The Adempiere Show - The story

Let me first tell the story so far.

on 02/2006, I firmly decided to invest in a proper software to sort out the catastrophic management of my small business. The situation was getting dramatic:

Accounting:
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Almost 05 months of delay for legal V.A.T quarterly declarations. Why ? Takes lot of work. We don't know which paper is where.

Finances:
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Nobody knows where situation is. No proper analytical accounts held. Why? Takes too long to find and gather the data.

Administration:
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Freelance secretary is costing a fortune. She receives and handles lot of incoming mails. Lots of reminders of providers we didn't pay 'cause we have'nt been able to process their first mails.

Moreover, she types all invoices with spreedsheets and asks questions about what to bill, who what's his address again? What's his open items balance?

Sales:
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Probably good and saving life. Still we sell with loss sometimes, because of dramatic fluctuations between USDs & EURs. With sharp margins, we just cross fingers the deals we're making are still good.

Controls:
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Money coming in, lots of money leaving and bank is calling for overdrafts controles. What's left for us?

And so on, ... I have read somewhere that 70% of bankrupties are managed by engineers. And 80% of sucessful companies are managed by Financials.

I don't know much aboug finances, accounting, administration. I'm an electronics engineer recycled into IT and facing some issues that I don't always undertand. Not even enough to understand th accountant mumbles.

So, I am just hoping that I will find a software that allows me to get all data fixed in one and get rid of all this time wasted searching info here and there.