accounting software

[Amiruddin Nagri]

Hi Donald,

Thanks for sharing your insight and experience with us.

I am a developer and looking to explore and extend Gnu Cash, also I am a
beginner to accouting/account keeping.
I am going through the help manual provided with Gnu Cash but some of the
domain specific terms and logic are not very clear to me given that I don't
have the relevant experience. How do you suggest I fill this experience gap
? If there are some manuals/tutorials/lectures available in any ocw style
open university where I can study more details about accounting that
probably will help me get an insight into this domain.

Thanks,
Amiruddin Nagri


On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 8:56 PM, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnucash-devel mailing list
> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
> >
>
> 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.
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> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>