Semi-OT: Referral for Linux-friendly accountant

[R P Herrold]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Vaughn Treude wrote:

> Randy Melder wrote:
>> Why stop at GNU Cash? You could always hand-write your ledgers,
>> invoices, P&Ls, and Balance Sheets. Then you're truly liberated.
>>
>> I mean, why give them more money? They've stolen from you at least
>> $250 over the last 10 years. Those evil-doers. How can anyone run a
>> business with thieves like that?

chuckle -- I *still* run an 'ancient' Windows 95 box, which 
has moved through multiple chassis and hard drives (using 
rsync to move the entire system image from a failing drive to 
the next one [three such moves so far], and 'grub' to select 
booting into the W95 image rather than the Linux (CentOS) 
installation), __just__ for QuickBooks, and the laser check 
MICR printing print filter program I have used.

As I have accounting data going continuously back to 1992 from 
when I formerly used an earlier TUI Quicken, I am not eager to 
move from something that does not match those abilities.

> But it's not the money, it's the ownership of data issue. I 
> would willingly pay twice as much [$1000 was quoted] for a 
> program that would extract the data from QB and put them 
> into an open format than to get the QB update.

Writing such an extractor is clearly doable (and as we shall 
see in a moment with the emergence of a SDK, and a willingness 
to move to later versions), probably not _that_ hard to do.

I need that laser check printing capability, and want two way 
import /export, though ;)


I have offered bounties in the past;  this thread from #centos 
at irc.freenode.net months ago; I affirm and renew it here.

15:13 orc_orc> LoF^[Lawbringer]: not at all -- I don't use 
Windows at all and in the main have not since 1995, except for 
a lone Win95 box printing MICR checks in QuickBooks on an 
isolated subnet

15:14 * Evolution shows orc_orc the wonders of gnu-cash

15:14 Zathrus> Evolution: quickbooks != quicken

15:14 orc_orc> Evolution: will it catch Windows printer driver 
calls and do HP LJ 6 font substitutions to print MICR ink 
checks directly? [the thought being to set QB up inside Wine]

15:15 Evolution> orc_orc: probably not.

15:15 orc_orc> if so, and if it can read the backfiles in QB, 
I am so gone

15:15 @hughesjr> orc_orc: it will if you take the source code 
and write something to do that :P

15:15 orc_orc> hughesjr: I will do so in my copious spare 
time  ;)

15:17 orc_orc> I hereby offer a standing bounty of $400 for 
addition of those two features to gnucash, with conformance 
tests being acceptance of checks by my bank's clearance engine 
without reject; and import, use, export and availability of my 
QB company data

[Intuit formerly published a 'qif' -- quickbooks interchange 
format for (hopefully) lossless imports and exports; but to my 
understanding has moved to a SDK, in an 'Intuit Developers 
Network': http://developer.intuit.com/ -- I suspect my version 
is 'too early' per the supported version chart at: 
http://developer.intuit.com/QuickBooksSDK/Briefing/?id=110]

15:23 orc_orc> Evolution: yes -- and a filter can solve that, 
Zathrus: there is a prefectly fine MICR font for latex, and 
with [LaTeX] miniboxes, one can control positioning just fine 
-- trick is to add a filter/interpreter and I have not done it 
or tasked a PFY -- thus the bounty offer

===================================

I was thinking then of the bounties which appear from time 
to time in the 'wine' project and Code Weavers CrossOver 
space: http://www.codeweavers.com/

The QuickBook series is largely supported; the laser print 
queue interceptor I use is _very_ Windows printer queue 
internals specific, and not listed
 	http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?letter=q;

I have no problem 'paying' for open source development; 
This question about a 'business ready' replacement or 
companion to QB has come up a couple times on this list;  the 
'downside risk' need to be able to 'export from QB' the 
accountant review copies {and the less difficult laser check 
printing MICR issue} are my stoppoints.

Perhaps this list can get a large enough mass of 'bounties' 
together?

http://www.gnucash.org/ is dead atm for me, although the 
domain is not expired, so I cannot cruise and see of there is 
a wider community of bounties may already be already present 
there.

-- Russ herrold