TurboCASH

In these very difficult times, when the economic crisis is staring us boldly in the face, operating a small business can be a very challenging task. All businesses are pressured to be more efficient, more cost-effective, and everyone has become very price-sensitive. For this reason, streamlining business processes has become imperative in ensuring that we are able to process a sale at the right price; thus, there is a very real need to manage purchasing for business wisely. Open source accounting software have been identified as highly effective tools to employ for this purpose as they allow business owners to keep track of all financial transactions without the confusion associated with voluminous paperwork. One such software currently offered in the market is TurboCASH.

Developed by a project team led by South African Philip Copeman, TurboCASH is a free, open source accounting software package, which has been continuously developed and improved on since April 1985, and was finally released for public use in July 2003 under the GNU General Public License. It has been translated into 23 languages and has over 60,000 users to date. It is said to be somewhere between a home finance and an ERP package, since it targets small to medium-sized businesses. The core function of TurboCASH is a General Ledger, which involves posting transactions into accounts and producing financial reports.

TurboCASH is one of the first fully-featured open source accounting applications that targets small businesses. Originally, the program only runs on Windows since it was developed in Delphi; however, developers have since released a version for Linux that runs under Wine and another version that will run on Apple under Crossover is also being developed at this time.

One major criticism of TurboCASH is that it uses Paradox/BDE, which some developers say is slow and outdated. They are pushing developers to switch to any one of the more modern SQL databases instead. TurboCASH developers argue that Paradox/BDE has been proven to work well and has a long record of easy installation and stability in networks of one to five users, which is their primary target market for the software.

Developers boast of its power and flexibility as a small business accounting software. Describing the application as more than just a "home finance" bookkeeping system, it includes functions essential to business management such as a general ledger, full stock control, bank reconciliation, full reporting and analysis, VAT accounting, as well as multi-user and multi-company capabilities, among others. The software is flexible and may be configured for any country or any small business.

Among the TurboCASH features most appreciated by users is the preferential suppliers in stock setup, which allows you to flag a preferred supplier for every item on your pricelist; this, in turn, automatically gives you the option of ordering first from your preferred supplier. The software also has the capability to automatically convert sales invoices to actual purchase orders, which makes it easier for business owners to send orders to various suppliers simultaneously.

TurboCASH is easily downloadable from the developers' website, free of charge. They also offer a free chart of accounts, which may be downloaded for the UK and USA.