Parsley Sponsors
These organisations are sponsoring the development of Parsley:
Project Parsley
Parsley is a project to develop a free, open-source, cross-platform
accounting and book-keeping system for very small, small and perhaps even
medium sized enterprises, providing a free realistic and practical (though very
different) alternative to Sage.
It is very much a work-in-progress, and is not yet suitable for real-life use
Parsley and Sage
Sage is a UK company producing first-class
Windows-based accounting software for businesses of all sizes. It holds a virtual monopoly* in this market, in the UK at least,
and is consistently profitable - as monopolies tend to be!
Parsley aims to challenge Sage's monopoly*, but Sage needn't be worried any time soon: their software works, ours doesn't.
| Feature |
Parsley |
Sage |
Rosemary |
Thyme |
| Works? |
Not Yet |
Very Well |
n/a |
n/a |
| OS |
Any |
Windows Only |
n/a |
n/a |
| Web-based? |
Yes |
No |
n/a |
n/a |
| Price |
Free |
£100 up |
n/a |
n/a |
| Payroll? |
No |
Extra |
n/a |
n/a |
* Well, it's by far the largest business operating in the market, but many organisations don't use it.
Lots of small businesses do their accounts on Excel, or the back of an envelope, and larger ones
tend to use products like Oracle Financials, customised for their operation, or their own legacy COBOL based systems
which are just too ingrained to change. Probably.
Platosys Needs Partners for Parsley
If you are a Java programmer with time on your hands, or an organisation employing Java programmers
with time on their hands, you could do worse than join the Parsley project on Sourceforge.net. We need all
the help we can get!
Alternatively, or in addition, you cold always just:
Sponsor the Parsley Project
Parsley depends on sponsors to continue its development. Without sponsorship, its
developers can only work in their spare time and for free; with sponsors, they get paid for
their work on the project.
Why it's worth sponsoring Parsley
If you run a small business, and/or you are an accountant or a book-keeper who provides
services to small businesses, Parsley will make your life easier - even if you usually
use Sage! The competition from Parsley will improve Sage.
What you get from sponsorship
-
Influence
-
He who pays the piper etc... There's a private parsley-sponsors mailing list, open only
to sponsors; and the developers will pay more attention to suggestions
there than anywhere else.
-
Kudos (and advertising!)
-
Your name will appear on the list of sponsors - and we'll link through to your website.
We'll put up your logo as well. Give us enough money, and we'll do anything - but it
will take quite a lot to get us to compromise on our principles of openness.
A developer for a day - or a module for ever
You can sponsor a developer to work for a day or more, leaving us to decide the priorities - which,
naturally, we'd prefer - or you can sponsor work to be directed on particular modules.
Design Goals
- Simplicity
- It should be simple and ergonomic to use - data entry should be kept to
a minimum, with as much as possible automated.
- Multi-user
- Book-keeping is the bane of many small enterprises, such as plumbers and builders.
It should be straightforward for a part-time clerical assistant, working
from home if necessary, to do the paperwork and access the system securely
- Real-time reporting
- It should be able to show sales and forecast profitability in near real-time.
T The plumber should be able to relax in the pub at the end of a week confident in
profit rather than confused by cash-flow
- Service-Capable
- It should be adaptable to service provision, so that it could be operated by
a firm of accountants for and on behalf of their clients. Accountants would have
relevant access to accounts, ledgers and reports
- Openly Secure
- It should have an open security model, because there is no security in obscurity.
Open-Book Accounting
Parsley will support, but not compel, open-book accounting. Open-book accounting
is revolutionary, and it will take courage to adopt it. Parsley will let its users
decide how open they want to be, and let them protect confidential information securely
Your contributions welcome
If you would like to suggest other design goals, why not join the Parsley mailing list?
Only Chopped Parsley Available
Join Parsley on SourceForge
But you can join the project on SourceForge.net, and get a login to the
trial servers. Don't go using them for real business work yet!
Development code from Subversion
We run our own Subversion repository and anonymous access is permitted. This is
bleeding-edge, broken, prototype, alpha code. Try it at your own risk. It probably
won't even compile, let alone run on your system; we never said it was ready. But
we do believe in openness
Boox Core Library available
The Boox java library, version alpha 0.3, is available on Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/boox/.
It's not parsely, so much as the compost the parsely is grown on. Sort of. And it's
only alpha too; it's missing a number of important features - including, specifically,
the permissions/access control functionality. Which is really quite important.