Dan Zlotnikov
2005-10-20 00:24:53 UTC
I've received a number of replies, which had brought up some questions.
First of all, I'd like to clarify a few points.
|Doesn't sound like an overly complicated set of requirements: Have you
|considered writing something web-side with perl and mysql ?
Oh, I'd love to. It sounds fairly simple even to *me*. Except I'm the
wrong kind of geek -- Geek of Technical Writing. Geek of Interaction
Design in training, but that's the closest I get to code. According to
my girlfriend, it's beyong her PHP abilities, as well. And the budget
for the whole ordeal is far too small to pay someone to do it.
Len:So when you produce something, enter it as exiting and bought from
Len: yourself I suppose or some such.
The current program, MYOB AccountEdge 2005 for Mac, is a "total
business management solution." It sucks, partially due to bad design,
and partially because it was never designed for the type of business
we run. Yes, the suggested type of fudging around is possible.
However, it is exceedingly complicated, and tends to produce countless
problems down the road as well.
Len: Why bother doing accounting if you aren't going to do it right? If you
Len: ever want to talk to an accountant about your stuff, it works much
Len: better when the data is useful. And if someone ever decides you need
Len: auditing, I suspect it will go much better with proper accounting data.
All true. Proper accounting is being done, just not using the program
in question. This ties into Steve's comment: "Accounting is a means to
end. What end do you have in mind?"
I was being a very bad interaction designer wannabe. So, with the end
in mind, a rephrasing.
The business is a small-scale cheese farm (www.meadowcreekdairy.com),
which produces its own milk.
The business has a few hundred clients, a dozen or so different
products, and an extremely unpredictable production chain. Part of the
cheese tends to go bad while being aged. The milk composition changes
significantly depending on season. Hell, the same amount of milk
doesn't always produce the same amount of cheese, anyway! Thus, the
near-absolute impossibility to predict how much product quantity X of
raw materials will result in.
The business requires to track three things:
1) Sales and invoicing (and income)
2) Inventory
3) Bills and payments
Currently, AccountEdge is used strictly for the first, Excel for the
second, and Quicken for the third, as well as the total income from
sales. (This results in AccountEdge having a ludicrous positive
balance, but we ignore it :)
The only thing we really need is something that will do invoicing and
track payments for the multitude of clients. To help with business
analysis, it should also support things like reports on items sold,
categorize accounts as wholesale or retail, export to some externally
readable file (CSV, for example), and... That's about it. The problem
with the total solution packages is that they assume they will be
managing everything about the business, and don't handle exceptions to
that very well. Or sometimes at all.
Thanks again for the input!
Dan
--
WatCHI
http://www.acm.org/chapters/watchi
First of all, I'd like to clarify a few points.
|Doesn't sound like an overly complicated set of requirements: Have you
|considered writing something web-side with perl and mysql ?
Oh, I'd love to. It sounds fairly simple even to *me*. Except I'm the
wrong kind of geek -- Geek of Technical Writing. Geek of Interaction
Design in training, but that's the closest I get to code. According to
my girlfriend, it's beyong her PHP abilities, as well. And the budget
for the whole ordeal is far too small to pay someone to do it.
Len:So when you produce something, enter it as exiting and bought from
Len: yourself I suppose or some such.
The current program, MYOB AccountEdge 2005 for Mac, is a "total
business management solution." It sucks, partially due to bad design,
and partially because it was never designed for the type of business
we run. Yes, the suggested type of fudging around is possible.
However, it is exceedingly complicated, and tends to produce countless
problems down the road as well.
Len: Why bother doing accounting if you aren't going to do it right? If you
Len: ever want to talk to an accountant about your stuff, it works much
Len: better when the data is useful. And if someone ever decides you need
Len: auditing, I suspect it will go much better with proper accounting data.
All true. Proper accounting is being done, just not using the program
in question. This ties into Steve's comment: "Accounting is a means to
end. What end do you have in mind?"
I was being a very bad interaction designer wannabe. So, with the end
in mind, a rephrasing.
The business is a small-scale cheese farm (www.meadowcreekdairy.com),
which produces its own milk.
The business has a few hundred clients, a dozen or so different
products, and an extremely unpredictable production chain. Part of the
cheese tends to go bad while being aged. The milk composition changes
significantly depending on season. Hell, the same amount of milk
doesn't always produce the same amount of cheese, anyway! Thus, the
near-absolute impossibility to predict how much product quantity X of
raw materials will result in.
The business requires to track three things:
1) Sales and invoicing (and income)
2) Inventory
3) Bills and payments
Currently, AccountEdge is used strictly for the first, Excel for the
second, and Quicken for the third, as well as the total income from
sales. (This results in AccountEdge having a ludicrous positive
balance, but we ignore it :)
The only thing we really need is something that will do invoicing and
track payments for the multitude of clients. To help with business
analysis, it should also support things like reports on items sold,
categorize accounts as wholesale or retail, export to some externally
readable file (CSV, for example), and... That's about it. The problem
with the total solution packages is that they assume they will be
managing everything about the business, and don't handle exceptions to
that very well. Or sometimes at all.
Thanks again for the input!
Dan
--
WatCHI
http://www.acm.org/chapters/watchi