Financial Software/Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15 - Revision history

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2017-10-16T08:34:11Z

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2017-10-16T07:26:44Z

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BobJonkman: BobJonkman moved page KWNPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15 to Financial Software/Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15: Standard hierarchy

2017-10-16T07:22:42Z

BobJonkman moved page KWNPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15 to Financial Software/Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15: Standard hierarchy

BobJonkman: BobJonkman moved page NPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15 to KWNPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15: Better branding

2017-02-14T05:01:59Z

BobJonkman moved page NPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15 to KWNPSA Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15: Better branding

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2016-09-03T20:58:47Z

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2016-09-03T20:55:23Z

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New page

(Go to [[NPSA Past Events]])

Event notice: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/
Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445

== Financial Software ==

* What financial software does your organization use?
* How do you migrate between software?
* What considerations do you factor in?
* How do you support this software?

=== Announcements ===

* Upcoming meetings? Fold the group?
** Free software for nonprofits

* What do we want out of the group?
** Proselytize free software? How do we get others to adopt free software?
** What makes people use free software vs proprietary?
* Hiring policies. Windows people are replacable?

* Recruitment drive?

=== Financial Software ===

* It was difficult to get accounting software for Linux without paying a fortune.

* We should be concerned about financial software
** Writing different interfaces (eg for batch jobs) is difficult

* Sysadmins usually do not decide this software. Accountants do.
** There are specific needs for payroll, HST, auditing
** There is a high learning curve

* Brendan uses SAGE because of payroll
** Quickbooks requires a service to deal with payroll
** Personally Brendan uses GNUCash

* NewViews
** hierarchical accounting that looks like a spreadsheet
** It was made for DOS and Windows
** It has a high learning curve
** TWC moved from the DOS version to Windows

* People at banks prefer correctness over efficiency

* Brendan keeps tracks of accounts for several nonprofits
** They were both using some ancient DOS program
** They migrated their infrastructure to Access databases
** They have multiple systems that have to manually reconcile things?!!!??!!?!!

* It is possible to use TeX as an accounting system
** With spreadsheets as input
** Who else maintains this?

* Why can't some Drupally solution come in and take over this space?
** There are consulting companies: eg http://www.parit.ca/

* The core of financial software are:
** Sales
** Financial transactions
** Different accounts

* The non-cores:
** Reports to funders
** Payroll

* (ObTopic) Is the cloud going to eat everyone's lunch?
** Freshbooks is on all the podcasts

* Integrating with banks is not so easy with GNUCash
** You also have to make sure the cheques have been written correctly

* How about hledger/ledger?
** https://gitlab.com/egh/ledger-autosync
** http://captin411.github.io/ofxclient/

* Why can't this all be federated?
** IIF : Intuit Interchange Format (proprietary)
** OFX : open standard used by Microsoft Money : http://www.ofx.net/
* Not an API thing?

* Companies vary in what their expenses are and their categories?

* In publishing:
** There is some key information in invoices
** People need to respond to invoices from printers
** Different industries have come up with their own standards (EDI)
** EDI: Electonic Data Interchange
* Used for Business to Business transactions
** Banks have worked out how to exhange data amongst themselves

* In libraries: somebody wrote http://www.libraryelf.com/Default.aspx that requires you to give your credentials, and it tells you when your books are due.

* Companies decide WHEN to pay invoices to maximize their cash flows
** If you pay early then maybe you get a discount
** Can computers help with some of these problems?
** You favour certain relationships over others

* Quickbooks works under Linux using WINE?

* Studio Tax and UFile will work for tax returns in WINE
** http://studiotax.com/en/

=== Considerations ===

* What people know
** People like their Word and Excel
** Migration costs are very high -- there has to be lots of benefit

* There are a bunch of updates to payroll and HST
** The software is always under development

* Upgrade costs are very high -- once you make a choice you are kind of stuck

* Accounting software needs to be customized to the particular needs of the organization

* Internal formatting is different from reports
** If internal structure is good then maybe making add-ons is feasible

* Humans will have to input most of the transactions?
** But there are point of sales
** Accountants need to verify the receipts
** Robust interfaces are important to avoid input errors

* Can the bookkeepers use the software?
* Does the software interface with the services (ADP) that the organization uses?

* What are the security implications of data breaches?
** Information leakage about things?
** Corporate surveillance? Future products?
** Know what your prices are?
** Know what different employees are paid?
** Medical/dental data

* Maybe you can't have plugins because that has the potential of violating integrity
** Can't proper transaction logging fix this?

* You close books at the end of the fiscal year
** This freezes accounts

* https://sfconservancy.org/npoacct/

=== Migration ===

* Take an end of year fiscal snapshot
* Move the summary to the new program

* Quickbooks will let you upload your desktop information to the cloud
** But you can't get the data back!
** Maybe the competitors will let you upload to THEIR clouds
** But Quickbooks does not support backwards compatibility on the desktop either

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 ; Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445
-=== Questions ===
+==== Questions ====
 * What financial software does your organization use?
 * How do you migrate between software?
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 * How do you support this software?
-=== Announcements ===
+==== Announcements ====
 * Upcoming meetings? Fold the group?
 ** Free software for nonprofits
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 * Recruitment drive?
-=== Meeting Notes ===
+==== Meeting Notes ====
 * It was difficult to get accounting software for Linux without paying a fortune.
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-==== Considerations ====
+====== Considerations ======
 * What people know
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 * https://sfconservancy.org/npoacct/
-==== Migration ====
+====== Migration ======
 * Take an end of year fiscal snapshot

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 : Event notice: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/
 : Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445
 <span style="font-size:x-large;">'''Financial Software'''
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 * What considerations do you factor in?
 * How do you support this software?
 === Announcements ===

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	** Maybe the competitors will let you upload to THEIR clouds		** Maybe the competitors will let you upload to THEIR clouds
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-Event notice: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/
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 * What financial software does your organization use?

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	Event notice: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/		Event notice: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/
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	Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445		Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445