[gentoo-dev] (OT) Accounting systems: Ledger-CLI vs GNUcash

[Robin H. Johnson]

(OT accounting systems)

On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 01:10:16PM -0500, james wrote:
> GNUcash is superior to Quickbooks, as it is a 'double entry' accounting
> system. Last time I check Quickbooks was not 'double entry' and that is
> a big deal in accounting.
QuickBooks is double-entry, and has been for a very long time; It did
used to obscure the fact before, to make accounting 'easier' for
non-accounting people to understand.

For the Foundation, I'm presently using Ledger-CLI [1], but this is a
hurdle for any third-party financial auditing (we should be prepared at
all times for a real financial audit), because they want data in
quickbooks format.

If there is a good GNUCash support for non-profit accounting (which does
differ from small-business accounting, see [2]), and matching
documentation for it, I'm VERY interested to know about it.

Why Ledger? The Software Freedom Conservancy started a project aimed at
Non-Profit accounting [3], wrapped around Ledger, which covers far more
of the non-profit nuances than GNUCash does.

They included enough documentation in how to specifically configure
Ledger for non-profit usage, so it was easy to get going since I already
used Ledger for my personal accounting.

Ledger being plain-text based does work very well with version control,
even for multiple parties (I enlisted help to convert old bank
statements).

[1] http://www.ledger-cli.org/
[2] http://www.accountingcoach.com/nonprofit-accounting/explanation/1
[3] https://sfconservancy.org/npoacct/

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Trustee & Treasurer
E-Mail   : robbat2@g.o
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