Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 17, 2004 02:33 AM
Quickbooks is successful because it is good, and because it meets customer's needs. I've been testing various F/OSS accounting programs for several years, looking for a good quickbooks replacement. Nothing comes even close. A typical Quickbooks user is a small businessperson who does almost everything- all the paperwork, marketing, and the actual paying work. The data entry is the most tedious part- everything else can be done with a mouse click or two. You're not going to persuade this person to give up a good product that meets their needs without some extremely compelling reasons. If the alternative is something with too steep a learning curve, forget it, because the one thing in short supply with most small businesspeople is time. They're not stupid and they're not lazy. They're busy.
Something that many F/OSS advocates don't seem to be able to grasp is how to target a particular audience. Quickbooks users are not users who can afford to hire someone to customize their accounting program and train them. Even in the windoze world, higher-end accounting programs cost thousands of dollars and require a lot of training. Those are the ones that F/OSS has a real chance of replacing, with many advantages: open code, so no chance of sneaky stuff. Secure platform. Endlessly customizable. Open data formats, so customer data are not held hostage.
To really make a dent in the Quickbooks market means building something that is just as easy to use, and with bales of nice features like Quickbooks has. And much lower cost than Quickbooks, which is already dirt cheap by accounting software standards.
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quickbooks is easy to learn and does a good job
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 17, 2004 02:33 AMSomething that many F/OSS advocates don't seem to be able to grasp is how to target a particular audience. Quickbooks users are not users who can afford to hire someone to customize their accounting program and train them. Even in the windoze world, higher-end accounting programs cost thousands of dollars and require a lot of training. Those are the ones that F/OSS has a real chance of replacing, with many advantages: open code, so no chance of sneaky stuff. Secure platform. Endlessly customizable. Open data formats, so customer data are not held hostage.
To really make a dent in the Quickbooks market means building something that is just as easy to use, and with bales of nice features like Quickbooks has. And much lower cost than Quickbooks, which is already dirt cheap by accounting software standards.
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