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On 24/12/10 17:26, Philip Hudson wrote: > to QuickBooks for them. I actively promote FOSS. Mostly to small company start ups. The BIG BIG (intentional capitals) problem is the lack of a FOSS equivalent to QuickBooks (or Sage) to do UK VAT properly. GnuCash is OK for USA based businesses, and provided the user is competent in double entry bookkeeping it is possible to set up a UK Chart of Accounts for non-VAT systems easily but not for UK or EU VAT The lack of adequate bookkeeping to UK/ HMRC standards for company bookkeeping is a real problem for FOSS. So my summary: for all work in Engineering (including CAD/CAM etc) FOSS copes, for Commercial Side of company it fails! Thus fall back on proprietary programs for accounts. Windows easy choice. Gnu/Linux smaller choice. This kills three out of four possible start up folk from FOSS or Gnu/Linux. "I'll just buy Windows and MS Office and QuickBooks" PS FOSS bookkeeping for non-VAT non-HMRC e.g personal accounts is OK. There are VAT capable 'free'(as beer) Windows' systems but much more awkward than QuickBooks. For lack of a nail the horse.. ...war was lost! -- Regards Eion MacDonald -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq