Setup for hosting business

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Brendan Grossman <brendan at grossman.id.au> writes:

> Hey,
>
> Is it possible to use GnuCash for managing a web hosting business? The only 
> real difference compared to most other businesses is that customers sign up 
> for a number of months or even years at a time. I would need functionality to 
> be able to set how long a customer will last, and when their payments are 
> due, etc. Is this beyond the scope of GnuCash currently? If so, anyone know 
> any good free tools that can do this?

I don't know if GnuCash can do this.  It certainly isn't why I wrote
it, but I tried to make it general enough to be usable for most
businesses.  It doesn't specifically deal with what you're looking
for, however.  I don't know what you mean by "how long a customer will
last".  It also does not have the ability to make "scheduled invoices"
or even "duplicate invoices" (i.e. making a new invoice as a copy of
an old one).

I'll note that these lack of features are not design flaws -- the
design can handle it.  It's just that the code hasn't been written to
do it.  Patches are always welcome ;)

There aren't many other open-source business accounting packages
available.  Indeed, this is why I wrote the code for GnuCash -- there
wasn't anything else at the time.  So, I don't know what to tell you.

> I also have another question. You see, i'm switching my home office entirely 
> to free open source software. So is it a better idea to have seperate GnuCash 
> data files for both business and personal use? 

Yes, I would definitely suggest separate data files for your personal
and business use.  If nothing else it will make your tax returns
easier to do.

> Regards
> Brendan

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available