Hi all,
I have been working for a while on a Java implementation based on SQL-
Ledger. It's not finished yet but it does do a lot of things. I
wanted to see if there was some way that we could collaborate.
Originally, I was looking for an accounting system to replace our
mish-mash of Java code for the web store, Excel spreadsheets for
reporting and Quicken Home and Business (don't laugh) for the
ultimate recording, balancing, etc. We do business in both the US
and Japan and multiple currency support and the ability to integrate
with our online shop (so that we don't have to manually enter all the
transactions again) were key features for me. Being able to keep the
business from being dependent on a Windows system was also a plus.
When I looked around for systems that I could use and afford SQl-
Ledger looked like the best bet. I installed it, did a few
transactions, it looked reasonable. I started trying to figure out
how to integrate it with the web store and ran into the (lack) of
documentation. I sent Dieter some money and got his manual and it
was quite unhelpful. When I finally did figure out his solution for
getting SQL-Ledger to post an invoice automatically (if I remember
right it involves generating the equivalent of the HTML post that
comes back from the sales order form) I gagged. I'm primarily a Java
hack, the database schema didn't look too bad and so I started
writing some classes that would let me smack sales orders/invoices
into the database. One thing led to another and I found myself
painting the whole house and wound up with a pretty sizable portion
of SQL-Ledger implemented in Java and once I had that, well, heck,
making a Swing UI to the thing seemed pretty logical.
Since Dieter seemed to be pretty hostile to anyone asking questions
or doing anything with his system I was going to wait until it was
more finished before announcing it since it didn't look like I would
get any help/advice on the development. But, now that Ledger-SMB is
going it looks more worthwhile to toss it out.
Here's what I have so far:
Core code:
Compatible with SQL-Ledger 2.6 on Postgresql
JDBC->Java object mapping
Chart of accounts
AR/AP/GL
Invoices, sales orders, bills, payments
Vendors
Parts
Customers
Swing UI:
Create new parts, new sales orders, new vendors, new customers
List parts
List sales orders
Show chart of account
List transactions in accounts (doesn't let you change/enter
transactions yet)
QIF file import:
QIF file format Java implementation
QIF file importation into SQL-Ledger 2.6 database
Most of this stuff works but is still in a pre-alpha state. The
project got backburnered for a while so that I could finish and
release other, paying projects but the pain of the lack of an
accounting system has gotten strong enough to bring this back to the
top of my project list. I am currently in the process of
transitioning my company from Quicken Home & Business over to this
so I expect the parts that we use to mature rapidly. My plan has
been to release this as GPL'd code but I haven't done so yet, mainly
just out of lack of time to put GPL notices in the software and get
things checked into Sourceforge. I created a Sourceforge project
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/ledgerdemain/) for it but have never
really had time to get it going as an Open Source project.
So, I wanted to see if there were any ways that we could help each
other. If you would like to have a Java version of Ledger-SMB being
developed in parallel, I'd be happy to put the code into the Ledger-
SMB tree. Or we could keep the projects separate but work to keep
the schemas in sync. Since I've been reimplementing things and
transitioning from another accounting system I've been finding a lot
of idiosyncracies in the SQL-Ledger schema. I'm not primarily an
accounting/database person and they seemed like things that Dieter
wouldn't answer or would take as criticisms. I see that you have
ditched doubles in the database for Numerics which is a pretty big
step forward. I would really like to fix the schema to handle
multiple currencies as true multiple currencies rather than the
continual conversions back to a base currency that seem to be going on.
If you're interested in seeing the code let me know and I will check
it in either to the Ledgerdemain project or the Ledger-SMB project as
you like. If there's no interest in the Java code at the moment I
will probably hold off checking it in until I get it more working but
I hope that you'll let me ask some dumb questions and make
suggestions here. I've been trying to look through the archives of
the mailing list but Sourceforge seems to be broken there at the moment.
I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone here.
Regards,
Dave Smith-Uchida
President & Head Geek
iGeek, Inc.
Tokyo, Japan
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