
Ledger, a command-line accounting system - nodivbyzero
http://www.ledger-cli.org/index.html
======
zrail
I've been using Ledger for almost nine years, both for my personal accounts
and now my business accounts. I wrote some introductory articles about it, and
further articles about how I use it day-to-day:

[https://www.petekeen.net/finance](https://www.petekeen.net/finance)

~~~
parm289
Have you ever thought about using a natural language interface with ledger?
For example, the Mac/iOS calendar app Fantastical lets you create an event by
typing or dictating a sentence like "lunch with mike at 2 on Tuesday at
Wendy's", and the app will parse the input to create an event with the right
parameters.

I ask after reading your vacation write-up. Seems like the input side could
have been a lot easier if you had a speech or text NLP interface to ledger.
"$10 entertainment expense paid from MasterCard today," for example. That
could be the holy grail for people who are not inclined to keep a detailed
ledger, or for situations where input is difficult. (Theoretically you could
email/iMessage/SMS/slack that string and have it picked up by your ledger
file.)

~~~
zrail
Ledger sort of has that built in, actually, but it only works if you have a
similar transaction in the past. For example, I can say this on the command
line:

    
    
      $ ledger xact 11/5 mcd dinner 10.55
    

and ledger spits out

    
    
      2015/11/05 McDonald's
          Expenses:Food:Dinner          $10.55
          Liabilities:Credit Card
    

This falls down when you're traveling to new places, because in the command
`mcd` is just a regex that matches on the payee.

~~~
parm289
Interesting, thanks. I had in mind a system that would basically regex match a
string and add an entry to the ledger (similar, but it would probably be a bit
more flexible than the built in system).

Separately, I saw you have also worked on a similar system for food logging.
That got me thinking...what else could you track with a plain text file in
this format? Fitness/workout info came to mind, as well as rewards points,
sleep tracking, any others? Would be cool to have a single system to track all
these things, which could be linked up to APIs like Fitbit, myfitnesspal, etc.

~~~
zrail
I don't use that system anymore, actually. I switched to LoseIt, primarily
because of the extensive food database. Most of the time I can just scan a
barcode or search for a particular thing and it's in there.

Convenience trumps plain text in this case because, unlike with finance,
there's no bank statement to refer back to if you fall off the data entry
wagon for a day or two. That data is instead just completely gone.

------
tectonic
I use and love ledger, and wrote a Ruby wrapper a few years ago called reckon
that applies Naive Bayes to your bank CSV (kind of link Mint.com) and outputs
a ledger input file.

[http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2013/02/16/command-
line-a...](http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2013/02/16/command-line-
accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thank you thank you thank you!

~~~
tectonic
You're welcome :)

------
roel_v
I've used ledger for years, but it's not a 'real' double entry system, despite
what the manual says. It's more halfway between cash and double entry. The
'auto balancing' for example, which is sold as its big feature, doesn't make
sense from a double accounting perspective - the whole _point_ is to not have
it be 'auto'. Other basic things are missing - the difference balance and
profit/loss accounts, for example. It's fine for personal and small business
accounting, but if you've had training in real accounting some things will be
confusing (because of terms meaning something else) and don't expect your
accountant to be able to work with your reports if you haven't set up your
system in cooperation with him/her.

~~~
merb
you don't need the auto balancing.

You could definitly write: 2015/10/12 Exxon Expenses:Auto:Gas $10.00
Liabilities:MasterCard $-5.00 Liabilities:Visa $-5.00

It's still valid. However it would fail if you put a 5 and 4 here if your
expense is 10.

I'm still not sure how it decides between active and passive (since Expenses
and Liabilities could also be other words like the german ones: "Ausgaben",
"Verpflichtungen" and the program works with them, too but It can't know if
its active or passive. so I don't know what would happen if I make a
transaction on two aktivas, like Bank to Cash or Bank to Fund)

~~~
kspaans
Ledger doesn't differentiate between active and passive, it just makes sure
the transaction balances.

------
danpat
I wrote a small, single-script clone in Python:

[https://github.com/danpat/uledger](https://github.com/danpat/uledger)

I wanted to be able to group all my assertions together. This means the
assertion needs to be able to retroactively calculate the balance on a given
date. ledger-cli's assert doesn't support this. hledger does, but, well, I'm
not a Haskell guy and the whole Haskell ecosystem seemed...cumbersome...to
install.

uledger supports a useful-to-me subset of ledger-cli, primarily nested
accounts, multiple currencies and out-of-order assertions and transaction
entry. It has a bunch of tests and a very simple web balance interface. My
favourite feature is the accounting-equation balance feature:

    
    
        2015-01-01 Opening Balance
                Equity:Owners Contributions   $-100
                Assets:Bank                   $100
        2015-01-01 Buying widgets
                Liabilities:Credit Card       $-50
                Expenses:Parts
        2015-01-03 Some Income
                Income:Consulting             $-200
                Assets:Bank                   $200
    
        assert balance 2015-01-02 Expenses  $50
        assert equation 2015-01-04 Assets - Liabilities = Equity + Income - Expenses
    

Feedback/patches welcome.

------
sasvari
as a side note: both ledger [0] and hledger [1] support time tracking/keeping.
of all the various tools I tried to use for personal stuff it has been the
most convenient one for me (it helps that I also use it for accounting) and
I'm using it consequently from day 1 on! you can apply the same
reporting/balancing to your time keeping as you do to your accounting.

[0] [http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Time-
Keeping](http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Time-Keeping)

[1]
[http://hledger.org/manual.html#timelog](http://hledger.org/manual.html#timelog)

~~~
cel
See also t [0], a script for working with ledger timelog files.

Now for a script to generate invoices from the timelog...

[0] [https://github.com/nuex/t](https://github.com/nuex/t)

------
toomim
And the author/maintainer of Ledger just became the maintainer of Emacs, just
today!!

~~~
psibi
Any announcement/mailing list link regarding that ?

Edit: Found that: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2015-11/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2015-11/msg00118.html)

~~~
draven
Congratulations to John!

I found his first answer in the thread interesting (he talks about his
interaction with RMS.)

------
clord
Been using ledger for 9 years as well (hledger lately.) Never have a hitch.
The only complaint I have is that I can't (easily) keep AR in sync with online
invoicing software. minor though. Would love to have some git-style
integration with my bank and other accounts. `ledger pull savings` or `ledger
pull invoices`

~~~
cel
I like that interface idea. There is ledger-autosync (in Debian and on
GitHub[0]), which should pull transactions from with accounts with OFX. I
haven't tried it as none of my accounts are reachable through OFX.

[0] [https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync](https://github.com/egh/ledger-
autosync)

~~~
egh
If your bank supports OFX/QFX download, you can still use ledger-autosync. You
can manually download as many transactions as you like, and it will only
import the new ones.

------
grhmc
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7707262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7707262)

Unaffiliated with, but an extremely pleased user of
[http://www.youneedabudget.com](http://www.youneedabudget.com).

~~~
merb
accounting != budget management

accounting is more a business thing. all accounts needs to be balanced ie you
always needs to have zero.

~~~
maaku
YNAB is both. It's a double-entry budget management system.

~~~
zrail
YNAB is not double-entry. In fact I interviewed with them one time and they
asked me how I would design it, and I started outlining how I run my ledger-
based YNAB-like system with double-entry accounting. Their response was
something along the lines of "wish we had thought of that, it would have been
easier."

~~~
Karunamon
Wait, it isn't? My understanding of double entry is that asset moves across
accounts are recorded in both accounts, so if I were to, say, pay a credit
card bill, I show a debit from my checking account and a credit to my card
account.

Is this incorrect?

~~~
roel_v
You'd do the same in cash accounting. Otherwise you're recording wrong values,
as compared to the actual account statements. Double entry means balancing
active and passive sides for all activities, asset and debt. When you buy a
laptop with a credit card, you add (for example - the details depend on legal
requirements, how much detail you want to capture etc) an entry with 1000 on
the passive side, in the cc account, 500 on the active side (asset it's not
worth what you paid for it any more) and 500 under depreciaton. Then when you
pay the bill, you reduce the cc account and the checking account. Each of
these operations individually are balanced, ie they sum to 0.

~~~
merb
that's in fact the way I learned it and ynab doesn't look like it. however I
didn't seen many people who use double accounting for their personal budget?
maybe i didn't seen enough people yet, since it looks like that a lot of hn'er
using double accounting...

~~~
roel_v
Double accounting for personal budgets is too much overhead, which is why
ledger is a nice middle ground. I doubt many ppl reading this use double
accounting for their personal finances - by the time you need that, you'll
have someone else do it for you, and they won't be dicking around with
ledger...

------
Dowwie
There's another open source project worth checking out called BeanCount. The
author, Martin Blais, originally wrote it in Python to serve similar double
entry bookkeeping needs as those from the ledger-cli community. He seems to be
continuing development of it, or at least porting portions of it (plugins?) to
a variety of languages.

homepage: [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/) source:
[https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/overview](https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/overview)

------
cpayne
(Coming from a Windows background) I often wonder what the appeal is to
something like this.

(Seriously!) Why would you use something like this over say a spreadsheet? Is
it really much easier than opening a browser and running Google Docs???

~~~
peteretep
Over a spreadsheet is an easy sell - dual-entry accounting is an absolute
revelation.

Over the many good GUI dual-entry accounting programs, I'm not so sure.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well something like quickbooks its much more transparent and Ledger isn't
constantly trying to upsell you some service :-) Agreed on the spreadsheet,
its balance checking is really the key feature here that spreadsheets don't
do.

The simplicity of simple text files means you don't have to worry about your
files not being readable by a future you. Which is not the case of every 'gui'
dual-entry accounting system to date. Seriously, pick any system you could
have used in 2000 and figure out if you can read its files now.

~~~
a3n
Ledger also isn't bribing Congress to keep the tax system complex enough that
you need Quicken or HR Block.

I won't touch anything from Intuit.

------
ausjke
Heard about it and never really used it, should I start with ledger or hledger
these days? any suggestions?

~~~
zeckalpha
90% of the features overlap. Depending on your particular needs, one or the
other may be preferred, e.g. multiple currencies. I use hledger for the
Haskell street cred. ;)

edit: [http://hledger.org/faq.html](http://hledger.org/faq.html)

~~~
ausjke
Thanks. Looks like ledger does multiple currencies but hledger did not mention
that in its features list. Will probably start with ledger then.

~~~
zeckalpha
I was wrong about that particular feature, hledger calls it "multiple
commodities" instead.

------
robotmachine
I have been using Ledger for a long time and it has really been a wonderful
tool. The reports are great. I even made a little Python script so I can
easily make entries from terminal on my phone!

~~~
themiurgo
Would you elaborate how that works? I'd love to make entries from my phone.

~~~
robotmachine
Sorry, I am not used to commenting here and didn't realise it wouldn't notify
me.

I use Prompt by Panic
[http://www.panic.com/prompt/](http://www.panic.com/prompt/) on my iPhone to
do SSH sessions. Since it was hard for me to type in entries to my Ledger data
file I put together a script with Python that could have stored merchants and
just sort of make the process easier.

I can type in `ql -m sd -t 50` and it will add a full entry for the grocery
store that I frequent. The project on Github is here:
[https://github.com/robotmachine/QuickLedger](https://github.com/robotmachine/QuickLedger)

To clarify, it is just a command line tool that I made with mobile SSH in
mind-- not a mobile app. Hope that helps.

~~~
themiurgo
Thanks a lot, looks cool! At the moment I'm using Nebulous Notes to write to a
"mobile" ledger, then I merge that to the main ledger. This has the advantage
I can add entries also offline. I'd love to move something more automated
though and your project might definitely help. :)

~~~
robotmachine
To my knowledge I am the sole user of my QuickLedger project -- so I'd be very
interested to hear how it works for another's use case. Any feedback would be
great! If you fork I'd like to know so I can see what someone does with it.

~~~
themiurgo
Sure, will do! In the meanwhile, I randomly discovered the awesome Pythonista
([http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz-software.com/pythonista/)).

Pythonista would make possible to run QuickLedger on the mobile, and it could
be expanded to automatically update the main ledger, hosted on another machine
or on some Dropbox-like container.

------
flatM
Is it possible to attach a receipt (say scanned PDFs) to a Ledger entry? I am
interested in ledger, would like it to be the accounting system for my side
business, a bit more bookkeeping feature such as the receipt attachment would
be great for tax filing purpose.

Edit: I know that Ledger uses plain text for each entry. Though I kind of
wonder how do you guys keep those receipts.

~~~
zachlatta
We use Ledger for all of our accounting (it's not too much... yet) and we've
been using comments in Ledger to keep track of our receipts.

Example:

    
    
        2015/02/05 Clipper Card
            Expenses:Transport:Public Transportation               $20
            Liabilities:Reimbursement:Zach Latta
            ; Receipt: 52fae6a40afaf2a79bfdef92f5e1b6d3.pdf
    

Each receipt filename is <md5 hash>.<extension> and they're all tracked in a
private GitHub repository.

Here's a link to our repo with more examples:
[https://github.com/hackedu/finances/blob/master/main.ledger](https://github.com/hackedu/finances/blob/master/main.ledger)

~~~
cgb_
I do something similar, although I name my receipts/documents with yyyymmdd-
friendlyname.pdf for ease of lookup.

For my IT consulting business, I also wrote a wrapper that rejects entries
that _don 't_ have a receipt tag which allows me to catch any entries that I
haven't complied 100% with my practices (and tax office won't get upset in an
audit).

I also autogenerate the ledger entries from the receipt name (and prompt for
description/expense account/$$ with logic for handling common items like fuel
etc).

I've played with PDF metadata so my entire receipt scanning => ledger is
automated from just the PDF document but haven't reached a satisfactory setup
there.

------
colindean
I've used Ledger extensively for a side business as well as for timekeeping
for work. It's incredibly powerful and incredibly unforgiving.

If you want to keep PDF, JPG, etc. receipts with it, just put them in the same
directory and note them in a comment. Additionally, use a VCS that does
binaries well. Git does not.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
Your "unforgiving" comment is actually exactly what makes me nervous about
using this (a command line util) vs a GUI application. I feel like (and this
may be a total misconception) my poor typing abilities are better caught in a
GUI than cmd line, unless the application itself has something built in (like
git's fuzzy commands), where most UI applications, at least on Mac, are sort
of validated by the OS level field validation.

~~~
kspaans
Ledger has a 'strict' mode, where you basically pre-define the accounts you
plan on using. That will at least stop you from typoing account names (perhaps
like a pre-populated drop-down list in a UI?). Manual entry errors (too
many/not enough zeros) are probably just as easy to make on the CLI/in a GUI
though.

------
javiercr
This is very interesting. I'm involved in an open source project to create a
Ruby gem to extract bank data from multiple banks and offer it via a CLI and a
Ruby API. We fetch the data either from bank APIs (which often we discover
through reverse engineering of mobile apps) or simple web scrapping.

[https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap](https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap)

The project is still under heavy development but we already have support for 3
main banks in Spain. We also have managed to integrate it with Slack and other
apps.

I am sure we can learn a lot from the Ledger CLI.

------
Fiahil
I have been very interested by ledger lately, is there a wrapper, somewhere,
that would ease interactions with my bank account and/or allow me to plot
reports graphically across time?

~~~
dflock
Yes, see this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10510608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10510608)

------
a3n
A number of people here say use a VCS with ledger.

When do you commit? After every entry?

And do you have branches?

~~~
zrail
I have this particular repo set to push when I commit, so I commit when I'm
done doing data entry for the session. When I push my reporting web app
automatically updates it's postgresql database so I can go run reports and
look at the data.

------
avodonosov
I used ledger-cli, but as I constantly deal with several currencies, I can't
rely on it. Unfortunately, none of the open source accounting system I know
support multi-currency accounting well.

~~~
oskarth
Ledger deals with multiple currencies quite well in my experience, especially
using a custom prices.db file. What is the problem you are having?

~~~
avodonosov
After currency exchange transactions it doesn't balance.

~~~
mikekchar
It can be done, but it is tricky, especially if you have to report capital
gains as FIFO. The documentation is in ledger is misleading/wrong (or was the
last time I looked). I have been meaning to write a blog post on this topic
for ages (a year???).

Warning: This may be wrong. I just grabbed it randomly out of a test file I
was using to try this out and I don't have time to verify it. However, I think
it will put you on the right track even if it is wrong (also not sure how to
get it formatted correctly here). Anyway this is the kind of thing you have to
do:

    
    
      2014/09/04 Exchange Currency
        ; Note that the next line generates 20 GBP, not 10 GBP as you might expect
        ; This is so that the excess is captured by the capital gains account at the bottom
        ; Also note that the @ 0.50 GBP is not actually used by ledger in this case
        ; You could put @ 5000 GBP and it would do the same thing.  The rate is
        ; determined by the lot price.
        Assets:CDN                   -20.00 CDN {1.00 GBP} @ 0.50 GBP
        ; It is unfortunate that you can't get ledger to calculate or assert the next value
        Assets:GBP                    10.00 GBP ; Proceeds without commission
        Expenses:Commissions           0.20 GBP
        Assets:GBP                    -0.20 GBP ; Balance the commission
        Income:Capital Gains
    

The main things you have to understand are that you need to specify the lot
price in the transaction. Second, you _must_ specify the price of the
transaction. The P line is only used for calculating current value -- it will
_not_ set the price of the transaction correctly (if you don't specify it, I
think it sets it to whatever the P line is set to when you run the report,
which is clearly wrong). Also, you have to calculate either the total proceeds
for the balancing account _or_ the capital gains. Also, very unfortunately,
with this scheme you can not use the @@ method of specifying the price. I do
the math and calculate the result and let ledger calculate capital gains,
because that seems the most reasonable thing to do. Some people feel very
strongly that a human should calculate the capital gains by hand and enter
that value. Either way should work.

Hopefully the above should unstick you. If you are using average method for
capital gains, it is dramatically simpler, but I don't have an example handy.

Printing reports with the lot prices is incredibly useful as the lots should
balance out to zero. If they do not, then you have an error somewhere (and boy
does that suck). It's also very frustrating when doing FIFO or LIFO that you
constantly need to run the report to show you how much you have left in each
lot, and then go and figure out which lots are the next ones to use. I think
this can be automated, but I haven't gotten around to doing it.

~~~
avodonosov
BTW, will it balance if I want report not in GBP or CND, but in some other
currency I use?

~~~
mikekchar
Yes it will. The trick is that the currency you use for capital gains always
has to be the same. Also, my colleague mentioned that you might be trying to
do this without recording the capital gains. You have to have a capital gains
account, or else it will not balance. You can report in any currency you want
with the -X flag.

I'm busy for the moment, but I will send you email tomorrow with some better
information. I'm GMT+9 so depending on where you are, probably while you are
sleeping ;-) It will get me off my butt to write a blog post about it.

------
rushabh
There is also a nice php based simple accounting app for those looking for a
slightly modern user interface.

[http://webzash.org/](http://webzash.org/)
[https://github.com/prashants/webzash](https://github.com/prashants/webzash)

------
t0mk
the tool looks great, thanks for the tip.

To whomever is using it, do you also capture VAT in ledger? VAT reporting is
something I would also need.

------
nodesocket
I like the idea of using ledger-cli for automation, but honestly, this needs a
web-ui.

~~~
blakecaldwell
Unlike all GUI apps out there, this one gives you the ability to write one,
using the interface as an API. Go for it!

------
lancewiggs
It's got a high hack and giggle factor, but obviously horrible usability for
anyone off the command line - which includes your accountant/tax advisor.

Here in New Zealand essentially every start-up uses Xero - a SaaS accounting
system that works extremely well and now has over 600k paying customers. It
means one set of data, permanently in the cloud, and a host of integrations to
other players.

Founders open up access at different levels - we can give read-only to
directors and some investors, advisor-level access to accountants and
bookkeepers and so forth.

Frankly it's part of the NZ advantage right now (120000 or so of those
customers are here) - we seem to be spawning a large series of smart, low cost
B2SMB SaaS businesses, who are not just following Xero's own path, but also
using the tool to improve the way they do business.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Here in New Zealand essentially every start-up uses Xero - a SaaS
> accounting system that works extremely well and now has over 600k paying
> customers. It means one set of data, permanently in my butt, and a host of
> integrations to other players._

Not everyone thinks it's a good thing. For instance, with Ledger, you don't
have to be a customer. It's available for free. Anything that works good
without SaaS is better done without SaaS.

------
Havoc
WHY?

There are a bunch of legit accounting packages out there. No need to re-invent
the wheel or (in this case) clean the parade ground with a toothbrush. Off the
shelf SME accounting package or if you really need it a proper ERP. Anything
else is likely to end in tears.

Unless its for your one man show...in which case go wild with the CLI / Excel
custom rolled solutions & sundry DIYs.

Source: Accountant

~~~
aidenn0
Comparing ledger to cleaning the parade ground with a toothbrush is
misunderstanding the feature set. Similar to comparing it to Excel custom
rolled solutions. This is a true double-entry accounting system that happens
to have a CLI.

It definitely does not have the feature set of a proper ERP, but it can
effectively be used in place of an SME accounting package.

Out of curiosity, what makes an accounting package "legit" in your eyes?

[edit] I see that 3 other comments asked a variation on the "legit" question.
At least in my case this is not intended as an attack, but rather actual
curiosity about what a professional SME accounting package can do that ledger
can't; as far as open-source accounting packages go, ledger has a reputation
for being able to produce reports that others can't.

~~~
Havoc
>not intended as an attack

Don't worry. I knew I'd catch grief. I know HN is strong on CLI love and thin
on actual accounting experience. ;)

>This is a true double-entry accounting system that happens to have a CLI.

Double entry has existed in paper format since before the dawn of time. Its
not particularly revolutionary (CLI or not) in fact its bare minimum for
sanity. Hence my comment that this is barely a step above Excel.

>actual curiosity about what a professional SME accounting package

Copy paste from other questions:

Is it widely used? Can you get staff with a couple years experience using
ledger? Will accounting staff be productive using the interface? Does it cope
well with multiple simultaneous users? Is it compatible with other software?
Can you get local support? Can you export/import to other packages? Are the
fringe case glitches known?

All these things matter with finance software, even for fairly small
operations.

>as far as open-source accounting packages go

To be honest I wouldn't go for an open source one (as much as I like FOSS
etc). Accounting software is really an area where you want to follow the herd
(unlike usual HN mindset). Straying from the herd has terrible risk/reward.
e.g. Yes you might save $100 on the software by using FOSS, but when the
auditors show they take twice as long to deal with the unfamiliar stuff and
charge you an extra $2000. Or worse they find a glitch that is new. In the IT
world you file a ticket for that. In the accounting world you end up with a
massive bill to get outside help to salvage the accounting records. Followed
by another massive bill from the auditors attempting to audit said salvaged
records. But yeah...you totally saved that $100 on the initial purchase.
(Exaggeration obviously, but you get my point).

>it can effectively be used in place of an SME accounting package.

I'd not attempt it, as per above. Seen way to many horror shows.

~~~
inopinatus
I have actual accounting experience so by your first point I am qualified to
comment.

I doubt CLI snobbery is a factor; that would be infantile. I suspect others
downvoted you for taking the default position that the status quo is the best
prospect - hardly a hacker's point of view and certainly not in keeping with
the startup community.

Had Rod Drury agreed with you, he might never have started Xero.

My finding is that once one is trained in the basics of double-entry book-
keeping, accounting standards, finance and taxation, then any package that
keeps appropriate records and generates the right reports will do. To which
end, Ledger seems a perfectly reasonable choice for a micro business or self-
bootstrapped lean startup. Comparing it to an ERP platform is a non sequitur.
A better discussion might be around the transition triggers.

Moreover, Ledger could serve as the accounting module of a larger system that
benefits from double-entry book-keeping, such as a trading platform or two-
sided network business. I say that with confidence because I'm building one.

By the way, a little historical research: double-entry was invented in the
fifteenth century; hardly the dawn of time.

~~~
Havoc
>I suspect others downvoted you for taking the default position that the
status quo is the best prospect

In my line of work I get to see a variety of approaches to accounting. This is
not a game where the bleeding edge wins. In fact those do a lot of bleeding
and zero winning.

>Comparing it to an ERP platform is a non sequitur.

Oh come one dude. I specifically said people should get a proper ERP if its
need in my opening post. At no point did I compare this to an ERP. So
please...chill with the latin, especially the false kind.

As for your other points. You list the "trading platform" as an example of
this being successful. Sure. You could use this to effectively run a kitchen
pantry too. Its still no good as a commercially accounting package for day to
day use though.

