Bob, > It seems that we really need a good free software general purpose > accounting system, and then we can integrate our donor management > systems with it in a very tight manner (i.e. by sharing the > database), rather than less tight manners (export/import files or > manual dual data entry). Possibilities:
That would be ideal, but currently isn't practical because such a thing doesn't exist. Designing a successful accounting system which could be used equally well for NPOs as for retail businesses would be a truly monumental task, a task no *proprietary* software company has succeeded in accomplishing. Trying to design a general accounting system which works for everyone is like trying to build a VM which works for all programming languages. You can only do it by imposing extreme limitations. It shows that the proposal doesn't understand the differences between how accounting works for different types of businesses. If we target an accounting system specificially for donation-funded nonprofits, we have some chance of actually creating it. > *) GNU Cash --- I believe they're moving to a client/server model, > which would be perfect for this kind of integration. The donor > management system could read and write directly in the GNU Cash > database, based on a common understanding of the schema. That's a surprise since GnuCash dropped their database integration 2 years ago. Historically, gnucash has not been a real accounting system, and I think that significant work would be required to build it into one, more work than required for other systems. > *) Quasar --- This was formerly released under GPL, but no longer. I > have access to a GPL version of the code, which I believe would be > perfectly legal for us to fork. It's a very significant program, > written in C++/Qt I believe. The company in general has been moving > toward point of sale systems. Not familiar with that one. If it's been abandoned by its creator, though, I don't really think we collectively have the energy to salvage it. The most promising systems have been in the realm of ERP. However, ERP workflow and accounting is significantly different from NPO accounting, to the point where it's possibly faster to build something from scratch than to adapt. The ERP systems include: LedgerSMB TinyERP OpenBravo xTuple Compiere (and forks) > This kind of integration of a general accounting system with a system > specific to an organization's needs is actually how things worked in > my work on Wall St. as well. We never built accounting systems, we > just integrated with them by reading/writing directly into their > database. I am skeptical of Donor.com's proposal to build their own > accounting system because I've never seen it be done. I've done it. A client needed specialty accounting (legal trust management), existing systems were very painful to adapt, so we wrote one from scatch. > The other problem with accounting in nonprofits is that many > nonprofits are bound by what software their auditors are willing to > use. And that means QuickBooks. I believe that getting nonprofits > to use free accounting software will be a huge challenge for this > reason alone *shrug* If they use it, they use it. I need an accounting system for *me*, and Quickbooks is not adequate for my needs. > Summary: I think our free software resources would be best spent > building up a general purpose accounting system based on client- > server database technology (two or three tier, doesn't matter). I disagree. I think you've dramatically underestimated the effort required to please everyone. -- --Josh Josh Berkus PostgreSQL San Francisco _______________________________________________ software mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.flossfoundations.org/mailman/listinfo/foundations-software
