Accounting Mechanics

First on the list of open source accounting packages that I’m reviewing is TurboCash. Just to recap, I’m looking at open-source (often free) packages from a small-business perspective to answer the question “can open-source development produce software that is practical for a business to use?” More than an academic exercise, I’ll use one of these packages myself if it passes muster.

TurboCASH introduction

Looking through the website, TurboCASH has a long history with its roots in the DOS era and for 18 years was licensed commercially. The source and programs were made freely available in July 2003 with the aim of becoming “the world’s leading Open Source entry level accounting program”. The application runs on Windows and is a stand-alone application - both data and application installing and running on the user’s PC. The data is held in unprotected Paradox data files - not secure but easy to get at and report from using something like Access, in case the built-in reporting functions don’t provide what you want.

This setup can support multiple users to a limited extent, by network-sharing the folders holding the Paradox files, however the batch entry restrictions (see below) would seem to limit practical scaling beyond a very small number of users.

Accounts for multiple companies can be established and run independently - there is no support for inter-company trading. There is no multi-currency support.

I began my review work on TurboCASH by reading through the included help file. In reading about all of the functionality included, I warmed to the product significantly and looked forward to installing and running it. Aside from the standard general, debtor and creditor ledgers, TurboCASH offers a surprising breadth of additional functionality. There are stock items (either physical or ’service’ items), stock tracking, sales and purchase order processing, quotations, VAT/sales tax capture and reporting, customer and supplier contacts, salesperson analysis, calendar appointments, bank accounts and reconciliation, point-of-sale support, various means of data import and export, quite a few standard reports plus a custom reporting, multiple languages and additional plug-in modules. Plug-ins apparently extend to e-commerce integration, XBRL exports, electronic bank transfers and more. I particularly liked the language option “Gibberish” - which some might say is an apt choice for an accounting application.

So TurboCASH can tick quite a few boxes. I guess that’s why the website displays a comparative feature chart showing the relative list of functions provided by TurboCASH, Quickbooks and Sage.

Installation

Version numbering is slightly confused. The UK website lists the download as version .7, the install file is labelled version 3.751 and the installed software reports itself as 3.750. The installation was uneventful, however a point of detail put me on my guard. The default installation is to a folder ‘TCash3′, directly under the root of the C: drive, rather than where it ought to be under the ‘Program Files’ folder. I specified installation to ‘C:\Program Files\TCash3′ and proceeded cautiously - software that shows its age by not following the file system conventions established back in 1995 might well have other undesirable hang-overs. This proved to be the case with TurboCASH. I was not able to create accounts for a new company because the system tried to find a file in ‘C:\TCash3\’, which obviously wasn’t there. The only option was to uninstall and start again, going with the default install location.

Unusually for open source software, registration and a licence key is necessary to use the software beyond a trial period (150 transactions). Registration is free and straightforward, but I’ve since had two marketing emails from TurboCASH, despite unchecking all of the newsletter subscription boxes.

In Use

The menu in TurboCASH is easily comprehensible. I began with the commands under ‘Edit’ for creating my list of general ledger accounts. Account codes can be 3, 4 or 5 digits followed by an optional 3-digit sub-account code. In addition, accounts can be classified with 1 or 2 grouping codes, which add a fair amount of flexibility to whatever reports need to be produced.

Debtor and creditor ledgers link to the general ledger via control accounts - a single account for each sub-ledger. In use, the presence of the sub-ledgers is almost invisible. Accounts from all ledgers can be selected for posting when entering journals (batch configuration allowing) and postings hit all ledgers simultaneously. There is no period-end process to update and reconcile the general ledger from the sub-ledgers. However, there is also no way to close the sub-ledgers for a previous period while holding the general ledger open for further adjustments.

There is no concept in TurboCASH of a period independent of the date. Reporting periods are defined simply as a range of dates, so transactions appear within whichever period the transaction date falls.

Much of the behaviour of TurbCASH is determined by batch type, with batch setup options available to define contra-accounts, which account ranges can be selected, whether debits, credits or both can be entered, etc. Despite being able to enter data via batches, there is only half of a batch processing system in TurboCASH. A batch of the required type is created and can be held, adjusted and reported on until ready for posting. However, only one batch of each type can be processed at a time, which effectively restricts the use of batch entry to one person at a time.

The other means of data is entry is via ‘documents’ - invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, etc. and these can be printed for sending to customers and suppliers.

The year end process clears all income and expense accounts to reserves and moves the period dates for the new year. It remains possible to post into last year if necessary. Only the current and previous year’s data is held in the system.

Standard reports provided by TurboCASH are good. There’s a fair range available covering all of the basic requirements and the group codes that are available can be attached to all core elements of data. Reports provide a number of configuration options for filtering, sequencing, level of detail, etc. In addition, a simple report-writer is available to create any more specific reports that you may require and would be useful for creating organisation-specific financial statements. If that is still not enough, the option of using the data directly from the Paradox files is available, as mentioned above.

Problems

After only a few minutes of use it began to dawn on me that something significant was missing from TurboCASH - online inquiry doesn’t exist. There is a tool called “T-Account Viewer” which provides a view into a single account at at time. It is also possible to see the transactions on a debtor or creditor account, but only via the Edit Account command. Otherwise, the only means of seeing your data is by using the reporting functions - and these don’t allow you to see last year’s transactions! The ability to browse through accounts, look into transactions in one or multiple accounts, examine or “drill down” to the source batches or documents, etc. is entirely absent.

The facilities for importing and exporting transaction and batch data is potentially of great value, with a few file formats available to choose from. However I was confounded by the fact that TurboCASH’s CSV format requires strict quoting of text values, exactly what Excel’s CSV implementation doesn’t do. That leaves TurboCASH in the position of having a great feature virtually disabled by not working with the one application that every accountant uses habitually.

Budget values can be entered by period and account. Unfortunately the entry of budget data is manual only, there are no shortcuts or import options provided, causing the feature to be too cumbersome for practical use.

At several points in using TurboCASH, odd warning messages appeared which rarely made much sense and gave no useful options. This one, for example, appeared after I had pressed Alt-Tab to switch to another application and then Alt-Tab to return to TurboCASH. Despite the errors, the program continued to operate apparently normally, but that hardly diminshed my foreboding.

Presentation and UI

Supermarkets and soap powder manufacturers realised in the 80s that marketing with starry flashes is cheesy. Nevertheless, TC continues undeterred with their ’style’ and the micro-budget look of the website unfortunately carries straight through to the software.

Of more serious concern than the style is the utter lack of attention to user interface design: the TurboCASH developers appear to be in a world of their own with regard to UI standards. The positive anticipation that I had built up in reading the capabilities in the help file evapourated soon after starting the software.

I’ll relate a handful of typical examples of the bad user interface.

• Inaccurate commands. After completing an action in a dialog box, you would like to press a button labeled ‘OK’, or ‘Close’ perhaps. When faced with a choice of ‘Reset’ or ‘Cancel’ what do you do?




• Random use of icons. The whole point about an icon should be that it triggers an association with the action that follows. Looking at this menu, I can’t imagine how to associate a spade with creditors and a heart with debtors. Why not also have a diamond to represent the general ledger?




• Inefficient windows. My screen is a reasonable size and I may have thousands of accounts to choose from. But the window for account selection is piddling and small and can’t be re-sized.




• Confused information. Here’s a summary of the values in a partially complete general ledger batch. Do the December transactions balance or not? Incidentally, the option to use 2 fixed decimals was selected, so displaying 12 or more, a full floating point number, represents unexpected behaviour.




• Mouse-only input. It’s not possible to operate TurboCASH using only the keyboard, you need to reach for the mouse frequently, causing efficiency to plumet. Mouse use is required to access key input controls in some dialogs, which can’t be reached by pressing the usual Tab key. Also, there are many cases where lack of keyboard shortcuts prevent activation of main command buttons.

Conclusion

The wide functionality of TurboCASH is impressive and good flexibility is afforded by the liberal import/export facilities, grouping codes and reporting options. Even so, the features that it doesn’t have - security, currencies, real multi-user support, etc. - mean that it couldn’t be considered by any other than the smallest of businesses.

Unfortunately, the awful presentation really drags it down: I’m sure I grimace every time I use it. I simply don’t want to spend alot of time struggling with it, moving the mouse around and being hampered by the eratic user interface and lack of attention to detail. More serious than my feelings towards it, poor design is a drag on efficiency. Small businesses, at least as much as larger ones, need to be efficient.

Now, if you don’t mind, I have some uninstalling to do…