Re: LedgerSMB Readiness

[Luke <..hidden..>]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, blck shp wrote:

> What is the longest successful deployment of LedgerSMB? What trial and
> tribulations did you go through?

Most of my trials and tribulations were of my own making

The most significant bugs I noticed with LedgerSMB itself, were 
non-critical errors.  Example: "NaN" showing up as a credit limit value 
when it should have been a negative number.  Example: weird problems with 
orders not representing items and such correctly, under certain 
circumstances with long orders.
Other things like that.  I have never, that I can recall, had an actual 
accounting problem in relation to LedgerSMB.

> Is it worth the risk migrating to LedgerSMB from Peachtree?

Personally, if I was in that situation, I might hold off until 1.3 is 
released, at least in beta.

There are usability issues which some people used to non-web-interface 
products will have.  Not everything is labeled well enough for 
non-accountants.  There are an insufficient number of pre-designed 
transactions.  What I mean by that (this is only an example with no basis 
in reality): let's say that in QuickBooks, you can enter a money order, 
which is really a multi step transaction series involving possibly two 
vendors and a couple of different dates, as a single transaction, by 
clicking "money order".  (as far as I know, you can't.)
If you want to move money between two bank accounts, you have to do a full 
transaction, whereas in WYSIWYG accounting packages you could just do a 
"bank transfer" or something.
You can't create vendors and customers from invoice, order, and product 
screens.  That is a real PITA.

I have had these kind of comments from QuickBooks users who have had to 
use LedgerSMB--I imagine that the same would be true for PeachTree users.

In short, the average employee has to understand more about double entry 
accounting, than the average employee generally understands about double 
entry accounting, in order to use the software effectively.

Maybe that is different in 1.3: I have no idea, having not tried it.

> Why isn't LedgerSMB right for my company?

See above, with the understanding that it may all be invalidated by the 
new interface.

> What are the major bugs keeping me from deploying LedgerSMB?

Look at the Sourceforge bug tracker.

> What other software would you put up against LedgerSMB for reliability?

Hmm.  The backend, nothing.  I have administered QuickBooks systems for 
windowsie clients, and even with the improvements to their DBM, it doesn't 
hold a candle.  I have no idea what PeachTree uses.

That's the real reliability factor, and I don't really know how it could 
be improved upon.

In general, I would commend the comments by Hugh Esco.

Luke