GnuCash and running a business?

[Paul Lussier]

>>> On Mon, 21 May 2001, Paul Lussier, identified below as "Paul",
>>> spake forth:

  Paul> I guess the things that I'd be interested in seeing in
  Paul> business-related software would be things like:

  Paul> - payroll 
  Paul> - project tracking
  Paul> - billing (time/services)
  Paul> - personell/materiel management

On Tue, May 22, 2001 at 11:03:09AM +0000, Gerd Arlitt was heard to remark:

  Gerd> I think you are plainly wrong here if you compare  GnuCash with
  Gerd>  Applications like SAP or Peoplesoft in general.

  Linas> Right. SAP is a high end, and does very different things.
  Linas> But a more appropriate comparison might be with peachtree,
  Linas> which comes shrink- wrapped, on a cdrom, and support the
  Linas> above to a sifficeint degree to be usable in a small office.

Correct, I never meant to compare GnuCash to SAP/PeopleSoft, rather:

  Linas> The question was 'can gnucash, the pc-based app, be enhanced
  Linas> to support peachtree/quickbooks style features'? and the
  Linas> answer is yes.

(I think) Linas mentioned previously that most of 
the features many people look for, are in fact, merely new report 
forms.  Therefore, from my (all be it limited) understanding, it 
should be pretty easy to add a report form to GnuCash to massage the 
information properly for the desired output.

IMO, GnuCash already has one leg up on Quicken as a personal finance 
manager, since it's entire structural design seems to be much better 
planned out.  Just the default use of double entry alone make it a 
better and more reliable product, IMO.

  Linas> But if the question is 'can it be morphed into some mainframe-
  Linas> mangling enterprise-class system', then no. Maybe absorbed by,
  Linas> merged into, but not grown into.

Well, I don't think anyone expects GnuCash to be used to manage a 
multi-million dollar enterprise, nor do I think, any of us want it to 
morph into that.  However, I think it might worthwhile to use GnuCash 
as the General Ledger interface for something like GnuEnterprise?!

  Gerd> This may be all too much off topic .... maybe it can be discussed
  Gerd> somewhere else but I woulden't know where ....

  Linas> Nah, this is a great place, although the gnue place
  Linas> may be good too.  Maybe we should set up some sort of
  Linas> 'linux-financial' list?  I don't beleive the community has a
  Linas> general list of this kind.

I don't find that there's an overwhelming amount of traffic on this 
list.  Personally I don't mind if this type of discussion takes place 
here, but I'm one person who really has no say in this :)

The idea of a general linux-financial list might be a good idea, 
though I don't know if the level of interest yet warrants it.  Could 
this be hosted at Gnumatic?

-- 

Seeya,
Paul
----
	It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!