Accounting System for Winforms / SQL Server applications
If you were going to write a vertical market C# / WinForms / SQL Server application and needed an accounting "engine" for it, what software package would you chose ?
By vertical market, I mean the application is intended to solve a particular set of business problems, not be a generic accounting application. Thus the value add of the program is the 70% of non-accounting related functionality present in the finished product. The 30% of accounting functionality is merely to enable the basic accounting needs of the business.
I said all that to lead up to this: The accounting engine needs to be a royalty-free runtime license and not super expensive. I've found a couple C#/SQL Server accounting apps that can be had with source code and a royalty free run time for $150k+ and that would be fine for greenfield development funded by a large bankroll, but for smaller apps, that sort of capital outlay isn't feasible. Something along the lines of $5k to $15k for a royalty-free runtime would be more reasonable. Open-source would be even better.
By accounting engine, I mean something that takes care of at a minimum:
- General
- Ledger
- Invoices
- Statements
- Accounts Receivable
- Payments / Credits
Basically, an accounting engine should be something that lets the developer concentrate on the value added (industry specific business best practices / processes) part of the solution and not have to worry about how to implement the low level details of a double entry accounting system.
Ideally, the accounting engine would be something that is licensed on a royalty free run-time basis.
Suggestions, please ?
Answer
@Craig I know this may not be an exact answer to your question, but honestly what your asking for is not that complex to develop. Double entry book keeping is of itself a pretty simplistic data transformation model. All you need is a table with accounts, and tables for journals and ledgers. Writing code to move entries between those tables would take a couple days at most to write and test. In my experience, most accounting systems are prime markets since most business core operations rely on them, and so they will be expensive. I would recommend hiring someone on contract to write the core functionality if you are unable to.