Linux accounting suites?
 

My wife is willing to consider switching to Linux <b>but</b> the only hold out is she swears by Intuit's Quick Books which is a Windows-only proprietary software accounting suite. I don't have a clue about accounting packages but do know that she dislikes batch processing systems preferring real-time/actual time processing.
I know that there is GnuCash (but again wouldn't have a clue about how it processes nor how it would compare to Quick Books), but am polling input from the Linux community as to what GPL/open source software would fit my wife's requirements.

TIA
- Andy

Have you checked whether WINE will work with Quickbooks? (www.winehq.org)

No I haven't ... and I think that is borne from my reluctance to use Wine - primarily because it seems that it is so buggy. I have rarely heard many good reviews of it. Are using Wine and if so, what are your experiences of it to date?

I am running Winex Point2Play (for games) and it works fine. I have also used a demo version of Crossover Office and was very impressed. I believe that the free to download version of Wine is the most probelmatical - if you pay for it you get help and support and a much easier install.

I have just been to the Crossover website and had a look at which programs work. They have 2 main categories of program - supported and unsupported. Basically supported programs are ones which Crossover will give help on, both categories work. In Unsupported, QuickBooks is listed (Go here for the list and click on the program for more details). Crossover office was really easy to install and from there installing Windows software was a piece of cake. To grab the demo version, click here and fill out the details. They then send you a link to download the product.

Thanks for all the info XavierP. I'll look into it. How much did the supported version set you back?

Haven't tried the supported version only the demo. By the time it got to a point where I thought I needed the programs, I realised I din't and that there were programs in Linux I could use!

Looking over the Wine site, it appears that Wine is free (please correct me anyone if I'm wrong) and it can be downloaded from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...?group_id=6241

The Crossover download is anything from $55 upwards depending on your needs. Which is good for us UK residents as that works out as about £35

CrossOver is pretty cheap. WineHQ is the development version yes, is much less stable because we don't test it with any particular apps (just whatever the devs are working on at the time). CodeWeavers do regression checks against certain popular apps.

If they support QuickBooks, try it out. Remember, they support the WineHQ communiy heavily, so you are helping about Linux and open source with your money :)

Good news! I just checked out the codeweavers site and Quickbooks is now in the supported category.
I'm curious, did you find a solution? I really want to convert 100% to Linux, but must have accounting sw.;)

Hi
Thanks for your comments. Status report:
After a hiatus - I have attempted to install wine but not successfully so will try again this w/e. My wife's Win98 box is temporarily disabled, so I have loaded MDK9.2 on a laptop and run it through the usual I/O peripherals (monitor, etc) - so she said she'd play around with GnuCash. In the meantime I'll keep playing with installing wine but have told her about CrossOverOffice. I'm pleased to hear about what XOverOffice do with the money, so buying the software at some point may well be in the cards if my wife doesn't click with GnuCash.

Thanks for being mindful of this thread, and yes knipknup, I'll post the outcomes here.
As they say, "Watch this space!" :)

Cheers

- Andy

Well, the xover install went well. The install of quickbooks did not. It froze up at about 90% through. When I try to run QB (QB2002 is mine, QB2000 supported) it errs with 'something went wrong with your installation'.

I have not contacted codeweavers yet but will post their fix.

Thanx for the update there Knipknup - have you ever used GnuCash and if so, what was your comparison with QB? Or is GnuCash more like AccPac or MYOB or Sage or ... ?
I'll look forward to the XOver fix post. What distro are you using?

- Andy

Check out GnuCash and Kapital...

see this page too:

http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linuxacct.html