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Re: At the end of my teather with LSMB

Hi there,


On 26 May 2008, at 12:17, beamends wrote:

...
Also in Stroller's reply he state that he actually uses a Book Keeper to enter data in another system to present to his accountant. That's pretty 
damming - if I'd known that.......... good old 20/20 hindsight.


Sorry if I was unclear.
Here in the UK there's a legal requirement to keep a paper copy of invoices. The taxman won't accept as proof of invoicing any records on computer, he has to have a "photocopy" of the invoice you've given to the customer, so as well as Ledger-SMB I have paper copies of everything. I think you may live in the UK, so apologies if I'm teaching my granny, here.
I pass all the invoices I've printed in Ledger-SMB in paper to my accountant (along with original invoices for stuff I've purchased), then SHE does whatever to them. Yes, as I understand it one of her minimum wage staff enters data into another system, but this is simply because I'm not going to interfere in the way she does her job. Anyway, to correct your statement: I don't get involved in any other system, I just present paper to my accountant.
Yes, I agree that it's inefficient and "incorrect workflow" for sales & purchases to be entered into two computer systems, but please don't consider it damning of Ledger-SMB. I shall explain.
If I recall, you have been in business 18 years - I've been in business 3 or 4 and, although I love my job, it's in the nature of my personality that I can't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Sorry - I'm absolutely not one to talk when it comes to tax deadlines.
So I was simply years late with tax returns, and didn't want to make life more difficult for my accountants by saying, "hang on, not only do I want you to sweet-talk the taxman for me and save me from my own cock-up, but I want you to do your whole job differently, too".
My accountant costs me a fixed price of £250 a year, and has saved me THOUSANDS. She does an absolutely cracking job, but she is the kind of person who prefers to do things her way. In fact, my accountant's son is a full time member of her business, and it's him who oversees all the computer stuff, typing of my paper invoices into whatever system they use. The mother doesn't touch the computer, and only looks at printed paper; I don't know what system they do use, and at least until they've gotten the taxman fully off my back I've been keeping my head down and not bothering them. So the son may use Ledger already, or I could probably talk to him about using Ledger - I would certainly look to be using a "proper workflow" long-term. If you recall I'm moving to France in a year or two (because what's the point of being self-employed if you can't spend all day flying hang- gliders or skiing?); I'll definitely be trying to get it right this time around, and have an accountant from the day I start. I'll be looking for an accountant who already uses Ledger, and then we'll both be able use Ledger properly. 


Over the past 18 months I looked as every single system, Windows and
Linux, I could find, even commercial ones up to £5,000 or £1,000 annual 
"rental". My initial criteria were:

1. Can I make head or tail of it at all, form a users perspective
(bearing in mind that "ordinary" staff are going to have to use it, who 
couldn't give a dam if things go in the wrong accounts etc).
(POS is not really an option - none of our products have bar codes, and 
finding the right part requires full access top the Stock records)

That got rid of the majority


Yeah, that's what I'd expect.
LSMB may be fine for an accountant, or a small business that can afford to have one on hand all the time, but for Joe Bloggs who has decided to 
start selling Widgets it is likely to increase overhead rather than
reduce it, which makes it less than effective as a tool. The same goes
for all accounts systems by the way...
They are all geared up to mimic ledger books (necessary behind
the scenes), rather than place an interface on top of the ledgers that
anyone can understand.
... though I have to say that showing our old system to a
prospective accountant a while back raised another issue - he simply
could not get his head round the fact that the front end didn't
immediately start showing ledgers but referred to "Purchases" and
"Sales" that us mere mortals understand.


LOL!
However, in seriousness, and with the benefit of hindsight perhaps, I wouldn't consider ANY accounting system without having an accountant onboard with it. As a user I don't expect to understand any accounts system, only (hopefully) my job using a small part of it.
I think you're EXTREMELY fortunate to have found a system that does indeed make sense to a layman, and you've demonstrated yourself that this kind of behaviour is quite the exception.
My expectation, when I'm using Ledger-SMB properly, is that I call my accountant when I have a problem like the one you've experienced entering a petrol invoice. I should be able to say, "hang on, I don't understand this" and he should be able to say, "ok, click on this, click on that, enter the VAT amount in that box there". A great advantage of Ledger is that it's web-based, so you can call your accountant and say "look at this payment schedule, I've entered this in the wrong column" and he can log into your system, see what you've done wrong and correct it. 


I understand that the developers have historical issues with the dbase
to address, but I feel that at least one should be concentrating on
UI/Usability issues.
It seems to me that you've said the UI & usability is as good as 90% of the accounting programs on the market. I suspect that the work involved in the migration from the old SQL-Ledger codebase makes it prohibitive to fulfil your request right now - from all accounts the SQL-Ledger codebase was an utter mess (it was reading the author's comments in reply to a security notice that made me realise he doesn't have a clue on a clue-farm).
It seems to me that being free (as in beer) is one of Ledger's biggest impediments to use. A user looks into available accounting packages, realises that Ledger costs nothing to try, and great! It looks just like any other accounts package and seems like it gets the job done. Note that I use the generic term "Ledger" here.
Back on the SQL-Ledger mailing list I read of similar problems - "why can't I do this? no-one has answered my question!" If the user had chosen Quickbooks or Sage then he would be able to phone their technical support department and ask for help; likewise if he were paying $450 a year for SQL-Ledger's official support, he would probably have had the answer the same day.
Unfortunately, Ledger-SMB is not a the stage yet at which paid support is available. Ledger-SMB is in a transitional stage at the moment, migrating away from the mess that was SQL-Ledger (although the mess is something that few of SQL-Ledger's users fully appreciate).
Basically, one shouldn't have a problem with Ledger-SMB, because it's just like SQL-Ledger, which you've been using for years. You've probably been using SQL-Ledger so long that you no longer need a support contract, and your accountant knows it back to front. From this point of view Ledger-SMB is just like SQL-Ledger - it's fork was initially in response to a single vulnerability, and minor bug-fixes are taking place on an ongoing basis.
I hope this'll all change with the release of 1.3. I do think it's unfortunate that the Ledger-SMB team markets on the website how great the product is, because is any accounting product suitable for new end-users without paid support? I also think that it's unfortunate the devs don't (appear to) read the -users mailing list, and that they don't answer questions like yours. The volume of such questions seems low to me, so it shouldn't be prohibitive for them to do so.
Looking back at my previous post (24 May 2008 17:55:58 BST) I see that I did explain why my accountant doesn't use Ledger, and it seems to me that I did so adequately, so I think your "pretty damming" comment is uncalled for. It's not a reflection upon Ledger-SMB, but upon my personal circumstances and those of my accountant, and I think you'd have no problems at all if you used an accountant who had been using SQL-Ledger for years. I would be extremely interested to hear from an accountant who was new to Ledger-SMB and hear how he or she gets along with it.
But, honestly, you wouldn't employ someone without any Photoshop experience to airbrush the cover of Vogue, not would you employ an AutoCAD operator who has never used the program before. Why do you expect Ledger-SMB to be easy? 

Stroller.