On 24 May 2008, at 11:01, beamends wrote:
On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 14:51 -0400, Luke wrote:Use an AP transaction.But how to deal with VAT (sales tax)? If I have to deal with that separately I'm in danger of missing something.
Hi there,Sorry not to be more helpful, but when I click on AP > Add Transaction a VAT box is already there & ticked.
Sorry to rant, but I've wasted three days now just trying to enter one fuel receipt - all I want to do is: Purchases->Expenses->Vehicle Expenses->Fuel ... I've got 7 days now to get my return in (including the time in thepost). I'm afraid I'm dumbfounded that LSMB can't do this, and the samefor rent, postage, office supplies, sundries, bits bought as one-off's from rarely used suppliers etc. Even if I enter it all in manually in the relevant accounts it's going to take far longer than just tallying the invoices and receipts manually, with no guarantee of them being correct without manual intervention, which rather defeats the object of using a computer. Sorry to the developers who I'm sure are trying hard, but I wasted so much time with LSMB just trying to do really basic things that Ihave lost confidence in it - it simply is not suitable for use by retailbusiness. ... LSMB is probably great for accountants for all I know, but the small businessman who has no time, or frankly interest, to become an accountant there is an awful lot of work to be done to make it useful.
Sorry to lose you from the community.To anyone else considering using Ledger-SMB, I would say don't try doing so 7 days before your tax return is up.
(Sorry to be so blunt, Richard)I learned what little I know of Ledger the hard way, typing in hundreds of old invoices so I could see how it all worked. It took a LOT of time to get myself up to speed, and I think it would be much easier if one was able to find an accountant that uses Ledger, and get them to do (or show you how to do) any difficult stuff.
My current accountant doesn't use Ledger, by the way, but I just give her the copies of my invoices printed on Ledger-SMB and one of her minimum-wage staff types them all in again manually to her system (spreadsheet-based, I think). I think this is crazy, but I just consider this one of my accountant's foibles - she's absolutely great, has saved me a packet and is VERY cheap. So I can easily overlook the way she does things when the paperwork leaves me & enters her office - her advantages allow me to consider that none of my business. For me, LedgerSMB's killer feature is to be able to print out invoices and email them to my customers; I can track unpaid bills easily. I presently don't track stock with LedgerSMB or do end- of-year returns or closure.
I plan to move to France within a year or two - finding an account who is familiar with Ledger will be a priority for me - to all readers of the list, please drop me an email if you know of one in the Grenoble region; I perhaps won't be moving for a year or two, so please do so even if you read this message in the archive years hence.
It perhaps isn't as hard as you might think to find an accountant who does use Ledger - the only bookkeeper I've spoken to about software was familiar with SQL-Ledger. SQL-Ledger has been around a while, so perhaps the installed user base is quite decent-sized.
The number of community members posting help & advice in response to LedgerSMB support requests does not seem to correspond to a large user base, so I can only imagine that many SQL-Ledger users are sticking with it because they've been using it so long, or because they're subscribed to the support option (and picking up the phone to have same day support for Ledger is a very compelling idea). I have the impression from the SQL-Ledger users mailing list that many users / admins are quite loyal to Deter and his software; I kinda perceive them as "old fogeys" or "stuck-in-the-muds", but I guess you have to be a bit technical to see SQL-Ledger's failings.
As Chris said in his reply yesterday to the POS thread, "Software exists to support business processes, not the other way around. Nothing is important besides the question of whether your business processes are supported by the software." So don't just pick up LedgerSMB and expect it to "just work". Make sure it does indeed suit you before committing to it.
Stroller.