Open Source Bookkeeping and Accounting Software in PHP - Demo - Wiki - Download - Forum - Development
I’m am utterly thrilled that today I sent out my company invoices entirely using PBooks! I only had to load up Quickbooks to find an address that was missing from my CRM database.
Invoice functionality still has a long way to go, but now that I’m able to use PBooks, I’ll be able to save a lot of time, time that I can dedicate to extending and improving PBooks!
PBooks 0.07 has been tagged and branched, but I didn’t package it up as a tarball. I’m going to hold off on doing that until later. If you would like to try out the latest version, please use subversion.
If you have any questions about how to install PBooks or use Subversion, feel free to register in our forums. All are welcome!
The last step I mention there is the one I’m interested in examining. Does it make sense to combine all the business processes into a single set of gates? How difficult would that be, and what would be gained?
First off, the retrieval of entry metadata may be better off combined. Right now they all do the same thing, but reference different XML document nodes. To do this, I’ll have to rename the node in the retrieval of business object entries, and at the moment I can’t think of a reason not to do that. If I do that, I’ll then have to update the XSL which references it as well (like the business object forms, i.e. check_form.xsl), and also any other queries.
If I were to go this far, I might as well consolidate the retrieval of all business object entries as well. But actually that wouldn’t work at all because those queries get specific metadata to ease the creation of the table view. In other words, specializing the queries to retrieve business object entries saves a boatload of complex XSL.
I just changed over the checks metadata retrieval query and it was too hard, actually just took a few minutes. Now on to the rest: invoices, deposits, and bills.
I’ve been working away like crazy on PBooks lately, and I’m closing in on a release of 0.07.
I’m not relying on the trac roadmap right now, as I think the planning can get a little bit ahead of the functionality with software, so I’m using the software and reviewing the code to let my mind analyze everything. In this process, I’ve been adding a lot of source code comments and its already helping me be more productive when I need to dive into a file and get my bearings.
Its funny, because adding a lot of comments makes the file seem messy, but its much easier to understand. The more I add comments, the more comfortable I’ll get with them and I’m sure I’ll find my own style.
There isn’t anything groundbreaking in changes from 0.06, but several obscure bugs have been squashed, as well as a lot of minor but important interface improvements. The code base is also a lot more consistent.
I’ve also been updating and cleaning up the tests a lot. After the addition of a few business processes to PBooks, I realized the need to keep the tests organized and consistent, so we can keep up with testing new functionality as it unfolds.
Which reminds me, one of the remaining tasks before a 0.07 release is the addition of Purchase Orders to PBooks. So I’ll get started on that now!
Flot is a jQuery extension which uses the canvas drawing method of javascript. I’ve added their example test to the PBooks code base to try it out:
http://www.pbooks.org/demo/index.php?nid=flot-test
Cool, huh? I can’t wait to start feeding some financial data into those charts! 
UPDATE February 20, 2008: I’ve removed the flot test from the code base for now to focus on other priorities.
I’m pleased to report the release of PBooks 0.06. This release includes several bug fixes, feature improvements, and lots of code cleanups. One of the more significant improvements is the inclusion of the jQuery and tablesorter javascript libraries. We’ve integrated these to make the ledger paginate and sort like never before.
You can download the new version here on the PBooks downloads page.
Latest Comments
RSS