Sat, 15 Jan 2005
I've decided it's time for me to learn something about accounting. I've been
using GnuCash for a while to generate
invoices, but without understanding the underlying accounting. GnuCash has the
tendency to break either when it or one of it's many dependencies is upgraded,
crashing while spitting out errors like undefined symbol:
gnc_option_db_lookup_taxtable_option. It also has a long-standing bug
which causes invoices not be be printed
correctly when linked against GtkHTML 1.0 as it is in the Debian packages.
So I'm also looking for another accounting package to replace it.
Software
The first one I tried was Lazy8 Ledger, a
java program. It's built as a plugin to jEdit making the interface kind of bizarre
with text editing widgets where they don't seem to belong. In general, the
interface just feels awkward, though with time, it might make more sense.
The next program I tried was FibuSQL. This program seems to
be pretty immature and lacking much documentation. It claims to have been
tested against MySQL and PostgreSQL, but the table creation script fails when
using InnoDB tables.
Next up was SQL-Ledger. This looks
very promising with lots of features and a clean interface. It has almost no
(free) documentation though. The author sells the manual for $190. It looks
like it generates nice-looking invoices and reports which is a plus.
SQL-Ledger will certainly be a contender.
Next up is Quasar. It has lots of
documentation and seems to be feature-rich. It's compiling now. (Tip for
compiling on Debian: Install the libqt3-mt-dev package and set QTDIR=/usr when
running configure.)
I also have a demo of Linux
General Ledger, a proprietary ncurses-based application, to try out. It
seems to be mature and well-documented. If it does what I need (I'm not sure
exactly what that is yet), I'd be happy to use a mouseless program. Those
Function keys are kind of far away for me, though. I'd prefer VI key-bindings.
It's on sale for $29.95.
Accounting
Of course, to use any of these programs, I need to know something about
accounting. The Lazy8 website directed to this great tutorial by Bean
Counter Accounting. I finally understand debits and credits. I also
picked up a book called Accounting
the Easy Way which, 20 pages in, is good and reinforces what I've learned
so far from the Bean Counter.
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