At 05:00 PM 8/30/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Just a couple of thoughts from left field-
>1. Is there a chance that you could convince your client not to enter
>identical information in Quickbooks? I strive to insist that a system
>be designed to avoid duplicate entries, including exportable
>duplication. Ebase can summarize all donations for a day, week or month
>to match deposits to the bank that need to be entered in Quickbooks. Is
>there a sound reason for entering the details in Quickbooks?
This did come up in our discussions, yes, and they did have a few reasons for not
wanting to do it this way. One, they like the security of having the detailed
donations list redundantly stored. Two, they do fund accounting, which means that
time-based batch accounting won't work for them. They could, of course, aggregate by
fund, but I think in many cases that this would leave them with almost as much detail
as if they just imported transactions. It would also mean that the Ebase data entrant
(is that a word? there needs to be one if that's not it..) would have to get all of
the fund numbers right, because the accountant would not be able to verify the fund on
a check-by-check basis.
>2. If details must be entered in Quickbooks, perhaps it would be easier
>to enter first in Quickbooks and export to ebase via an Excel
>spreadsheet.
I side with Walt on this one. So much more data needs to be put into Ebase that I
think it would be quite difficult to expect Quickbooks to be able to produce it.
Matt
>
>Gerry A Hodgson
>Richmond BC Canada
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>604-271-9877
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Matthew Scholtz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: August 30, 2001 4:48 PM
>To: TechRocks Support
>Subject: [support] Re: Ebase and QuickBooks
>
>
>Hey Jonathan,
>You make some excellent points. Comments below:
>
>>I should add that you may need to think through some processes, like
>>what
>>happens when a Payment is entered for a new name in the Names database.
>
>>Presumably, a new customer would need to be generated in Quickbooks,
>along
>>with (or prior to) adding the payment information.
>
>Right, and how would you know whether they existed in QBP already or
>not? I'm thinking that after every input into QBP you might want to do
>an export of a customer list. Then in turn, the routine that prepares
>the IIF file could check that list to see if a new customer needs to be
>generated. Does this sound feasible?
>
>>Also, if data has already been put into Quickbooks, can one assume that
>
>>all
>>the information that should match between Ebase and Quickbooks was
>entered
>>without any typos? Of course, this is one reason to automate things,
>but it
>>could take some work to find and correct data that doesn't match.
>
>Absolutely true. And I'm thinking that unless you want to get very
>involved in trying to program in synchonization, you'll have to assume
>that any post-import corrections will have to be made in both programs.
>My current client seems to accept this, and feels that errors are rare
>enough that the time saved on data entry will still be more than worth
>it.
>
>>I suspect that synchronization issues, although not insurmountable, are
>>likely to be a headache, initially.
>>
>>Jonathan Sibley
>
Matthew Scholtz
Database and Non-Profit Technology Consultant
Bellingham, WA
Also associated with NPower, Seattle
www.npower.org
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