Wondering about features

Federico Sevilla III jijo@leathercollection.ph
Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:55:18 +0800 (PHT)


Hi everyone,

I am currently attempting to set up GnuCash for a medium-sized
manufacturing firm. Their current single-user MS-DOS system is out of date
and is a major bottleneck as far as operations are concerned. I have only
used GnuCash for my personal accounting but have been happy with it, and
was wondering if it is ready to support the needs of this company.

Our accounting manager is a current fan of QuickBooks and Peachtree as he
has used this in previous organizations he has worked with. I, on the
other hand, am a Linux fanatic. I was hoping to be able to get GnuCash up
and running for them, as aside from the fact that it's free, this is a
chance to increase the use of Linux here. (BTW, I'm also looking for a
more decent Micro$oft Office alternative than StarOffice which
unfortunately needs per-user installations that makes it a pain to deploy)
The local Linux users group I belong to is also interested in how things
go as far as my deploying GnuCash is concerned. I am based in the
Philippines and a lot of organizations here and even our government could
benefit greatly from Linux and other GPL applications like GnuCash.

Our accounting department submitted to me a list of features or
functionality required. I have prefixed with a 'o' all those that I am not
sure exist, or don't know how to implement using GnuCash, and with a '+'
all those I am confident are working.

I hope those more experienced with GnuCash can let me know how to work
around or on the features with a 'o'. Or maybe the developers can let me
know if these are in their todo lists or in their don't-expect-it-soon
lists.

 + Multi-user capability, if possible with a database backend
 + Double-entry accounting
 o Subsidiary Book of Accounts (ie: sales book, purchases book,
   disbursements, et al)
 o Inventory management (since we are a manufacturing firm)
 o Invoicing features
 + Check-writing
 o Exporting of existing data into reports that can be worked on using
   spreadsheet programs
 o Capability to view reports generated via the web

I do not know what format GnuCash uses to store data in a PostgreSQL
backend, but I'm positive some web-based reporting can be managed by a PHP
script that will work on the GnuCash data in the database.

About the Subsidiary Book of Accounts: according to our accounting manager
who gave GnuCash a short tour to see how it would fit in, the Bureau of
Internal Revenue (our local counterpart to the IRS) requires that aside
from the General Ledger (which our manager believes is the only thing
GnuCash supports now) companies maintain special books like those
mentioned as examples.

I hope someone can help me in my "mini-battle" against the alternative
Windows-based accounting applications. Thanks a lot in advance!

 --> Jijo

--
Federico Sevilla III  :: jijo@leathercollection.ph
Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc.