Survey of existing FLOSS accounting systems (was Re: Revitalization of npoacct project; Brett Smith will take over as project lead)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 25/08/16 21:24, Tim Schofield wrote:
> On 25 August 2016 at 19:51, Chris Travers <chris.travers at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Not so much re-opening the debate (I am not here to convince people to use
>> LedgerSMB so much as to learn what we can do to better serve the NPO
>> community) but one thing I would suggest is that working with various
>> projects may get you further for less than trying to build your own project.
>>
> 
> I agree, this project has spent a lot of time and money trying to
> re-invent double entry transaction processing. Much better to work
> with an existing project to meet any specific requirements.
> 

I recently created a blog comparing some of these solutions:

https://danielpocock.com/comparison-of-free-open-source-accounting-software


I also agree it is better not to re-invent the wheel.  If you can use an
existing GL and just make some new front ends or reports that is much
better.  I've seen this pattern in practice in many places in financial
services.

Another idea is to concentrate on making packages, libraries or modules
that can be shared between different solutions.  E.g. just making up a
library for currencies and packaging it so that all the free software
accounting systems can use it to initialize their list of currency
symbols.  Other examples include managing electronic documents (bank
statement downloads, bills sent by email, etc) or a generic tool for
normalizing CSV files before bank reconciliation.

Regards,

Daniel