One of our favourite subjects at FLOSBUS is accounting software but it can be difficult in short blog post to explain the benefits of Open Source Accounting Software especially in the current market of accounts and ERP solutions. With this In mind Outserve have written a white paper titled ‘Using Open Source Accounting Software in Small & Medium Businesses’ which is available to download here.

It’s a clear and concise white paper looking at the history of open source accounting software through to how it fits into modern business solutions and what some the benefits can be. Definitely worth a read if you at all interested in this area.

OpenERP (formerly known as TinyERP) is an open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software package. A lot of documentation and links still refer to TinyERP

OpenERP has a server and client install for Windows. Mac and Linux variations. The main Linux distributions have OpenERP in their repositories ready for an easy install. The latest version of Ubuntu (8.04) has version 4.2 still called TinyERP. For Windows there is client, server and all-in-one installers. Mac install is from source so may be a little more complicated see here.

OpenERP is a modular system and has modules for

Accounting and Financials
CRM
Human Resources
Inventory (Stock)
Manufacturing
Purchase and procurement
Sales and Marketing

As well as the standard client there is a web application which looks like this

As with many open source ERP software (OpenBravo and Compiere) OpenERP uses a PostgresQL database

Summary

Current Version
4.2.3
eTiny 1.0.1.1

Platform

Installation – Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris
Database PostgreSQL

License

GPL

Well known Users/Case Studies
see http://openerp.com/success-stories.html

Useful links
OpenERP Site
OpenERP Wiki
TinyERP Virtual Appliance Server

Christophe Simonis – OpenERP Developers Blog
Relevant Blog – BeezNest Open Source Specialists

Openbravo the open source ERP software has just released the latest version of their POS (Point Of Sale) software. Openbravo POS was a recent acquisition of the open source EPOS system formerly known as Tina POS and Libre POS.

Openbravo POS can be integrated with Openbravo POS for complete solutions for retail including restaurants, grocery stores, specialised retailers and department stores.

Openbravo POS is designed for touch screen tills and supports a wide list of standard POS hardware

Screens are designed for different environments for example restaurant booking:

and restaurant seating plans:

Summary

Current Version
2.2 (released August 2008)

Platform
Installation – Windows, Linux, MAC OSX
Database Database independent, using the standard JDBC interface. Openbravo POS currently supports Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and HSQLDB. Adding a new database engine is very easy, with little modifications required in the code base

License
GNU General Public License,

Proprietary ERP Competitors
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics

Useful Links
Site http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/
Wiki http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/
Blog http://adrianrcblog.blogspot.com/

LedgerSMB is web based Open Source Accounting Software. LedgerSMB is a fork of the popular SQL-Ledger which was described by FLOSBUS here. The Fork came about after a disagreement over security and further more detailed information is available on the internet including here.

LedgerSMB has quite a few aims but initially they have looked to address the security issue and to generally tidy up the code. In the longer term the LedgerSMB team plan to rewrite the original code module by module. A roadmap is available on their website here.

Many users and partners of SQL-Ledger have now moved on to LedgerSMB. Although today the functionality between the two is comparable the future many be more secure for users with Ledgersmb.

As mentioned as of today functionality is vert similar to SQL-Ledger. As well as all of the functionality you would expect from an accounting system including all of the main ledgers LedgerSMB also has POS (Point of sale) time cards and HR (employee records).

LedgerSMB can deal with multi-currency accounting and exchange rates for mult-companies and multi users. There are multiple language translations available and LedgerSMB and be configured to deal with different countries tax regimes.

Summary

Current version 1.2.15 (August 2008)

Platform
Installation Mac, Windows, Linux (Debian) and FreeBSD
All GUI Browsers

Database

PostgreSQL 8.1 or 8.2 receommended (8.3 is not yet supported)

Other Requirements

Web server (Apache,
thttpd 2.22+,
boa, AOL server)

Perl 5+

Well known Users/Case Studies

Not aware of any published

Propiertory Accounts Software Competitors

Quickbooks, Sage Line 50

Useful Links
Site http://www.ledgersmb.org/
Documentation http://www.ledgersmb.org/manual
Forum http://www.nabble.com/Ledger-SMB-f21334.html

The Open Source ERP Guru is a fantastic blog covering many Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning applications including Openbravo, OpenERP and Compiere.

The sight is great for beginners and experts alike. As well as having statistics and tutorials the blog has now started doing podcast interviews with CEO’s of the leading Open Source ERP companies. The latest podcast is with Manel Sarasa the CEO of Openbravo the new poster child of Open Source ERP. The link to the podcast can be found on the Open Source ERP Guru’s Blog post here. Well worth a listen to hear where the company is going.

Tags: erp, openbravo

Openbravo is an open source Enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. Openbravo is based on the well know open source ERP software Compiere One of the big differences between Compiere and Openbravo is that Openbravo has a 100% web based user interface.

Openbravo is ERP aimed at SME’s (Small to Medium Enterprises) and divides its functionality into the following areas:

Master Data Management
Procurement Management
Warehouse Management
Project and Service Management
Sales management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Financial Management
Business Intelligence (BI)

A virtual appliance is available here for the Vmware player and the Citrix owned open source xen hypervisor for Linux.

THe virtual appliance runs as a virtual server allowing you to connect your local browser to Openbravo and is very impressive.

Summary

Current Version
2.35

Platform
Server Installation – Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris
Database Oracle PostgreSQL
Client – Web based so Browsers – Firefox, SeaMonkey, epiphany and Internet Explorer

License
Openbravo Public License, based on the Mozilla Public License

Well known Users/Case Studies
Some case study details in the following presentation. Other presentations are available at slideshare.

| View | Upload your own

Open Source Alternatives
Compiere, TinyERP

Proprietary ERP Competitors
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics

SQL Ledger is one of the most well known open source accounts (accounting software) packages. Its core market appears to be the Quickbooks/Sage Line 50 market (SME, Micro, SOHO, Not for Profit etc) it even has some Quickbooks migration tools for data conversion.
SQL ledger is web based so can great when remote access is required and as its name suggests uses a SQL database.

SQL Ledger has all the functionality that you
would expect for a modern Mutli User, Multi Company and Multi Currency accounting system but added to this there is point of sale, time cards and even handheld pc options.
There are many language translations (some partial) and also Chart of Accounts for different country’s to download.
There are quite a few projects (integration, localisation etc) around SQL ledger but one of the most interesting is Project Auriga from the excellent Freelock which includes integration to SugarCRM.

Summary

Platform
Installation Mac, Windows, Linux (Debian) and FreeBSD
All GUI Browsers

Database

PostgreSQL,
Oracle,
or DB2

Other Requirements

Web server (Apache,
thttpd 2.22+,
boa, AOL server)

Perl 5+

Hosted Service
Yes – Commercial (currently US version only)

Well known Users/Case Studies

None published but this is a great Newsforge Article.

Propiertory Accounts Software Competitors

Quickbooks, Sage Line 50