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On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:02:06 +0000 Eion MacDonald <eionmac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I have not accessed LUG Wiki (Do not know how to!) Use your DCGLUG Members Area username and password to login. You should have received a reminder on 1st of each month. Paul: please update the drupal6 site with your wiki additions too - or let me know if there are problems / difficulties. > However it is the lack of Accounting software capable of correct VAT > records in OpenSource that stops the adoption of FOSS Gnu/Linux by > small businesses. VAT rules are highly region-specific and the sheer rate of change is difficult for open-source teams to control. Even the biggest open source teams will lack access to particular regions and have to concentrate only on certain areas. (GnuCash tried to offer US tax support but could not possibly stretch that to EU or UK tax let alone VAT which is quite different to US sales taxes. Canada isn't supported either.) > Sets such a smb-ledger /sql-ledger /Quasar are only of use if started > from scratch as input from existing systems MS Windows based are > extremely difficult. That's no different with free software - there is no standard for exchange of financial data (QIF is horribly unreliable and incomplete) and none of the various financial packages communicate with any other financial package in free software in any meaningful way. I have tried many times to create such communication mechanisms but there is no common ground between any of the relevant programs and there seems to be no appetite for a common interface. You only change financial package at the end of your financial year - with the inherent data duplication issues. > I found sql-ledger and Quasar almost imposable to set up in SuSe. > However personal accounts or USA based tax accounts can be easily > dealt with by GnuCash, with Kmoney ok for personal accounts. I gave up using GnuCash for UK based personal accounting - the system is far too laborious for day-to-day usage. If you do one invoice per client each month it might be OK but I had multiple invoices per day (for two clients) and GnuCash is simply unusable with that amount of input and there's no automation support. (I tried to write the support but the codebase is too cumbersome and I've given up.) I've now got scriptable support via my Palm and the datafreedom-perl package in Debian but that data simply isn't compatible with GnuCash. However, it has a much smaller footprint too, being command-line based. I know use Grisbi and my own scripts / gnumeric. > I keep MS Windows systems for accounts for a number of charities and > self. (Quickbooks - albeit it cannot in 2008 version handle Euro!)also > back up set with MS SBA (now abandoned!)and others over the years. > GnuCash is capable of being set up to handle UK VAT, (the biggest > difficulty with USA based accounts software) but I could find no one > using it, for an example chart of accounts IIRC GnuCash can't cope (or at least not easily) with which items are VAT-liable and which are not. I wouldn't recommend it for anything related to UK taxes. > a 2005 review comment is probably still valid > "> It is not uncommon to find hard-core Linux users keeping a Windows > box just to run Quicken or QuickBooks. " Or Sage? Or just use simpler clients like homebank or grisbi and do the real work in something like gnumeric. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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