Using GNUCash for business purposes

[Keith A. Milner]

On Saturday 12 January 2008 11:48:23 Colin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have just installed GNUCash on my Windows XP machine as a trial for
> helping me manage an up and coming small business, but am having trouble
> understanding how I would provide a quote to my customers.
>
> I can create an invoice but cannot find a way to create a quote. Is this
> possible?

Not directly, as Gnucash doesn't have a specific quote capability.

However, one approach could be to create an invoice, but not post it. With the 
correct custom report this could appear as a quote. If the customer was happy 
with the quote, selecting Post would then allow an invoice to be created.

Note that Gnucash is a general-purpose, double-entry accounting package. 
Arguably, things like quotes, purchase orders and invoices are not pure 
accounting, but are more to do with business management and business 
practice. A quote or a purchase order, for instance, has zero impact on the 
accounts; no transactions are performed.

Gnucash has some "business" add-ins for dealing with customers, vendors, bills 
and invoices. Certain "business management" functions do have a direct impact 
on the accounts. For instance, an invoice creates a transaction from an 
income account to A/c Receiveable.  Because of the direct relationship with 
the accounts, capabilities have been provided to assist with these functions. 

However, Gnucash is not a full-blown business management system.

I would recommend if you need to do quotes, purchase orders, and the like that 
you develop your own templates for these in a Word Processor or (probably 
better) spreadsheet.

If you need something more than this, you could look at "CRM" packages like 
Sugar CRM.

Others may be able to recommend other packages.

Cheers,

-- 
Keith Milner