Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses Software

Software for Membership Tracking and Inventory? 36

Posted by Cliff from the running-a-business-on-free-software dept.
ZeLonewolf asks: "I'm a consultant to a customer who owns two franchises of a fitness gym. The computers they use to keep track of members and inventory run DOS programs written in the early 90's by a company that has long since gone out of business. My customer needs an upgrade badly. Replacement software to keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data, costs $5,000 and up, so a free software solution is desirable. Does GnuCash do the job? Have Slashdot readers successfully set a small business up with Free/Open Software? What software have you had success with?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Software for Membership Tracking and Inventory? More

Software for Membership Tracking and Inventory?

Comments Filter:

  • Cheapskate! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by passthecrackpipe ( 598773 ) * <passthecrackpipe ... m ['l.c' in gap]> on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:34AM (#9212524)
    $5000 for an assumed lifecycle of 3 years comes down to about $137 a month. If your customer can't afford that, especially for what is likely to be a piece of business critical software, he should consider a different line of work. My work consists of helping customers evaluate Free / Open Source Software for businesses, and those that only look at FLOSS because it is free as in beer invariably end up not implementing FLOSS. Those who use FLOSS because of other reasons, such as source code availability etc, usually end up as success stories. Yes, FLOSS is a very powerful tool for the small business market, and my customers range from the 2-man-band kinda organisations, as well as the top of the Fortune 100, but if your business isn't worth an investment of less then $200 a month for your core system, you have to reasses your priorities.....
    • Oh, BTW - forgot to mention it - Compiere [compiere.org] is a really great Open Source package that will probably do what you need, but as it requires an Oracle backend, your customer probably can't afford it.....

    • Re:Cheapskate! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's worth noting that depending on how much inventory they'd do (got a juice bar? want one? sell towles, water, dvd's, knicknacks?) there are other considerations. If's it's just all manual, and there's not that much in the way of flow and storage, maybe that's fine. But a telxon gun or two, and attendant system might have a say in which route their going, and bring in a fair amount of labor saving. Maybe it'd be nice to have a system that automatically reordered very popular items when inventory dipp

    • Re:Cheapskate! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ask Slashdot has the same question about every two weeks: I've got some tightwads who have some obscure need, is anyone giving it away?

      The thing to understand about "free" software is that it tends to focus on generally applicable tools that anyone can use, not verticals -- especially for end-user software. Thus you get dozens of web servers and RDBMSes and very few inventory or HR programs.

      The other thing to understand (since the questioner is probably not a programmer), is that if someone did write a C

      • Re:Cheapskate! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by tha_mink ( 518151 )
        "Ask Slashdot has the same question about every two weeks: I've got some tightwads who have some obscure need, is anyone giving it away? The thing to understand about "free" software is that it tends to focus on generally applicable tools that anyone can use, not verticals -- especially for end-user software. Thus you get dozens of web servers and RDBMSes and very few inventory or HR programs. The other thing to understand (since the questioner is probably not a programmer), is that if someone did write a
    • Any business should pay what it needs to pay for its software, not what you think they can afford.

      So, for a fitness center business with an unknown number of members, and an unknown revenue, with unknown specific business requirements, why is the unknown inventory software worth $5,000?

    • Re:Cheapskate! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:50AM (#9213377) Homepage Journal
      I agree.

      Unless the open source solution exists that is specifically targetted at this vertical market, you are going to spend more than $5000 to customize and configure it.

      The great power of F/OSS software IMO is that it empowers people to solve problems; not necessarily in providing ready made solutions. Proprietary software is, in a sesne, a form of outsourcing: you enter into a legal and financial relationship with an outside company in order to have a problem fixed. Free software allows people charged with solving the problem to take a crack at at it, often for the same amount of effort or less than it would take to get their company to make a decision on a proprietary package.

      If -- you are in a vertical market (a specific type of business with many companies in it); and if technology is not a differentiating factor in your success; and if your market is served by affordable vertical market software; and if you dont' have slack technical resources that can work on getting software at no marginal cost; THEN proprietary software is a no-brainer. Otherwise it may be a some-brainer.

      If -- you are an unique business; or technology is critical to differentiating your business from its competitors; or if there are no vertical market packages for your segment; or if you have technical people spinning their wheels while the decision process grinds on and on: THEN free software is a no-brainer.

      I'd say a gym falls int the prior category. If the $5000 software works at all, even if it is piece of crap writen in Access, it's going to be a better choice than screwing around adapting another piece of software. Eventually, somebody will create a F/OSS solution for this vertical market. Then the story will be different.

    • I agree that F/OSS isn't a panacea, but the article says the vendor for their current application went out of business. Maybe that's made them a little gun-shy. I can easily imagine the customer asking, "Is there any way to make sure this doesn't happen again?" Once they ask, you really ought to start looking to see if anything meets that need.

  • GNU Cash isn't all that extensible.

    Have you looked at commercial database programs? There's lots of open source programs database programs, but they tend to be difficult to use for the end user (you could write a nice php front end for MySQL, but it may be time consuming). Rather, why not try (I shudder to recommend a MS product, but...) Access or the newly released FileMaker Pro 7? I can attest to FileMaker's ease of use (though I'm still on version 6) and its relative performance. Granted, it's not free,

    • Re:It's late and my head hurts (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just by the thumbnail:

      keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data,

      , it's pretty much impossible that you could build a custom system for less than $5K, even if you did it Access and outsourced it to India. Once you get a grasp on the scope of these things, $5K is pretty cheap.
    • So why doesn't somebody make an inventory system/cash that impletements a bunch of computers networked to a server? That way, somebody could get a "real time" invoice of what's there, what got sold, where, and by who?
  • Since I don't know what type of system your customer is running it's hard to suggest a complete solution. But I will say that, if your client is running Windows, you could whip up a fairly robust POS/Inventory system using VB and a MySQL backend. There are/were a lot of POS systems written in VB6 back in the day and you might want to look around at those to see if you could simply extend them to fit your clients needs.

    Also, if your client isn't using barcodes, scanners, etc, you *might* actually be able t

    • "Also, if your client isn't using barcodes, scanners, etc, you *might* actually be able to get by with this using nothing more than a LAMP solution."

      You can use barcodes and scanners and printers and everything with LAMP these days. In fact, it's pretty simple what the the CLI version of PHP. Plus, the cost of development for something simple is fairly low. (~$2500)

      I would switch out the "M" with "PG" but, it's possible.
      • You can use barcodes and scanners and printers and everything with LAMP these days.

        Hmmm, I can see how one could develop a CLI program using PHP and Gtk but how would someone build a web app that can handle barcodes, scanners, and printers? This was something I was looking to do not long ago.

  • GnuCash and BananaPOS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chilltowner ( 647305 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:42AM (#9213003) Homepage Journal

    I ran my software consulting business on GnuCash. It was really pretty great, actually. Once you follow the tutorial and get a handle on basic accounting practices, I was able to handle all my expenses, invoicing, accounts payable/receivable, etc. Good stuff.

    A lot of people kind of react poorly to GnuCash because it isn't a simple checkbook app. In my experience, that's a shame. It CAN be used that way--I run my personal finances on GnuCash, too. But it's powerful enough to run a mid-sized business on.

    If your client is looking more for a POS app, take a peek at Banana POS [bananapos.com]. I don't know that much about it, but it is F/OSS and might be closer to a tracking application than GnuCash.

  • Clubdata on Sourceforge (Score:4, Informative)

    by ear1grey ( 697747 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:06AM (#9213261) Homepage

    The open source Clubdata [sourceforge.net] project might be of interest.

  • Why is an upgrade needed? - other options (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:21AM (#9213469)
    I'm not trying to imply that an upgrade *isn't* needed, but you didn't list a single reason in your question for upgrading. Being an old DOS app is fine if it works. Having no support is fine if you aren't having issues, and haven't in ages. Is the software not doing something he needs? Is it broken?

    If it's doing the job it may be a good idea to keep it. You'll have the benefit of being able to run on practically free hardware, and no migration costs. Plus, whatever new vendor you find may not be a stupid as the company that sold you the previous software, and they might force you into an upgrade cycle, which is practically the only way a software company that targets such a narrow market can stay in business. Is that new software really just $5000, or are there yearly "maintnence" fees? Do they come out with a new version every 6 months?

    Even free software has costs associated with it. It's free as in "freedom," not free as in beer, remember? You're unlikely to find exactly what you need, so how much of your time will you spend building something? How much is it worth to you compared to what you have, and this $5000 option?

    If you decide you really do need something, and you don't want to buy a commercial product, a good option may be to find yourself a freshman year computer science student. After their first year they should have all the skills nescicary to build a simple database application for your membership needs, and they'll likely be availble for 3 more years of cheap support. It may cost you about $5000 in the long run, but it won't be all at once, and you'll get something that's tailored perfectly to your needs. When it's done, perhaps you could release it as free software, so the next guy in your situation doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. I know a few small businesses that do this, and it's worked out quite well for them. Also, I did this for a company when I was in college, and it worked out quite well for me too. I don't recommend having a custom built app handle your financials though...
    • Quite honestly, the $5000 software was the cheapest one we found, and others went $10k and up. But since you ask, here's why an upgrade is necessary:

      Awhile back I upgraded their ancient 486's which we becoming unreliable to some modern hardware. We found that some quirk in the DOS programs only allowed it to work on Windows 9x, and not on 2K or XP. The major problems with the current software is that it gets corrupted very easily. We make tape backups, but it's a pain in the a$$ to work with in Windows
  • I've written inventory software, but there is no chance that it'll ever be free. The reason for that is simply that inventory systems are typically enterprise applications and target LARGE COMPANIES.

    Maybe what you need is Microsoft Access, or perhaps even MySQL and simply manage the data with one of the many front-end GUIs.
  • If your customer is unwilling to spend $5,000 on business-critical software, he's probally unwilling to spend $5,000 on YOU as well.

    A small gym with 350 customers is grossing a minimum of about $170k/year from memberships alone. If he cannot afford a $5,000 capital expenditure, he's out of business within a few months.

  • some options I've seen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by myz24 ( 256948 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:34AM (#9214279) Homepage Journal
    As an IT worker for a YMCA we've recently been looking at software to replace our aging DOS application as well. I've looked at quite a few different packages and I'ved listed them below along with websites. Many of them are YMCA centric but they might still be of help.

    * Aphelion (http://www.aphelion.net)
    * Christensen Computer Company (http://www.cccsoft.com/)
    * Class (http://www.classinfo.com/)
    * CSI (http://www.csisoftwareusa.com/)
    * Daxko (http://www.daxko.com)
    * Finesstri (http://www.finesstri.com/)

    Those are a few that I've found during my search. I've personally seen Aphelion, CCC, Daxko and Finesstri. Daxko's pricing is revenue based where most of the others set a rate on number of users or other factors that might suit a small place well.

  • I'm setting up one of these right now (Score:3, Informative)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @10:10AM (#9214639) Homepage
    I've spent about six months or so repairing a botched installation of Quickbooks (http://www.quickbooks.com) and setting up an inventory and accounting system for a small distribution/wholesale concern. Aside from the fact that QuickBooks was designed by accountants who obviously hate all techies, and despite the additional badness of possessing an inflexible and proprietary back-end with a five- or ten-seat 'concurrent use' limit, Quickbooks possesses the following serious advantages:

    1. Price. A one-year subscription to Quickbooks Pro, including tech support, costs $85 a month, which means that you get the whole accounting package for a little over a grand. (You can cancel your subscription and keep your seats.) That's a steal, especially since I'm computing this in Canadian dollars. :)

    2. QB Pro comes with an SDK, so you can buy third-party extensions to attach your database to ODBC, etc, which mitigates the allergy you might have to proprietariness. Also, people like www.numbercruncher.com have developed very complete sales/invo add-on packages for Quickbooks, which are worth taking a gander at if Quickbooks built-in inventory system is insufficient. (It'll probably be sufficient on its own, however, unless you're doing something weird.)

    3. You really, really don't want to roll your own accounting system. Funny thing is that an inventory system must be pretty tightly integrated with an accounting system in order to work well. (ie. inventory adjustments should alter the accountant's info about what assets you have on hand; double-entry bookkeeping dictates that the difference in the asset account must match an occurrent change in an income account; valuation must be performed by averaging the cost of each order of a given inventory item type; etc.) You don't want your client to get to year-end and then find that his books don't make sense. The IRS and Revenue Canada both hate that sort of thing, and your client will likely pass the hatings on to you. Don't leave him up that particular canal without a gondola pole.

    4. Quickbooks is really easy for end-users to use. Ease-of-use is paramount when you're going to let the minimum-wagers at the counter enter info.

    5. Intuit sells a POS for QuickBooks. Never tried it, but I'm sure it works well.

    6. Quickbooks might be too dinky for your client's business, but that's okay: It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try before you buy. If quickbooks isn't enough, go get $10,000 of AccPac like everyone else.

    7. Message me for more info about what I've seen work and not work.


    • "5. Intuit sells a POS for QuickBooks. Never tried it, but I'm sure it works well."

      Intuit is number 4 on the Gripelog Hall of Shame [gripe2ed.com]. It was number 1, but now the others are worse! That means that Intuit has been voted one of the most abusive computer companies in the world. Do you want them for a business partner?

      I've looked at the hardware sold in a package with the QuickBooks POS. It looks VERY cheap. Anyone have experience with the package?
  • my community food co-op
    has been using this for years now

    linux canada quasar pos [linuxcanada.com]

  • One of my businesses is a retail store and we use the CamCommerce RetailIce POS (that's "Point-of-Sale", wise guys). The cost is $30 for a stand-alone station and it runs on a Windows PC. While I'm not sure if they still do this, the publisher was selling it on EBay for $15 when I bought it.

    RetailIce is a full-featured system that does what you are looking for. We have been using it for almost two years now and it has certainly been very much worth the cost.

    The reason for the price (which basically just c
  • It's called Accounting, any half arsed account package supports repeat billing for fixed lengths of time. Any decent accounting program can handle inventory.

    I don't know where the submitter is getting $5000, in 2hrs you can get Quickbooks or Peachtree up and running to do everything you've mentioned with Nice pretty idiotproof forms and restrict access to everything the people filling out those forms shouldn't have access to.

    Unfortunately no, there is no open source answer to Quickbooks/Peachtree and suc

Slashdot Top Deals

An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.

Close