Re:Missing Department and Product codes for the GL
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 10, 2006 11:24 PM
I have a customer who uses SQL-Ledger in a retail management environment, and I am a core contributor to LedgerSMB. We are expecting to migrate them within the next couple weeks as 1.2 stabilizes.
SQL-Ledger out of the box has a lot of issues working with retail environments. Aside from the performance issues (which are resolvable), and the security issues (which reqire rewriting most of the code), SQL-Ledger doesn't support much in the way of POS equipment. Having cash drawers that can be opened without printing in invoice is a pretty major issue.
Aside from the POS customization framework changes (pole display, cash drawer, till reconcilliation, and workflow optimizations), we had to deal with the issues you mention.
What we did was: 1) Divided up the products into 12 categories which mapped to income accounts. 2) Each was had the UPC 3) Added rapid invoice entry and inventory adjustment calculations 4) Added an inventory report that showed (by part) income vs. COGS. We could have done this by category too, but this is what the customer wanted. This report also had income and expense, and the ability to drill down to see the individual invoices involved.
We weren't able to move them before 1.2 because these customizations weren't compatible with the current codebase. We are just starting to test the 1.2 codebase in their environment.
You are absolutely right that SQL-Ledger is inadequate for a retail environment. But even so, the cost of modifying it to do what they wanted it to do was only a couple thousand dollars including all implementation effort (compared to the cost of a proprietary POS application for multiple tills). THese core enhancements are now part of the LedgerSMB codebase, and the version that includes them is scheduled for a Beta 1 release on Monday.
Best Wishes, Chris Travers Core developer, LedgerSMB Former maintainer of the SQL-Ledger Wiki
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Re:Missing Department and Product codes for the GL
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 10, 2006 11:24 PMSQL-Ledger out of the box has a lot of issues working with retail environments. Aside from the performance issues (which are resolvable), and the security issues (which reqire rewriting most of the code), SQL-Ledger doesn't support much in the way of POS equipment. Having cash drawers that can be opened without printing in invoice is a pretty major issue.
Aside from the POS customization framework changes (pole display, cash drawer, till reconcilliation, and workflow optimizations), we had to deal with the issues you mention.
What we did was:
1) Divided up the products into 12 categories which mapped to income accounts.
2) Each was had the UPC
3) Added rapid invoice entry and inventory adjustment calculations
4) Added an inventory report that showed (by part) income vs. COGS. We could have done this by category too, but this is what the customer wanted. This report also had income and expense, and the ability to drill down to see the individual invoices involved.
We weren't able to move them before 1.2 because these customizations weren't compatible with the current codebase. We are just starting to test the 1.2 codebase in their environment.
You are absolutely right that SQL-Ledger is inadequate for a retail environment. But even so, the cost of modifying it to do what they wanted it to do was only a couple thousand dollars including all implementation effort (compared to the cost of a proprietary POS application for multiple tills). THese core enhancements are now part of the LedgerSMB codebase, and the version that includes them is scheduled for a Beta 1 release on Monday.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Core developer, LedgerSMB
Former maintainer of the SQL-Ledger Wiki
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