Best way to manage utilities

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Alberto Dante wrote:

> Thanks Michael,
> Yes I know what inventory systems do: I looked at many ERP programs, 
> but they are too complicate for my small needs.
> Instead, GC has already some business features (customer, vendor, 
> employee), so I have thought it would be easier to make some changes 
> to it.

Alberto,

    We might of course be having some language difficulties. I was NOT 
suggesting that you use an inventory system. I was just trying to point 
out that there were a lot of things we might be wanting to keep track of 
besides MONEY. What an accounting system does, what it is supposed to 
do, is keep track of money, not other things. You are expecting gnucash 
to perhaps do things OTHER than what an accounting system is designed to 
do. I chose "inventory" as an example because an inventory system (in a 
business environment) would have a TIE to the accounting system, whether 
an automated tie or not depending on how well the two systems, 
"inventory" and "accounting" were connected.

    So yes of course, just as in the case of a proposed inventory system 
that would tie to gnucash, there could be one that would do what you 
want, one that would do "project" accounting or "time" accounting (for 
those businesses that so "billable hours") or "commissions" (for those 
businesses whose sales people work on commission), etc. But ALL of these 
would be in effect separate projects needing their own development 
teams. WHY? Because in all likelihood, even if particularly friendly to 
gnucash (primarily intended to work with gnucash) it would be foolish if 
these systems did not make provision to connect to other popular 
accounting systems.

Michael D Novack

PS: That you might have seen these with other (commercial) accounting 
software may have confused you to the extent you saw them as "part of" 
it. Many vendors of commercial accounting packages may offer for 
purchase add ons like a "point of sales" package that connects to their 
"inventory" package" and both their "accounting "package" (and maybe 
"tax preparation" packages for some of the more popular jurisdictions). 
Being commercial vendors, they have no interest in making these optional 
packages tie in to the accounting systems of competitors. That still 
does not make these add ons PART of the accounting system.