Best way to manage utilities

[Alberto Dante]

Thanks Michael,
Yes I know what inventory systems do: I looked at many ERP programs, but 
they are too complicate for my small needs.
Instead, GC has already some business features (customer, vendor, 
employee), so I have thought it would be easier to make some changes to it.
Your considerations are theorical, my are practical: this is the 
difference, I think.
I don't know if you can suggest me a different program, according to 
your experience...
> I think this is perhaps confusion about what a bookkeeping system
> does/should do.
>
> There are many things in our lives of which we might want to keep track.
> Money is just one of them, and doing THAT job is what accounting
> packages like gnucash are for. Even in normal businesses, there are
> other things to track, things that have SOME relationship to the money,
> but also much data that has nothing to do with money.
>
> Take an "inventory system". The tie in to the accounting package is the
> book value which changes as items are removed from inventory (sold) or
> added to inventory as more purchased (account payable with vendor). But
> there are a LOT of other things we expect of an "inventory system",
> things like number currently on hand, reorder point, where shelved, who
> the vendor is, etc. Those things are NOT properly part of an accounting
> system.
>
> Record keeping related to your utility use can of course be useful to
> you. And so you need to consider the ways you might best go about that.
> However the accounting system itself doesn't really relate to anything
> "real" like that, just the money part of it. Please, I am NOT saying
> that other systems might  not have ties to the accounting system, might
> not produce "feeds". Thus a "point of sale" system such as might be used
> by a retail business might be sending a feed to accounting, a feed to
> inventory, a feed to commissions (if sales person compensation depended
> on sales), etc. But while the whole might be considered "the business
> system" the accounting system would be a discrete part.
>
> Michael D Novack