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A client of mine does the payroll for his small business and has thus far used various versions of Intuit's Quickbooks. While he can manage to muddle around with programs and do things, computers are still very much magic boxes to him and he had the malware to prove it. I'm doing everything remotely, so I would like to switch him to a simple Linux desktop but the problem is Quickbooks doesn't have a Linux client and the web version of their app is unusable. I've looked into Linux financial software (e.g. gnucash) but I can't seem to find anything that does payroll and accounts for U.S. state and federal payroll taxes. Does anyone use payroll software for Linux that they can recommend?
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Ask Soylent: Payroll Software on Linux
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Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 08 2015, @11:58AM
I was a treasurer at a volunteer org and the "standard" was to use google docs spreadsheets to keep track. We're talking dozens of transactions per year, maybe $10K annual cash flow.
My limited understanding of accounting software is its like emacs for programmers. So the learning curve is a bit steep but after your first 10K LoC or accounting transactions or whatever you'll start running a net profit of the investment of learning the tool.
If the guy is a small enough operator that he has to do his own accounting because he can't afford to have anyone else do it, maybe he's so incredibly small that he doesn't even need a computer. Going back a quarter century when I was a kid at the independent food store (probably a dead concept now) I got handwritten checks from the owner till he signed up for a service. I also got handwritten checks from a contracting gig long ago (not computer related, long story). If the entire "payroll" is like one dude and his wife, he doesn't need computer automation. You probably don't want to lose your client, but honestly I'd tell the guy to shut down and do it by hand. There's plenty of books at the library for the noob small business owner that explain whats going on.
Might be a management consulting opportunity to tell the guy about the difference between a measurable metric and an actionable metric and the waste of time of generating or paying attention to non actionable metrics. At the volunteer treasurer gig I made balance sheets, income sheets, and cashflow sheets but there really wasn't a damn thing our geographic team could do about any of it other than a slight modulation of our spend rate. So most of my effort was basically a waste of time and we'd have been just as well off with a simple checkbook register. This dude might be in the same situation, if he has no idea how to use the tool he probably has no idea how to use the report output so why bother using the tool?
If his company is so small that he occasionally has nothing productive to do, and he wants to learn accounting, either on a mysterious computer or by hand, well, everyone's got a hobby, and thats his. Thats how the store owner ended up hand writing paychecks to his staff, well, there's often nothing to do on afternoons between the lunch and dinner rush, and there's some paychecks to write, so ... On the other hand, if he's got enough employees (more than 2?) that he never has nothing better to do, then obviously he's better off having a specialist accountant take care of it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:48AM
I've been paid by cheque as an employee before. I rather liked it. I was acutely aware; each time that he personally handed me a paycheque; that it was his money that was paying me. It was both a reminder to be diligent in my work and simultaneously a way for the boss to say "good work this week - keep it up".