• Flexibility and Central Management
• Accessibility over the Internet (for some users)
• Data is in a relatively open format
• Integration with other tools
• One of the best accounting options for Linux users.
• Open Source
• A flexible, open framework that can be extended or modified to fit your business.

• Accounts Receivable
  • Track sales by customer
  • Issue Invoices, Statements, Receipts, and more
  • Job costing and time entry for customer projects.
  • Manage sales orders and quotations
  • Ship items from sales orders

• Accounts Payable
  • Track purchases and debts by vendor.
  • Issue RFQ's Purchase Orders, etc.
  • Track items received from purchase orders.

• Budgeting
  • Track expenditures and income across multiple departments.
  • Track all transactions across departments.

• General Ledger

• Inventory Management
  • Track sales and orders of parts
  • Track cost of goods sold using First In/First Out method
  • List all parts below reorder point.
  • Track ordering requirements.
  • Track, ship, receive, and transfer parts to and from multiple warehouses.
• Localization
  • Provide Localized Translations for Part Descriptions
  • Provide Localized Templates for Invoices, Orders, Checks, and more.
  • Select language per customer, invoice, order, etc.
• Manufacturing
  • Track cost of goods sold for manufactured goods (assemblies)
  • Create assemblies and stock assemblies, tracking materials on hand.
• Multi-company/Multiuser
  • One isolated database per company
  • Users can have localized systems independent of company data set.
• Point of Sale
  • Run multiple cash registers against main SQL-Ledger installation.
  • Suitable for retail stores and more.
  • Supports some POS hardware out of the box.
  • Third party add-ons available for more functionality.
• Price Matrix
  • Track different prices for vendors and customers across the board.
  • Provide discounts to groups of customers per item or across the board.
  • Store vendors` prices independent of the other last cost in the parts record.
• Reporting
  • All basic financial statements supported.
  • Customer history, sales data, and additional information can be easily displayed.
  • Open framework allows for ODBC connections to be used to generate reports using third party reporting tools.
• Tax
  • Supports Retail Sales Tax and Value Added Tax type systems
  • Flexible framework allows one to customize reports to change the tax reporting framework to meet any local requirement.

• No payroll module (Payroll must be done manually)
• Some integration limitations
• Further development/maintenance requires a knowledge of a relatively broad range of technologies.

• PostgreSQL
• A CGI-enabled Web Server (for example, Apache)
• Perl with the DBI and DBD::Pg modules
• An operating system which supports the above software (usually Linux, though Windows, MacOS X, etc. do work).
• LaTeX (optional) is required to create PDF or Postscript invoices.

Next: User Account and Database Administration Basics

(First version from: An Introduction to SQL-Ledger by Chris Travers, 2006)