Accountancy free softwares ?
Hello everybody,
I don't know a lot about accountancy but I will probably learn the grounds of it, or more.
I would like to know which free software we can use for accountancy, with Trisquel 6.0 .
I ask this question because I know that... probably, if I learn accountancy in a society or in a school, probably - and unfortunately ! - they will use proprietary softwares.
Because I will probably have to use the same softwares as them, I will have to learn it and install it on a laptop (with Windows, not with Trisquel ; okay, I know that Windows and Mac are evil). My idea is to learn accountancy both with proprietary software(s) - because I can't force society to use only free software - and free software - because, you know, I want to stay free, like us.
At once, I wonder about compatibility of files formats. What are open format for accountancy files ? What are closed format for accountancy ? Will there be compatibility problems ? (like sometimes between odt and doc, between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office)
Thank you in advance for your answers.
I don't know : are there many differences between accountancy in Switzerland - where I live - and accountancy in France, in the United States, in England, etc. ?
If I were you I'd install the package gnucash and read their Tutorial and Concepts Guide here http://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide . Then set up a set of accounts to organise your personal finances and run them for a bit just to get familiarity with the basics of double entry accounting.
See the guide's section on migration for discussion of the main proprietary file format for small business accounts.
AIUI these basics are the same the world over. However, when you consider that accounting also involves knowing what are the legal accounting practices in a given country and what is the best legal way of paying less tax there you'll see that a typical working accountant for an SME has large body of knowledge specific to the country they're in. However, multinationals etc. have accountants whose job it is to extract every last cent out of international money arrangements.
The Software Freedom Conservancy has a campaign to raise money for the development of accounting software so aparently there is something lacking at the moment. They later announced [1] that they were hiring someone. Later on the announcement [2] came that it would be Joar Wandborg. It might be a good idea to keep in touch with them and share with them things that need improving in the world of free accounting software.
[0] http://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
[1] http://sfconservancy.org/news/2013/aug/26/software-architect/
[2] http://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/npo-accounting/2013q4/000072.html
[3] http://lists.sfconservancy.org/mailman/listinfo/npo-accounting
Besides GnuCash, here's a few alternatives http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/GNUCash#Related_Projects
I'm going to try GNU Cash just for fun. Thanks for the recommendations.
When I close GNUCash, I have new files appear next to my GNUCash save file. Some of these are <.log> files. Some are <.gnucash> files.
Do I need them? I'd like to work with just the one save file ...
Edit: Never mind --
If they're autosave files you can turn them off by setting the
Auto-save Interval to 0 in Edit -> Preferences -> General .
You can also turn off log files in the same place if that's what they
are.
Of course, turn them back on when you get around to using real
financial data. Losing financial data is a big no no and these
features help make sure you don't.
Okay, the society where I will learn accountancy use Cresus (proprietary...). I can't change it. But I can learn a free software at the same time as Cresus.
And then I will tell them : "Stop liking Cresus, start loving GNUCash (or any other free accountancy software)." Twisted