even Linux and Gatesware vendors cannot provide an "increase hours in a day beyond 24" option.... Perhaps I'll hack GnuCash.

I agree Sage is quite clunky and horrible. My biggest gripe with it is that when you come to bank reconciliation it just puts "sales receipt" and "purchase payment" against entries rather than the customer or supplier involved. Also cases where the bank unexpectedly splits what Sage thought was one transaction or combines what Sage thought were several it would be nice if it offered help.

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By Accounting WEB
06th Sep 2001 16:29

Why don't we build the best Linux accounting system?
OK - why don't we all get together to kick off an open source project to develop a Linux alternative to the bloatware in Windows land. That way we'd all get the software we want and the satisfaction that we'd contributed something to the open source movement. We could hack the base software as we saw fit for our own needs.

I can offer Delphi, Kylix, SQL and Excel skills, plus I'm a qualified accountant. I'm sure there are guys within the AW community who would like to contribute and have better skills than me.

Somebody tell me I'm totally crazy... but this would be a real test of the AW community.

Martyn

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By Accounting WEB
05th Sep 2001 12:05

I still think Jay Tanna is wrong
Firstly I'm not suggesting that I should get accounting software free.

Why should anyone want to migrate Borland C or C++ to Linux when vastly better C, C++ and a dozen other languages plus debuggers come free? Plus database packages (etc etc).

I disagree with you about the lack of a good teaching language. Maybe it depends what you want to teach but you might as well use a serious language and C++ is exactly that (but I speak as a software author myself). I cut my teeth at University with a precursor of C as it happened.

Also I have had at least Unix or Linux system at home (the current count is 4) for the past 18 years and know numerous other people who have including the people next door to me. As I said before, the requirements are less than Windows.

My case is that Linux is cheaper, is better, is more secure, has more and better built-in facilities, has smaller system requirements and is vastly easier to program for (and I have written software for Windows as well as Unix and Linux, so I know).

It's when you actually start to write software, for example using "Visual C++", that you see how limiting and buggy Windows is. They clearly don't use it themselves at Microsoft, for example Visual C++ doesn't provide the facility for "custom toolbars" in your software like Word and Excel offer you, nor does the documentation tell you how to implement them. You are more or less constrained to a particular format of your software - and this is clear from Sage's user interface for example, although they clearly use Visual C++.

So please get real!

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By neileg
05th Sep 2001 14:05

Reality check
This ping pong between Linux and Windows fans is more typical of PC Mag or Byte than AccountingWeb.

Two facts:
Linux is better than Windows by far
Windows hugely dominates the market place

Despite the former, the force of the latter dictates that most people who want to run a desktop accounts package are doing so in Windows.

As I have often observed, the fact that a product is a market leader does not make it a good product. The Ford Escort sold in millions and was a duff car.

As for Sage, their software retains design faults that I first observed in my 1984 copy running under CP/M.

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By AnonymousUser
05th Sep 2001 15:21

A good source of Linux Software information
.. is Freshmeat. Try searching on "accounting". It also allows you to extend your searching to other linux software indexing sites.

Another suggestion might be Java. Linux has a number of high quality Java implementations for it (IBM's JVM is particularly fine). And due to the platform neutrality of this language any Java based accounts software would run just fine .

With regards to the interesting assertions made by Mr Tanna regarding the state of linux as a software development platform, could I point out as the most visible component within what is commonly referred to by the media as the "Open Source" movement (i.e. Software that is distributed in source code form for you to use and modify as you wish) then Linux owes its very existence to the proliferation of compilers and development tools available to it.

Obviously-as without compilers you cannot change your free source code into useful programs!

It is as a direct result of this that any freely downloadable linux distribution comes "out of the box" with industrial-strength development utilities for just about any programming language under the sun. Sitting in front of me at this linux workstation I have immediate access to complilers and development tools for Fortran, ADA C, C++ , 3 flavours of java, perl, Python ,HTML, tcl, XML, LISP, scheme and others far too obscure to list!

True, there is no "visual basic" style point and click programming environment - but there are plenty of Enterprise quality IDE's for real programming languages.(Suns's Forte and QT Designer/KDevelop immediately spring to mind)

And as for the assertion that linux is good as a "hobby tool",could I just point out that AccountingWEB is hosted ,developed and built entirely on Linux.

Finally in answer to your question about what sort of individual has Unix systems at home, I feel compelled to point out that I do, in fact I have eight of them ;-)

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By Accounting WEB
04th Sep 2001 22:58

John Collins - you can't be serious man!!
John,

I was talking using my mounth and thinking using my brains. However, I seriously think that you can't be using any stste of the art software such as accounting package even for basic functions.

Paul suggested a GL package which sells for under $20 but what is the point of buying a foreign package which needs to be run using GBP and/or Euros?

to me Linux is a non-starter. Borland Delphi is the only package I have come across which is a true compiler for Linux but how many delphi programmers are there in UK? I believe I must be the only one using Delphi, but that also as a hobby to create small programs to hack into my old firms systems and sabotage the records!! I shouldn't be saying these things!

Borland C++ is still not migrated on Linux platform and it is unlikely to be migrated in the near future because of Delphi for Linux not catching up!.

Linux is good as it is and you can continue playing games on it or use it as a hobby tool or for teaching of programming languages. did you know that since the demise of a "proper" dos interface there isn't a single good programming language for teaching purposes! All the packages are VISUAL based which requires windows. I suppose you can learn C++ on unix but who has got a unix system at home? Is it worth having a monster /beast at home?

PC is the best and long live the king! i.e. Bill Gates.

Jay Tanna

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By AnonymousUser
04th Sep 2001 11:16

Linux - accounts applications not commercially viable
"I want accounts software under Linux at PC software prices (or even better at Linux software prices). I want it to import and export PC accounts s/w data."

As a specialist accounts software house supporting DOS, Windows and bespoke Unix systems, we looked at migrating out standard package for Dos/Windows to Linux several months ago, unfortunatly the research showed that the market was less that that for mac's so it would not make commercial sense to undertake the work involved.

I suspect from your other comment, that Sage done the same and came to the same conclusions.

PC Software prices are only as low as they are because of the volume of DOS/Windows PC's available to the market, reduce the volume and the software costs escalate per package to the point where it's cheaper to buy a PC with Sage etc. than the native linux/unix/mac software.

You best bet would be to hunt round the various Linux user groups on the web.

Good luck

Alan Sheppard
(Technical Sales Manager - Bestfirm Limited)

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By paulmitchell
04th Sep 2001 11:46

I found this on the Linux website...
http://www.linux.org/apps/AppId_6741.html

It claims to be a General Ledger application. More detail on their developer's site:

http://www.linuxledgers.com/

Perhaps someone can let us know if it works?

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By Accounting WEB
04th Sep 2001 10:43

Linux is useful - in the right circumstances
What you have to remember is that Linux is at its most useful as a server OS - say for web serving and email, file & print serving or as a firewall.

Linux is VERY powerful and can be used as a desktop OS aswell. KDE is a well developed Windows like environment and there is KOffice which does a good job in most office productivity (?) areas (let's face it nobody uses more than 25% of MS office features anyway)- but the desktop stuff is not as well developed as Windoze.

AFAIK there is no accounting solution for Linux although there is a web based solution I believe.

Unlike Jay, I beleieve you should try Linux and see if it fits your needs - perhaps use a cheap PC to get started. You never know you might get hooked.

M

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By Accounting WEB
04th Sep 2001 11:03

I suggest you find out a bit more about Linux
I must admit I was strongly inclined to wonder what orefice Jay Tanna was talking from.

Linux is a massively robust system. We have two machines running Linux which haven't been rebooted for over a year.The one I am typing on was booted nearly 86 days ago (and that was only because I upgraded the version of Linux). What Windows machine can boast that? Or even a week?

Linux is immune to viruses. Yes immune. Random programs physically cannot write to "raw disk" or tamper with system files, whereas Windows lets programs think of disk or network addresses and scribble there as they please.The new Windows XP is worse in that regard.

You can run it with much smaller resources than Windows. I can show you it running (with graphic desktop) acceptably on a 133MHz 32MB laptop with 3GB disk.Find me a version of Windows that can do that.

Linux comes with at least 3 spreadsheets all better than Excel, at least 5 wordprocessors all better than Word and so on and so on. And none of them crash the whole machine on the rare occasions they go wrong.

Yet you say "you get better options". Most people are spoiled for choice and don't quite know where to start.You can have a desktop that looks like windows, or 10 others. Or you can have up to 16 - at once.

And you're not even right about Dell preloading it. You can't buy a Linux machine from Dell in the UK. You have to buy a machine with a Windows licence and load it yourself, so you've paid a "tax" to Microsoft for the Windows licence you don't want.

It isn't a question of Bill Gates striking lucky, it's a question of too many people lying down and letting him walk all over them.

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By Accounting WEB
03rd Sep 2001 21:41

John forget Linix; stick with Bill Gates
John,

You guessed it. I just want to confirm what you already knew. We are all controlled by one individual who struck lucky some 20 years ago - Bill Gates.

In any case, the fact that Linux is free is itself telling us something about the operating system. Nobody is a fool to spend time and money to develop it without any profit from it. Red Hat are selling a flavour of it; So is Dell Corporation, who can preload Linux on desktops brought from them but I wouldn't spend any time or money on it. Nor should anyone try running an accounting package on it. Linux is a non starter as far as I am concerned.

The idea of a Pc is to have a simple machine which can give you the power of top of the range computer system. I doubt if you can run Linux efficiently on 64 MD Ram and 10 GB hard disk space. This is before using your other multi tasking/threading packages.

Stick with Bill gates products and let him continue making even more money from your generosity!. You will have better options with his operating system than with Linux/OS2/MAC. Incidentially, even Mac is controlled by him!!

Best regards,

Jay Tanna

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By Accounting WEB
03rd Sep 2001 10:56

I said Linux not Unix
I want accounts software under Linux at PC software prices (or even better at Linux software prices). I want it to import and export PC accounts s/w data.

Sage says: "No plans for a Linux version" (I've asked them several times).

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By neileg
03rd Sep 2001 10:29

?
There's plenty of accounting software that runs under Unix of various flavours. What do you want?

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By dclark
03rd Sep 2001 11:44

Office\2
John,

I'm not sure if there is a lot out there for free on Linux, but........

Office\2 (Hansa's little brother) is there with it's integrated accounting software with calendar, email, remote access without terminal server or citrix type add-on's, etc, etc. It comes very much in the 00's bracket with value pack add-ons to fit your needs (campaigns, dual base cureency, etc)

Please contact us

Daniel Clark
Ryba Macaulay Ltd
[email protected]

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By neileg
03rd Sep 2001 13:27

Ahh...
Ok, so what you want is desktop PC software to run under Linux on a single machine that can interchange its data with Windows applications. That's not the same question as you started with.

On that basis, then you're right, there's not much available.

And I know you said Linux, but then Linux is a freeware clone of Unix. Lots of accounting software in multi user environments runs on Unix, and many are specifically supported on Linux servers, too. But these aren't desktop applications.

I don't like the idea of being in thrall to Microsoft, either, by the way.

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By Accounting WEB
05th Sep 2001 14:48

GnuCash
It's only personal finances but it is a very well-regarded package

www.gnucash.org

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