So, I'm trying to launch an automotive electronics business/ side hustle on a Challenge budget. One bit of the puzzle I don't have is what I will use for tracking inventory and accounting. QuickBooks is the industry standard for small businesses, but pricey. Spreadsheet in Libre Office are free but awkward.
I've run across a few freeware options like Dolibarr and Odoo. Anyone here have experience with either? Or other options I should look at?
I've been using spreadsheets in LibreOffice for accounting but I have no idea what I'm doing from an accounting perspective. From an IT perspective, I know that QuickBooks is hot garbage. I've heard of GNUCash as a QuickBooks alternative.
A lightweight version of MS Business Central isn't terribly expensive.
Thank you for the suggestions. Unfortunately, GnuCash doesn't track inventory, and Microsoft's ERP is about $100 a month if I want it to use a bill of materials. If I used QuickBooks, it would probably be the online version so someone else can deal with its errors....
I have no direct experience with QuickBooks, but everyone I know who uses it regrets their decision.
Other than that I don't have anything constructive to add, unfortunately.
Sorry, but I don't think that free and ERP go together in a sentence.
I'm going to suggest that you pick something that you are willing to use for a long time. Freeware may not be the best choice. I started with freeware and within 6 months switched to Quickbooks. It would suck to get 4-5 years into it and have a problem that can't be resolved because the software you are using was designed by a 20-something in his basement.
Transitioning from one software package to another is insanely time-consuming and expensive. It is the main reason I'm still using Quickbooks after 18 years later of swearing at it.
As much as I despise Quickbooks, there is a reason they are the king of the hill for small businesses. Everything else is worse or several times the price.
If you aren't keeping payroll or using it to file tax forms, you can buy a desktop copy and never update it.
This may be a situation where a penny wise is a pound foolish.
I use Odoo on a daily basis. Its is absolutely great for inventory and warehouse management, as well as fulfillment if you choose to use it for that. Odoo is not free however, in general its about $50/month per user. We don't use Odoo for accounting, but the times I have played around with the accounting module it works just fine. At this point my operating system of choice is Linux(Ubuntu in particular) using Libre for spreadsheets. Libre works just fine, but it is not perfectly compatible with Ecxel, if you sent someone a spreadsheet you built with Libre and they open it in Excel sometimes things like formatting don't work correctly.
Toyman! said:I'm going to suggest that you pick something that you are willing to use for a long time. Freeware may not be the best choice. I started with freeware and within 6 months switched to Quickbooks. It would suck to get 4-5 years into it and have a problem that can't be resolved because the software you are using was designed by a 20-something in his basement.
Transitioning from one software package to another is insanely time-consuming and expensive. It is the main reason I'm still using Quickbooks after 18 years later of swearing at it.
As much as I despise Quickbooks, there is a reason they are the king of the hill for small businesses. Everything else is worse or several times the price.
If you aren't keeping payroll or using it to file tax forms, you can buy a desktop copy and never update it.
This may be a situation where a penny wise is a pound foolish.
That's why I suggested the MS product. It's maybe not as shiny as some of the new stuff but it's got a long history, loads of support and it's not going anywhere.
I used QB for years and found it quite good. Tracked inventory, purchasing, sales and cash. It was 10 years ago, not sure what it is like now. Used high end ERP like MAS and others in my career and though QB was a nifty little tool.
Found a list here with some systems that include inventory management:
https://opensource.com/tools/enterprise-resource-planning
I've heard of ERPnext before but haven't used any of them...
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