Luca 2.5.7 - An Accounting System for Mac OS X Users
Luca is named after Luca Pacioli, a lesser-known Renaissance figure who popularised double-entry book-keeping.
It's written in Objective-C and Cocoa, and can work with a wide range of relational databases.
Features : unlimited levels for Chart of Accounts; easy to drill down to any level of detail; tracks Sales, Purchases, Receivables, Payables; allows partial payment of invoices; allows off-setting between invoices of same account; Billing, Settlement, & Base Currencies can all be different; calculates Forex Gain/Loss; Statement of Accounts and Aging Analysis can be generated at any time; and more.
Luca's Design Objectives
"The task of the accounting profession, in relation to intangible assets and knowledge-based enterprise, is less about counting than it is about giving an account - telling the story of both tangible and intangible assets in meaningful ways, for both managers and markets." - Accounting for Knowledge Management.
The primary aim of an accounting system should be to help its users understand the financial information better. And we believe there's no finer platform for understanding information design than the Mac.
So we're trying to take advantage of all the wonderful user-interface design technology that is available on a Mac to provide Mac users with an inexpensive, easy-to-use accounting system that has most of the standard accounting features (e.g., double-entry, multi-currency, real-time P&L reporting, the ability to drill down and verify the source of any piece of data), and yet is still recognisably Mac-like in concept and navigation.
We take advantage of multiple windows to allow the user to focus on more-manageable pieces of information at a time, while providing the ability to drill down into the details or bring up related information with just one click. And we take advantage of a Cocoa application's ability to keep all its windows synchronised when you make changes in any piece of data.
Luca also exploits the relational nature of the underlying database to allow the user to analyse the data from any angle – for example, by starting at the Profit and Loss Statement and drilling down to the specific transactions that made up an account, or by starting at a specific transaction (say, an invoice) and looking up all the payment transactions, comparing them against the debtor’s credit history.
Luca has been built on very strong foundations. It has an open architecture, which allows users to choose which database they want to use to store the accounting data. Luca works with the SQLite database, by default, but users can choose to use it with MySQL, Oracle, PostgresSQL, or any number of industry-standard relational databases in the market.
Also, Luca is written in Objective-C and can be used as an embedded database in mission-critical applications, e.g., in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or insurance systems.
Therefore, the way we've envisaged it, a user can begin to use Luca in a non-critical, entry-level setting. And we're hoping to make the data entry as streamlined as a Personal Financial Management Tool. Then if Luca proves to be useful, the user can look forward to exploiting the built-in scaleability of Luca's double-entry engine to handle the accounting requirements of even a large scale business.
The schedule for Luca's development is to release a beta version and then a production-quality release, both of which we have done, and then to add features like Inventory and Time Billing, etc.
This downloadable version comes with a bundled SQLite database.
New in version 2.5.7:
• Luca updated to work with Mac OS X 10.4.10
• All the Preference Settings and Utility windows are now consolidated into one single Luca Preferences window :
• Currency display formats and decimal number precision can now be set for individual currencies (e.g., the Japanese yen has no decimal places and you can now set this, as shown below, by setting Max fraction digits to 0)
• Instead of having its own Utility window, you can now check the status of the accounting period (e.g., whether you had closed the accounts for a certain month) in the Periods pane in the Preferences :
• Certain accounts play important roles in the accounting system, e.g., you need to have an account to post Foreign Exchange Gain/Loss amounts to, and you need an account to post the year's Retained Earnings to, and you need to set up Checking Accounts that are linked to your bank accounts. This is now made clearer in the following Preference pane, which you can also use to assign a different account to play the selected role instead (if you had not yet made any postings to that special account) :
• Finally, some changes have been made to Luca's database structure. You can use the following Preference Pane to export the accounting data in Luca's built-in SQLite database to any MySQL 5.0 or PostgreSQL 8.1 database for which you have database creation rights. And you can use it also to upgrade an older Luca database, if you are already a Luca user :
• To update an older MySQL database, re-import it back into LucaDB, the built-in SQLite database, using the second button shown above. And then Export it back into MySQL. That should effect the database change. (But remember to back up the older MySQL database first).
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
System support:
PPC/Intel
For more information, visit:
http://cutedgesystems.com/software/luca/
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
|
|
|
|
| |