[CoLoCo] Software for a small business (customer database)

[Kevin Fries]

I have experience with both GNUCash and Quasar

GNUCash has always felt awkward to me.  It is very good about each account in its own ledger, and you can enter using the check paradigm, but that is about it.  Invoices are not its strong point, and there is no ERP functionality.

Quasar is very, very good.  Not as easy to set up as the site claims it should be, but otherwise very nice.  It will do invoices and account receivable type stuff.  I did not think about Quasar when I recommended Compiere, but it too would be a good choice.  It also has a paid POS module.  The free version does not include this, but it can easily be added later by upgrading to the commercial version.

My original recommendation should also be further qualified... Compiere.  Compiere is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and Accounting package all in one.  That may sound intimidating, and from a setup standpoint it is a little.  But, not from the user standpoint.

CRM basically means being able to track your customers.  So when Joe brings his car in to be repaired, the shop owner should be able to look up all the invoices, and work orders from before to know what other things he has fixed.  This can especially help when you have regular customers.  It also should allow him to data mine his existing customers to offer special deals and other marketing.

ERP means that you are planning inventory.  Keeping track of cans of oil, mufflers, etc.  As inventory runs low, orders can be made and managed.

Quasar is good at ERP, but its CRM (much more important in the situation you described) is almost non-existent.  In Compiere the Invoice creates the account receivable.  The person working the desk should never need to see the rest of the accounting system.  The person doing the orders should only need to see the ERP, for a purchase order creates the account payable.  These may be the same person or not, but even when they are the same person, they are taking on different roles and this separation actually makes things much easier.  The accountant can tie everything else together via the general ledger.  This separation actually provides three faces to the same data back end.  All in all, for a very customer facing business, such as a auto repair shop would be, Compiere is probably the best I have ever seen.  The free version of Quasar is better for a more back office type of business (I use it for Fighting Penguin), or the commercial version is better for a standard store front with lots of anonymous customers (clothing store for example).

I hope all this analysis is not overwhelming and was actually helpful.


Kevin Fries
Senior Linux Engineer
Computer and Communications Technology, Inc
A division of Japan Communications Inc
(303) 708-9228 x326
________________________________________
From: ubuntu-us-co-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com [ubuntu-us-co-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of siblog [tehsiblog at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 1:32 PM
To: Ubuntu Colorado Local Community Team
Subject: Re: [CoLoCo] Software for a small business (customer database)

Just did a little bit of Googling and found some stuff:

Open Source ERP, POS quickbooks alternatives
-GNUCash - http://www.gnucash.org/
-OpenBravo - http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/
-SQL-Ledger - http://www.sql-ledger.org
-Quasar - http://www.linuxcanada.com/

-Simon


On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 12:51 PM, TJ Heaney <tjheaney at gmail.com<mailto:tjheaney at gmail.com>> wrote:
One bit of FOSS that I've been using is dot.Project.

It's primarily oriented toward a Development environment, but it could have some useful applications.

www.dotproject.net/

All you need is the standard LAMP setup.

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Jeffrey LePage <jeffrey_lepage at yahoo.com<mailto:jeffrey_lepage at yahoo.com>> wrote:
Hello everybody,

I have a line on a possible Linux convert.

This guy owns a small auto repair shop (somewhere in the Arvada area) and wants to replace his existing computer system which is _very_ old.  He says it runs DOS, so I guess it's around 15-20 years old.

His needs are very simple.  He wants a customer database with some sort of nice front-end for entering data.  And of course he wants to print out work orders and stuff.

This will not be a POS system, however I suspect that he may want something like this in the future.   At the very least I suspect he may want to be able to print out a bill with everything itemized and tax included.  His wife does his accounting stuff at home on their windoze PC (with quickbooks, I think).  Exporting the data to a quickbooks friendly format would be nice.

My question is this:  does anyone know of a quick out-of-the-box FOSS solution for this guy?








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