accounting software

[Donald Allen]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 11:50 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
> On Jun 26, 2010, at 11:24 AM, Darla J. Wood wrote:
>
>> To Whom it may concern,
>> My name is Darla Wood and I am a small business owner. I am very new to the Smartphone environment and am a typical computer user. The information I found on your website concerning gnucash was very confusing to me. Is this program ready for the public? Is it user friendly for people like me. I would need step by step instructions on downloading and instillation. Any issues after instillation would confuse me as to weather it is a problem with program or me. I really need an affordable solution to my accounting needs, I have looked at QuickBooks but do not feel that I should have to rent the program yearly. Any info you can give me will be appreciated.
>> Darla J. Wood, SBO
>
> This is a developer mailing list for the programmers who work directly on Gnucash. Please in future post user questions to gnucash-users at lists.gnucash.org
>
> Yes, Gnucash is very mature; it has been available for almost 20 years. It is rather more demanding of the user than are many personal finance programs; more like QuickBooks than Quicken, for example.
>
> Gnucash does not support smartphones, though there are smartphone "apps" that will work with gnucash.
>
> You'll find lots of step by step instructions on all manner of different things in the wiki, at http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki.
>
> That said, while Gnucash is free, book-keeping is a lot of work. If you think that Quickbooks is expensive, go to Staples or OfficeDepot, get yourself a ledger pad, and keep your books by hand for a year. Be sure to record your time on a timesheet and bill yourself at whatever is your hourly rate. At the end of the year, I expect that you'll have a different perspective on software cost. You might at that point even appreciate the benefits of paying an accountant to take care of it for you so that you can devote more time to something profitable, like selling.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
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>

Excellent advice from John Ralls. But, if you decide you still want to
keep your books yourself, I recommend simply downloading and
installing gnucash, as well as reading the documentation (the Concepts
and Help guides). Even if you decide not to use the program, your time
will not have been wasted; you will learn some useful things. While I
don't run a small business, I've been keeping track of my personal
finances with a computer for over twenty years now, going back to
Managing Your Money on a Mac Plus. I used Quicken for a number of
years, Microsoft Money for a year (awful!), tried Gnucash 5 years ago,
and have been a happy user ever since. It's a powerful tool designed
and built by some very smart people and while it requires some effort
to learn to use it well, it will reward you if/when you do. And, as
you've already found out, there's an active user community that will
help you, including the developers.