Robert, this is perhaps a ?how long is a piece of string? question. :classic: Accounting, and for that matter enterprise software, or customer relationship management, or distribution or manufacturing, or whatever... packages chosen depend very much on the type of business that you are trying to computerize. Forgive the long post, I can write books on this subject.
A large factor is cost. Another factor is skill level of those that are going to be working with the software. And then for us there are the different currencies.
Language - I do not know if your accounting has to be in Spanish by Law, but modern and correctly chosen software has more than one language set, usually as an option when buying. Here we usually use both Spanish and English, and usually on establishing a customer/vendor in the software, you can configure the software to print statements, invoices in the language of choice - very very flexible. Further than that, you can display very quickly your accounting in English or Spanish, and then print in the language of choice. With modern software, language is not a problem, you can do what you want if you have the ability to work with language sets. We often work with international businesses, and frequently have a 3-language requirement - one language in Europe, one here in the DR and then English.
For multi-currency, it becomes a little more complicated. Some software have well developed multi-currency modules, others are not so good. A good software package should give you the same flexibility in displaying and working in multi-currency, as in the languages that I described. So, you could look at your accounts in pesos, or in dollars, or in euro?s, depending which modules you purchased. This takes some real skill in setting up charts of accounts to fulfil all these purposes.
On the accounting side, we work with the gamut from QuickBooks to Peachtree to Mass90 to Solomon to Macola to Baan to Great Plains, JD Edwards and in some years past, PeopleSoft (now gone), SAP and Oracle Apps. We now run run Simply Accounting for ourselves. All of these have strenghts and weaknesses, and the choice is predicated around what the business would like to accomplish, and the size of the business. Simply Accounting works real well for us, because we can send invoices in many languages, and run our expense side in Pesos and our income side in Dollars. Our P&L and income statement can be displayed in the language of our choice as our Accountant functions just a little better in Spanish.
So, choice of software depends on what the business wants to do, how much they are prepared to spend and how the implementation is designed. One could decide to implement only receivables now, and follow up with payables, for example - if one can handle the issues around balancing the accounts. There are many variables and if one understands these and handles them correctly, the money spent on technology and computerization, should allow the business to grow, without significant incremental costs. There should also be sales, marketing and productivity improvements to enable the business to do better and more business, more profitably. One needs a good focus on what you want to accomplish, when you computerize as it all can spin out of control, very quickly.
In Ken's case, perhaps there would not be the requirement for better and more business, but very definitely, for productivity and accuracy improvements. With successful automation and computerization, many other needs quickly show themselves. Perhaps to use Ken's Condos as an example, they would want to do on-line bookings for people who rent their condos. Then the basic question of ?accounting software? gets more complicated as now you want your software to act as a back-end and be integrated as an internet application. A skillful consultant should help clarify the current requirement, as well as the future requirements and then should help build an affordable way to get there.
The software consultants that we work very well with (in fact, we train their new consultants) is out of Santo Domingo and their name is Sistemas de Gesti?n. The sales person there is Cristina Bermudez and she is very sweet and very competent. They work only with Navision on the Software side. We work with them on the larger implementations and on the more difficult aspects where their consultants are not experienced. From Richard?s electronic engineering and networking background, we usually do the hardware and network specs, and see that the topology is designed and installed correctly.
I would not like to mention our Accounting Consultant?s name here on the board without asking her. She works for us on a contract basis, and we?ve trained her as well. Very competent lady and a CPA. I would pass the contact information on privately.
So, finally, I cannot recommend anything off the bat, without knowing the business requirements. Generally, in the DR, you should look for something that is multi-language and multi-currency, you should make sure that you not only meet today?s need, but the needs into the future, and you should select software from a reputable company, and have good consultants assist you with a business driven implementation. And to close, apologies for this long lecture... :classic:
