GNUCash -> SQL-Ledger the Journey

[James McDonald]

For the last couple of years I have toyed with the idea of starting up 
my own business and as a result have been trying to educate myself on 
how one would operate it. That being the case I'm thinking I will need 
some sort of accounting package to keep track of sales and to print 
invoices etc.

I have been looking at GNUCash but the reporting infrastructure is... 
well interesting. The scheme report code is difficult to decipher 
especially since I don't know scheme and the GNUCash specific 
implementation of html rendering relies on GTKHTML which refuses to put 
any sort of modern style information into your html no matter how nicely 
you ask. The end result is an invoice with 14pt serif which screams 
professionalism on so many levels NOT. To be fair to the GNUCash people 
they want to change it but they need someone to step up and do the job 
(sadly I demured because scheme is a little too haiku poetry for me).

Anyway that being the case I went to SQL-Ledger.org and installed it. I 
have had a few issues with making sure I have the correct dependencies 
but now that it's installed it works as advertised. The reporting 
infrastructure uses latex templates and it is very powerful. So I 
shouldn't have a problem with Kindie scribble reports. Speaking of 
SQL-Ledger I googled and noticed that DAB has an article 
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7290 on it.

To me SQL-Ledger is a good thing because it's mult-site/user. You can 
create and print a professional looking invoice over the internet 
without being at the office. It also has a backup-able SQL db nice for 
hardware failures and relocation if necessary. Another plus is that it's 
Perl and after purchasing "Programming Perl" and "Perl Cookbook" I can 
at least make an attempt to fix things as they break.

So anyone else running a business on opensource accounting software and 
if so what's your poison?