Talk:Comparison of accounting software/Archives/2012

Cleanup needed
Many of the software packages in this article are not compared at all (their columns are blank). A majority of the articles lack information website, target consumer range, and whether or not the package is free; is this information really notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia, or is it just linkspam? &mdash;donhalcon╤ 19:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * This is on my list of comparisons to cleanup, but help is welcome. The reason for the incompletion in most instances was a recent merge from list of accounting software.  I think the whole website column should be cut anyway.  Agree that the other columns need to have info added.  Judging that the list, which was less notable than this  comparison, survived an AfD: Yes, the comparison is notable. --Karnesky 20:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, and more importantly, what is the encyclopedic context of this article? Is it a sub-page of accounting software? If so, it should have a tag. &mdash;donhalcon╤ 20:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * None of the Category:Software comparison articles are really sub-pages. They have been treated as encyclopedic as stand-alone entities. However, this aricle could benefit from the inclusion of a short introductory paragraph.  --Karnesky 20:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * What is the last encyclopedia you read that contained stand-alone tables? I've never seen such a beast, except as appendices &mdash; and an appendix is generally associated with a particular article or set of articles.  A short introduction may be sufficient to provide context, however.  &mdash;donhalcon╤ 20:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Firstly, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Secondly, many encyclopedias do contain "encyclopedic tables" (particularly summaries often found in almanacs, such as a table of countries with population and other demographic info).  But let's see if an introductory paragraph will be good enough. --Karnesky 20:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I could complete the sentence "Wikipedia is not paper..." in a number of amusing ways that highlight the absurdity I find in the whole paper/non-paper issue; I mean no ill will so I won't do that, but suffice it to say that availability of storage shouldn't correlate at all with quality of content. Anyway, the kinds of tables you're describing are exactly what I mean by content usually found in an appendix; if that's the sort of content this is intended to be then a short (but informative!) introduction will almost certainly suffice.  &mdash;donhalcon╤ 20:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Reformating of columns suggestion
Is the price of the product relevant? This may change overtime and if it is an international product which can be localised, local pricing will differ. What about rearranging headings to  Name, Level, Target Audience, Platform, Geographical markets, Notes Name=Sage Line range Level=Entry to Midmarket (Example Levels = Entry, Mid, High end) Target Audience=General (example audiences: Doctors, Lawyers) Platform=Windows (Example platforms: Linux, Mac, Unix, web based) Geographical markets=UK and USA (Example geographical markets: Europe, Australia, Italy) Notes=Opensource (Example notes: taken over by oracle in 2000, FRS compliant, Parent company is Microsoft)

Items such as double entry (why?), module types, other unique attributes to a product, will lead to never ending additions. It will be hard enough trying to keep up with the thousands of products out there and keeping their modules and other changes up to date. With a simple layout as indicated, it will be easier to read and keep updated. A clear process of what can and cannot be added to each column must also be clearly defined --NilssonDenver 21:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Dolibarr
http://www.dolibarr.org/ Note that you don't have all accountancies features available.

Tiny ERP
Is Tiny ERP an accounting software?

Yes, it has dozens of accounting modules, many of them localized to the specifics of different countries.

Sources and advertising
A lot of this reads like advertising.

Simple and flexible personal accounting software without upgrade fees.

Not only is it unsourced, it reads exactly like advertising. As a minmum I suggest the addtional info parts are removed from the article. MartinDK 14:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Recommendation to start over
Jhansonxi 22:48, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

It would be best to list general system features that differentiate between market segments. The comparison should be a rough guide to product lines so that researchers can identify common characteristics that they should be concentrating on when compiling a list of products that match their deployment scenario and merit further analysis.

I recommend that the following aspects of current offerings be listed:

Current product line names

Market focus (see reference link below)

Type - general accounting, ERP, specialty (automotive, construction, medical, etc.)

Platform - Linux, Windows, Mac, Java

Structure from a client perspective - standalone, client/server, WWW

Licensing - closed/open source, closed/open architecture (third-party modules), free/commercial, Software-As-A-Service (SAAS)

Reference:

From Accounting Software 411:

"Many accounting and business software systems perform several different tasks such as processing payroll, tracking fixed assets, and peforming general accounting functions such as Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. Despite this fact, most systems are usually defined by a single major function and classified as such. For Example, software systems designed for construction companies generally perform many functions such as payroll, general ledger, job costing etc. but they are classified as "Construction Software".

ransom-ware (no documentation)
Most of this "free" accounting software seems to be ransom-ware: The program is free, but the documentation most users would need to actually use it is not! There should be a column for the cost of the documentation. -69.87.199.226 20:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguate abbreviations
The three letter abbreviations in the Type column lead to disambiguation pages. I would fix it if I only knew what these abbreviations mean! But of course if I knew it wouldn't be so much of a problem for me to navigate to the correct page in the first place :). Please, if you know what they mean, link to the appropriate pages. I have now disambiguated ERP, CRM, POS and SME, but I remain unsure or clueless about the others.--Cyhawk 17:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Openbravo
I recently added Openbravo ERP to the list, but has been taken out by another user. Openbravo is an open source ERP hosted in SourceForge.net with an accumulated 360,000 downloads. It has been one of the top 10 projects in SourceForge in terms of activity for the past months. Openbravo ERP has also been recently awarded an InfoWorld Bossie Award to the best open source ERP. As it is natural, the list in this page includes several ERPs (which are clearly accounting software). I believe this list would be more complete with Openbravo in it. The reason for deletion is that Openbravo doesn't have an entry in Wikipedia. I think the best solution is to include Openbravo in the Wikipedia (after all, smaller, less-relevant projects are included). Full disclosure: I am an Openbravo employee --jmitja 28 October 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.209.126.190 (talk) 12:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The one removing Openbravo was probably me. The rule is, that this page should compare only "relevant" products. Therefore only entries with their own article are included, because otherwise it is not possible to judge this reliably. Therefore my suggestion would be to write the article, taking the notability criteria into account. --S.K. 12:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * S.K. Thanks for your reply. I agree the best solution would be to write an entry for Openbravo. To date Openbravo has been downloaded in SourceForge.net more than 350,000 times and for the past year has been a regular on the top 10 activity list there. On Google there are more 300,000 references to the project. Openbravo has also received several awards, including a LinuxWorld Product Excellence Award and an InfoWorld BOSSIE award to the best open source ERP. Does this meet the notability criteria for inclusion in the Wikipedia? Jmitja 23:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Jmitja, I would assume it does. Generally notability is defined as A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. So if you can establish this, you should be save. Check Notability and Notability (organizations and companies) for more details. When writing the article, try to stay as factual as possible, "advertising language" might get the article deleted as well. --S.K. 17:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC) PS: References worth checking out might be Conflict of interest and Autobiography.
 * Openbravo has finally been unsalted, and accepted as a legitimate entry in the wikipedia. See Openbravo. Therefore I propose to re-inclusion in the list. Full disclosure for the purpose of WP:NPOV: I am an Openbravo employee. Jmitja (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure, the article now looks okay, it seems reasonably factual and referenced. Currently I don't see any reason why I can't stay in Wikipedia. Therefore I don't see any hindrance to add Openbravo here as well. Greetings, --S.K. (talk) 09:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC) PS: While you're at it, could you look into the architecture section of the Openbravo article. The way it stands now, this isn't very good. In particular how the use of MVC is described: model-view-controller, in which data is not directly handled by the user but instead manipulated by the controllers.

Multiple Product Entries by the Same Company
To ensure the comparison list does not get too unwieldy, and stays more user friendly, I think the list should only include one entry per company - not one entry for each of the products that are produced. Agreed? Joebray (talk • contribs) 16:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

ActionStep
I recently added ActionStep to the list but it was promptly removed. ActionStep is a mature online accounting package that has been used in production for over 2 years and is rapidly gaining popularity. Is there any reason it should be excluded from the list? Browtwo (talk) 19:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Thousands of accounting software applications exist. The page tries to compare notable products and therefore only accepts entries for applications that have Wikipedia articles as you can read when editing the page. So you should see if the program fulfills the above linked notability criteria, write an neutral article, not an advert. After this an entry here is welcome. --S.K. (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Compiere and Adempiere GPL licence
41.221.16.242 (talk) 12:43, 20 April 2008 (UTC)sorry but seems like your GPL data is resversed on these two in the articles about them we learn that Compiere is GPLv1 and Adompiere is GPLv2,am'I wrong?

Keep Accounting Software as a seprate topic
It was suggested that the Accounting software topic might be merged with this article (Comparison of accounting software). I believe each serves a disticnt and useful purpose. The former gives a nice overview of accounting software, while the latter compares various accounting packages. Keeping them separate but linking to each other as additional resources may be the best approach. PEH2 (talk) 22:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

what about mentioning the free online softwares
what about mentioning the free online softwares Sanjiv swarup (talk) 09:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Date columns do not sort correctly
Under "Further details" the dates are not in ISO 8601 standard format, therefore the columns do not sort correctly. 72.208.56.42 (talk) 15:42, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree, this should be corrected. Greenman (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of Oracle ERP solutions missing - notably Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne
J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne (OneWorld) and EnterpriseWorld are missing from this table - these are significant market share of mid-market to large corporation ERP solutions - as is Peoplesoft Enterprise - all of which are marketed by Oracle. I would like to add these to the table - but wanted to discuss first.

All of these solutions have relevant links on Wikipedia and are core part of accounting software solutions for many organizations.

Altquark (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

In the comparison, JFIRE does not have support for WMS, or it's not shown in their website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Capiscuas (talk • contribs) 16:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Comparison sites
Wouldn't Wikipedia users and the community find it useful to have the External Links of good comparison sites that complement this article? The description on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links seems to indicate that valid links to comparison sites specifically for accounting software should be acceptable. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rsrinivasan (talk • contribs) 22:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please forgive me for moving your comment - you were replying to a conversation that was about four years old and was discussing a fairly spammy link - which yours is not. I removed your link today because when I looked at it there was very little content there - it is a simple beta user review aggregator that only has a few user reviews in it.  There was nothing offensive about it, other than there was very little content there that I could see.  The external link policy stipulates that we use a few high quality links; not a directory of every link.  If there is something special about this one that I am missing, I would have no objections to re-adding it. I would prefer that we avoid adding many links, however.  Kuru  <sup style="color:#f5deb3;">talk  22:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The ProCompare site has over 50 reviews across the accounting products. It also has a side-by-side product comparison of various features. This would make it relevant. Another site that has a good listing of products with features (but no reviews) is http://www.2020software.com/compare-software/category/2/Accounting-Software/. Accountingsoftware411.com also has side by side comparisons, with different kinds of detail. All 3 of the sites are match the external link policy overall and are as high quality links as one could get as far as relevance to this topic is concerned (and provide the information without having to download anything or provide registration info - something that is stipulated in the external links policy). There are probably a few others as well. I do believe they would be beneficial to users here as far as what external links provide (without providing an excess of information or taking up major space). I'd like to add all these links. Thanks again for your consideration. Rsrinivasan (talk) 04:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

New Column Please
Sirs; I am looking for an open source accounting package, but must allow imports and exports directly into/from both QuickBooks and PeachTree. You show file compatibilities, .qif, but PeachTree is all SQL based; BeTrieve for older versions and MS-SQL for newer. Nothing is shown on support for this and the SQL ODBC driver, from QuickBooks is $200.00 and you must own a copy of QB to buy the ODBC driver. For those of us networking to our Accountants that either use QB or PeachTree, this is a very important feature and all US accountants are on or support one or the other, with some supporting both. Please add this column to let us see this at a glance, without having to install then test for it; and also pushing the open source community to know what we need. Also history of these packages is important. One of the MicroSoft packages used to be Solomon Accounting, a very robust accounting solution, but now no one knows, without you providing the history, which it is. This would be useful, especially to those on the old Solomon, looking for an open source solution, which supports their old package and imports all there old accounting data. Thanks! OldManRiver

New Column (#2)
Country column needed badly. This is very generalised info, and does not clearly define which markets each product is aimed at or relevant for; this had a large US bias from my reading through the info. As a UK person, but indeed applies to anywhere else outside the US, this info is pretty unreliable as many points are simply not valid for our country/region or are now invalid due to obsolescence, which should be noted somewhere. For example, Intuit's Quicken has last year (2006-7) been removed from supporting for the UK market specialisation's, and MS Money has now been withdrawn as a product worldwide by Microsoft. Out of date info is as bad as no info where comparison charts are involved, so this really needs someone with a good knowledge base in the subject to re-edit, define further, and generally clear-up the data. Thanks in advance. Jimthing (talk) 13:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

New Column (#3) (New Section even) "Reporting / Charts" requested
A column or section identifying what kinds of Reports and/or Charts (graphs) are available would be useful (e.g., can one get a chart showing graphically one's budget for a time period, say month or quarter, compared to actual, or comparing one year to another. How such reports or graphs can be created, customized, and managed would be useful too, which is why I think an entire section devoted to the topic might be useful. Dan Aquinas (talk) 18:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

(See also)
See comments about clear-up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_personal_financial_management_software Jimthing (talk) 16:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Proprietary, Free and Further details
The breakdown into proprietary, free and further details (with a mixed list) makes no sense. If proprietary and free are the primary headers (as they are for this and other similar articles), the divide should be maintained in the Further Details section, i.e. there should be two further details sections, subheadings of proprietary and free. Any objections to this? Greenman (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

MYOB
I do not believe MYOB serves the high-end market in any realistic way. Their [web site|www.myob.com.au/products] also only has pages for Small and Medium enterprise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philu (talk • contribs) 22:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

LIst overlaps with other lists
Hi, looking at the comments I suggest we rtemove ERP and personal finance software and provide links as the list is huge and overlaps with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ERP_software_packages and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_personal_financial_management_software Wakelamp (talk) 03:26, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Add Webzash
Please add webzash.org as free and open source accounting software — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pshahmumbai (talk • contribs) 07:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Removal of GNU Enterprise
It seems that GNU Enterprise is non-functional and unmaintained and should therefore be removed from the comparison page. Huskytreiber (talk) 12:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Skrooge
Why is any reference to Skrooge being removed from Comparison of accounting software and List of free and open-source software packages? Why do You think that Skrooge is less notable than Homebank or Grisbi which have much less features. What is Your defence for this appearingly strong bias? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.40.6.84 (talk) 09:02, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Because there is no indication of WP:notability. There are no independent WP:reliable sources - only the companies own website. noq (talk) 11:04, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * For one, Skrooge is part of KDE via Extragear. --193.40.6.84 (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well according to their own website they are. noq (talk) 12:07, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Also according to KDE's website . --193.40.6.84 (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)