Survey of existing FLOSS accounting systems (was Re: Revitalization of npoacct project; Brett Smith will take over as project lead)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Tim,

Tim Schofield wrote:
> These are precisely the same needs as a for profit organisation.

On this list and also in other venues, there's already been substantial
discussion about the differences in needs, but we're well past the needs
assessment phase of the project.  I know that some charities have been able
to shoehorn existing for-profit accounting systems into their needs (FSF, for
example, has used SQL-Ledger for years).  I've yet to meet anyone in a
charity using these systems, though, who feels it really fits their needs
fully, and that's why we started this project.  For my part, I spent months
trying to make OpenERP and/or Tryton to work for fiscal sponsorship and just
had to give up.  I did the same with SMBLedger.

Generally, I don't think we want to reopen the entire debate on-list about
why Conservancy is trying to adapt a few components from these other systems,
rather than simply taking an existing system as it stands.  Nevertheless, if
there is inaccurate information in the survey in our wiki,
http://npoacct.sfconservancy.org/ExistingProjects/ , please do update the
wiki with more information.

Meanwhile, please note that discussion here, at least for the next few
months, is going to focus specifically on the reimbursement problem.

BTW, I did my own survey (not documented in the wiki, mainly because I found
virtually nothing) of existing code to do that job, so that's among the
reasons that we're focusing on that subproject first.  But, if I missed
something, and as we start to talk more about requirements here, if you know
of a system that does the job we're discussing, please do tell us about it.

Meanwhile, Dave asked for URLs, many of which are already in the wiki, and I
would encourage everyone to keep in the wiki, as many have come by IRC over
the last two years and told me the links in the wiki are useful.

> To answer Dave's question there are a number of libre accounting
> systems that do this

While I don't think discussion about other systems is off-topic -- indeed,
the survey we did in this project was specifically about evaluating other
systems -- I ask that we not derail every thread on this list into a
discussion of what other systems exist and what they do.  We have rarely had
traffic on this list over the last two years, but nearly every thread has
so-degraded, and this seems now a trend.

Perhaps we can designate one email thread about that topic and those that
want to discuss it can follow up on that?
--
   -- bkuhn
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