[Debian-uk] open-source accounting in the UK?

[Philip Hands]

Daniel Pocock <daniel at pocock.com.au> writes:

...
>> Before that I tried OpenERP and then Tryton -- I probably would
>> have stuck with Tryton if my experience with OpenERP's worthless UK
>> chart of accounts, combined with my somewhat hazy understanding of
>> what should have been going on, hadn't put me off the whole idea.
>> I'd imagine that the chart of accounts has been fixed or at least
>> deleted (well, they closed the bug report about 18 months after I
>> reported it without comment, so I guess they did something about it
>> -- right? ;-) ).
>
> The problem is much the same for all of these systems - the
> conventions are slightly different in each country and they basically
> need to create a different starter database for each country.  For
> people maintaining free software that is just a chore.

Well, the problem in this case was that they lifted the UK chart of
accounts from SQL-Ledger, which I think was probably not great to start
off with, and during the import they sorted the file such that it
totally mangled the hierarchy, so it was total bollocks after that.

They then studiously ignored anyone that told them about it, for years:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/openobject-addons/+bug/462806

There was also a uk-chart-minimal floating around at the time, which was
much less broken, but still not quite right:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/openobject-addons/+bug/470815

I guess they didn't see it as important, because they are used to
setting up a bespoke Chart for each customer -- which is understandable,
if somewhat irritating (particularly when it results in an accounting
system that cannot add up properly, out of the box).

At least the Tryton folk had the wisdom to say "We don't have a UK
chart" at the same time, so you'd know you had to do it all yourself.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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