6. Proprietary Business Finance Software For Linux

The definition of running on Linux tends to vary somewhat. Several packages claim this property based on the fact that they run atop a relational database (like Oracle, Informix, Sybase, or perhaps one less famous), and that such database software can be hosted on Linux.

In many such cases, the software is implemented using a client/server architecture, where the client side software can only run on Windows. Some might consider it a little disingenous to claim that an application "runs on Linux" when not all of the application components can, in fact, run on Linux.

• SAPGUI, the front end to SAP AG's R/3 ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System, is available for Linux.

• The WGS (Work Group Systems) FTP archive contains a couple of accounting systems written using Clipper and then ported to FlagShip (both xBASE "clones") that run on Linux. It appears that people are at liberty to use the packages without charge so long as they don't expect support. Source code can be made available for an apparently moderate price to allow the systems to be customized to an individual enterprise's needs.

  • Account-On-It!

  • Columbosoft's Accounting for Clipper - afc.tgz

• Appgen

  Appgen was a vendor offering Unix-based accounting software using their own proprietary RAD tool and embedded ISAM database. It evidently has its origins in Pick , with its own database being similar to BTrieve. As of late 2003, they have gone out of business, leaving VARs high and dry.

  For a while, they were also the vendor of Money Dance , a personal finance app written in Java ;

  PowerWindows uses their own proprietary hash table-based database system, perhaps most reminiscent of DBM. They claimed good scalability results, which is nice; unfortunately, the data is embedded in a database that only they truly understand, which qualifies as a very bad thing.

  A problem that has been encountered with MyBooks is that it does not comply with LSB (Linux Standard Base) , and thus cannot be expected to 'run everywhere.' Apparently it does not play well with SuSE 8.1; you may need to do a careful selection of distributions in order to be able to run it. This quite a common problem encountered with proprietary binary-only applications. There is no guarantee that the vendor has considered environmental dependancies relating to your environment, and since it is not free software, you have no ability to modify the application to resolve problems. That's essentially the reason why Richard Stallman founded the FSF ... Part of the research you should do before buying any financial software is to find out if it is compatible with your environment. The closing of their doors expands the cautionary tale; if your vital financial data is shackled inside a set of proprietary software tools, your enterprise undertakes all of the risk of how financially sound the vendor is. If they had been using some third party database system, perhaps with an SQL relational database, there would be a clear route to get data out of the system. In light of the proprietary form of data storage, it may require "forensic computing" techniques to extract information about the financial position in order to transition to more supportable software.

• appgen-users Info Page

• APPX

  Unix-based accounting software, using their own RAD tool and their own embedded ISAM database system.

  Modules include General Ledger, Budget Analysis, General Subsidiary, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Purchase Orders, Inventory Control, Order Entry, Commission Accounting, and Sales Analysis.

• Conetic C/BOOKS " C/BOOKS consist of nine easy to use, fully integrated accounting software modules - Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Order Entry, Inventory Control, Payroll, Fixed Assets, Job Costing, and Purchase Order. "

  This is a terminal-oriented system based on Conetic's screen builder and C library-based database system.

• Fenix Data Systems

  Products include applications for Customs / Importing, Freight / Cargo, and Integrated Accounting, deployed on a relational database platform called Metropolis .

• Triumph Business Systems

  A multi-user accounting system that runs on DOS, OS/2, Win32, Unix, and Linux.

  Includes such modules as:

  • General Ledger

  • Invoicing and Accounts Receivable

  • Order Entry

  • Accounts Payable

  • Purchase Orders

  • Inventory

  • Point of Sale

  • Sales Analysis

  • Costing

  • Bank Reconciliation

  • Foreign Currency

  • Report Writer

  Produced "Down Under," which may mean it is easier to support in the Southern Hemisphere than in North America...

• InfoFlex ACCOUNTFLEX

  GL, Order Entry, Purchasing, AP, AR, Inventory, Payroll, Job Cost, Bank Reconciliation, Bill of Materials

  Uses the InfoFlex database system that's essentially a "clone" of Informix SE.

• Samco Power Accounting

  Roughly 25 modules available...

  • Accounts Payable

  • Accounts Receivable

  • Bank Reconciliation

  • CrossRoads

  • General Ledger

  • Global/DX

  • Inventory Plus

  • I/C Quick Entry

  • Job Cost

  • Ledger Connection

  • Multi-Site Order Entry

  • Multi-Site Point of Sale

  • Order Entry Plus

  • Payroll (Canadian)

  • Point of Sale

  • Professional Invoicing

  • Purchasing Plus

  • Purchase Order

  • Report Writer

  • Sales Analysis

  • Scheduling Plus

  • Time and Attendance

  • Time and Billing

• Qba

  POS (Point Of Sale) Application written using the Qddb database system

• mP-MIS - microPOWER Accounting System

• Sage - Sovereign

  Scott Watson (probably emailable at <scott@mail.force9.net>, but that's just a guess...) reports that:

  " I don't know whether it has got across the Atlantic to you folk but one of the most widely used DOS/Netware Accounting applications in the UK is called Sovereign from Sage Software. It also exists for Unix. I am a support engineer for it and I assure you that and the end user cannot tell the difference between the two. I can make internal modifications for one and then just copy the files to the other. A couple of the executables are different (obviously) but those are supplied ready for use by Sage. The whole system is tailorable to suit any needs and comes with a good programming language thrown in for free."

• SOLD II Point of Sale Software

• SanBase

  A POS system using the ConteXt OODBMS, with web-based Java client and server backend written using C++.

  With claims like: "Do you pay for a Charter Accountant every month? You can save this money. This is not only a POS but a complete management system too. All your income, expenses and purchases will be in a database. The system will calculate taxes, salary and make reports for the government." the marketing may be a little overenthusiastic as there are accounting decisions that may require the expertise of a Chartered Accountant or CPA.

  Licensing and pricing arrangements are not well-documented.

• SOLD II Accounting Software

• Unique Systems

  Sells/Integrates ThinSoft Accounting. Runs on Linux...

• I received email indicating the following, that I have yet to fully investigate:

  I have resale access to a number of Linux supports solutions based on the SmartWare 2000 development system, a complete MRP solution in the 75 to 200 K range:

  Electronic Bean Counter

  A powerful accounting system, $500 per module

  The Smart Contact Manager

  Contact management system - $895 including SmartWare 2000.

  The SmartWare Enterprise Resource Product (SwERP) is the optimum balance between 'best of breed' and products like SAP.

  <greg@mobiusmarketing.com> Greg at Mobius Marketing

• OpenCCVS

  OpenCCVS is a suite of documentation and programs to allow merchants to process credit cards via a modem. It currently only supports the FDR7 protocol.

• Mainstreet Softworks Monetra

  Credit Card Billing Software for various Linux-like OSes...

• WebTime

  A web-based time tracking and attendance product written for Linux. It uses pyapache, pygres, and htmlgen, postgresql, python and apache. It is the authors' intention to provide some financial support to the creators of those underlying tools " if and when we get profits out of the product"

  They are hoping technical groups will use it to track vacation time, programmer burnout and project costs.

• Proven Software: Business Accounting Systems In Linux

  Proven Software sell both single user and multiuser versions of their software that can provide access either using a "dumb terminal" mode (which looks like it likely uses ncurses ), as well as a GUI interface for X.

  They have Proven dk, Small Business Edition, a single user version priced at $99.

  A demo edition of Proven dk is available at FTP Directory: ftp://ftp.provenacct.com/pub/provenacct/eval/

  I've heard a report of one implementation of their package that did not work out well. A former customer complained of buggy software, and that they were displeased with the support offerings. These sorts of situations often involve disagreements on both sides, and I've not heard any of the "other side," so I certainly hesitate to take any sides on the matter. Regardless, the situation demonstrates the importance of planning installation of this sort of software most carefully, as if things do not work out, migrating back to old software or on to another package is an expensive and disruptive process. It is a good thing that a "demo" edition is available to allow at least doing some assessment of suitability.

• BestAcct

  Company offering single user versions of Proven Accounting software, with G/L, A/R, A/P, CheckWriting, and Sales/Invoicing.

• PARITY Software GmbH

  	Parity Software GmbH from have ported their systems to Linux using Qt as the gui, also available on winNT. It can be fully customized by their professional partners and they have an extension language called PAL which is a Perl m dule so one can do anything they want just by writing some Perl code using the extended command-set. Sounds great? Demo-version should be out by April 1999. (Sorry, it's all in German.)
  -- A CEBIT report from <r.kaercher@media-net.de>

• Southware

  Accounting software implemented in COBOL using AcuCOBOL, thereby portable to many platforms. Offers a considerable set of modules to support accounting for different sorts of commercial activities.

• DDI Time Tracking, Billing, and Accounting Management software

  Implemented in COBOL using AcuCOBOL, and thus portable to a sizable number of platforms, this software is likely to be particularly suited to professional offices such as accounting firms or law firms.

• s2r-IXware ESS - Enterprise Solution Server

• Syncline

• Silk Systems

  Produces integrated "enterprise management" software, including modules for:

  • POS

  • Order Processing

  • Inventory Control

  • Credit Management

  • Sales Analysis

  • Price Quotes

  • Purchasing

  • Rental Management

  • Service Dispatch

  • Warranty Tracking

  • Work Order Processing

  • Time Management

  • Accounting and Financial Reporting

  Software runs atop Linux, Novell, Unix, and Windows NT operating systems.

  Company is based in British Columbia, so it presumably provides some degree of support for both Canadian and US operational and tax environments...

• EuroLogiciel - Gestion Commerciale pour PME sous Linux qui vient de Belgique...

  Je pense qu'il faut parler francais pour effectivement utilizer cette systeme...

• LinuxLedgers.com

  Linux Business Accounting Systems (LBAS) - to provide a closed-source package for small business accounting, with some "open source" interface code so that you can develop interfaces to their software.

  I did a review on this for Linux Journal

• Linux Accounting Software - Retail and Wholesale Businesses

• Quasar Accounting

  Based on Qt GUI and relational databases Firebird or Sybase .

  Modules include:

  • The standard G/L, A/P, A/R

  • Purchasing and Inventory control from the point of view of retail sales environments.

  • Quasar now consolidates in Point Of Sale functionality from a package formerly known as LinuxPOS.

  • Platforms can be mixed and matched; much of the client software as well as server software runs both on Linux and on various flavors of Windows.

  A base single-user version is available free of charge, though not as free software.

• Review of Quasar Accounting for Linux

• Regulus-2 ISP Accounting Software

• [LeapList] Basic Bookeeping, AR/AP...

  Reviewing some accounting software...

• Vigilant Business Software

  Modules include:

  • General Accounting

  • Point of Sale

  • Inventory Control

  • Sales Order

  • Purchase Order

  • Repetitive Billing

  • Size and Colour Matrix

  • Credit Card Authorization

  • Advanced Bar Code Printing

  • Redemption

  • Canadian Payroll

  • Canadian Payroll Direct Deposit

  • Bill of Materials

  • Job Costing

  • Network Upgrade (applicable only for single location upgrades)

• Muli Software Solutions

  An Australian accounting system that seems particularly directed to the sorts of estimation activities associated with construction and subcontracting enterprises.

  Apparently it started as a BASIC-based system about 20 years ago; it was ported to Informix C-ISAM, later to Byte Designs DISAM, and apparently most recently to their own C and TCL/Tk-based runtime system.

  Modules seem particularly directed at Australia-based construction project work.

• AccountiX

  Once based on FoxPro, one of the xBase implementations, the authors plan to port it to use Recital.

• Megatechnologies RW32 - Accounting Software for Win32 and Linux

• TMA Systems

  Modular Accounting software for Win32, MacOS, Linux, with various SQL backends

• 5M Software - Business Accounting Software on Win32 and Unix

• Fitrix

  Customizable financial accounting package running on Linux using Informix -SE.

• Several vendors sell POS systems based on Pick -like database systems:

  • Comp-Ware Systems

  • Key Data Systems Group

• kalculate Financial Package on LINUX

  First in INDIA and ASIA PACIFIC

• RLA Assist - Rennie Lindsey accounting software for wholesale distribution and manufacturing.

  Industry specialties are fastener software and electronic component software.

  Solutions in the following areas:

  • Accounts Payable

  • Accounts Receivable

  • Distribution

  • EDI

  • Fixed Assets

  • General Accounting

  • General Ledger

  • Inventory

  • Lot Control / Lot Traceability

  • Manufacturing

  • Order Entry

  • Purchase Order

  • Warehouse Automation

  There's a GUI front end (which appears to be Windows-only), but also a text UI using something looking like CURSES .

• OpenMFG

  An ERP system written using C++, Qt and PostgreSQL .

• CanadianPayroll.net

  Vendor of Canadian T4/Payroll software that runs on Red Hat Linux.

• JDanSkinner.com

  Produces hotel and agricultural accounting software.

• neXonia

  Vendor of a timesheet/expense reporting system which runs on the Linux operating system, using PostgreSQL as the relational database server and JBoss J2EE as the application server.

• JAYA123

  A web-based small business accounting system. Much like Oracle's NetLedger system, this is a subscription-based system; the software stays on the vendor's servers.

• Relata

  Web-based CRM system written using PHP and relational databases such as MySQL™ or PostgreSQL

  This package allows managing sales contacts and customer accounts, tracking such things as:

  • Contact information (much as in a PIM;

  • Communications with customer contacts.

  There is an application that provides a limited ability to sync Relata data with PalmOS. A most fascinating thing is that the "sync" application is several times larger than the entire Relata CRM package, since its packaging includes the entire Java runtime environment.

• Cubit Accounting Software

  Coming from South Africa, this is a web-based application implemented in PHP. There are extensions for handling property management, POS, and hospitality industries, and plans for extensions to handle other specialized industries.

  It is available freely for non-profit organizations.