Difference between revisions of "Financial Software/Meeting Notes for 2016-08-15"
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− | + | ; Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445 | |
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− | Meeting notes: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50064445 | ||
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+ | ==== Questions ==== | ||
* What financial software does your organization use? | * What financial software does your organization use? | ||
* How do you migrate between software? | * How do you migrate between software? | ||
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* How do you support this software? | * How do you support this software? | ||
− | === Announcements === | + | ==== Announcements ==== |
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* Upcoming meetings? Fold the group? | * Upcoming meetings? Fold the group? | ||
** Free software for nonprofits | ** Free software for nonprofits | ||
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* Recruitment drive? | * Recruitment drive? | ||
− | === | + | ==== Meeting Notes ==== |
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* It was difficult to get accounting software for Linux without paying a fortune. | * It was difficult to get accounting software for Linux without paying a fortune. | ||
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− | === Considerations === | + | ====== Considerations ====== |
* What people know | * What people know | ||
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* https://sfconservancy.org/npoacct/ | * https://sfconservancy.org/npoacct/ | ||
− | === Migration === | + | ====== Migration ====== |
* Take an end of year fiscal snapshot | * Take an end of year fiscal snapshot | ||
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** Maybe the competitors will let you upload to THEIR clouds | ** Maybe the competitors will let you upload to THEIR clouds | ||
** But Quickbooks does not support backwards compatibility on the desktop either | ** But Quickbooks does not support backwards compatibility on the desktop either | ||
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+ | Back to: [[{{BASEPAGENAME}}]] | ||
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+ | [[Category:KWNPSA Meeting Notes]] |
Latest revision as of 03:34, 16 October 2017
Contents
Financial Software
- Date
- Monday, 15 August 2016
- Event Announcement
- http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/
What kinds of financial software are appropriate for nonprofits? What does your organization use? What work is involved in supporting it?
Questions
- 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?
Meeting Notes
- 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?
- 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
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
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
Back to: Financial Software