Greetings - I'm really just posting here to introduce myself more than anything else, but first, to answer your question:
My main interest is in maintaining a core set of entities (and not just in Accounting) that I can sync QuickBooks to. The main requirement here is the stability of core features (general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, as well as a few non-accounting components like product catalog).
I've been tinkering with OFBiz "in the lab" for 6+ months, and recently landed my first paid project, with another in the pipeline. At the same time, I've been looking for ways to help QB users in the mid-market, who are faced with using QB with multiple add-on applications and/or workarounds in order to avoid making the leap to an expensive ERP system, which more often than not includes an accounting module which is much less user-friendly than QB. Most of the requirements QB can't handle well tend to be around manufacturing, supply chain and eCommerce. OFBiz integrated with QB seems to be the obvious answer.
I could go on and on about my plans for OFBiz + QB, but to stay more or less on topic I'll just make 2 points:
1) At one time I was going to use the QB Web Connector and then add code to OFBiz to talk to it (SOAP). This turned out to be a major pain, so now my approach is to build my own desktop app to sync QB with core OFBiz accounting tables, with minimal impact on OFBiz. Thus the need for relative stability in OFBiz's core accounting entities.
2) Many mid-market QB users who are candidates for OFBiz will not want to give up QB as their accounting system. That's just the way it is. But I don't see this as preventing them from using accounting features that exist in OFBiz but not in QB. As long as the necessary data makes its way to the core OFBiz entities, such as invoices, I think the integration should work fine.
There's obviously much more that could be discussed on this topic, but I just saw your post and saw it as a good opportunity to introduce myself and let everybody know what's on my mind.
Since my expertise is mainly in QB, I actually have spent very little time looking at all the accounting features in OFBiz, but I will try to do so and provide feedback. I would also love to be involved in any discussions about making OFBiz accounting more user-friendly, based on my experience with QB.
Also, to complete my introduction, you should know that I spent 10 years in the dark Satanic mills (Microsoft), and I have very little experience in the open source world, so I hope you'll all be patient with me.
Thanks,
Mike Branch
www.whiterabbitservices.com
Pierre Smits-3 wrote
With the release of 10.04 we come to a point in time where we can think
about the future of the Accounting application. In order to draw up a plan
for future releases we would like have your input.
What do you feel is important? What should be in, what should be removed,
what can be improved?
Locked
