Scope of this phase of npoacct

[Glen Whitney]

Just another thought about how the current focus of npoacct might 
possibly fit into the larger eventual project, to add to Daniel P's 
excellent comments about the overall workflow of which reimbursement 
requesting is one step:

At its core, a reimbursement request is essentially just (one type of) 
an Accounts Payable (A/P) journal entry (or probably more accurately a 
proposed A/P journal entry that needs to be reviewed/approved by some 
other agent before being added to the ledger). So I just wanted to put 
my two cents in that the current module should be developed with the 
possibility/desire in mind that it can be or grow into the full A/P 
module for the "ultimate npoacct". I don't see anything much 
particularly "extra" about reimbursement requests as opposed to other 
A/P entries on the one hand, or anything much needed for general A/P 
entries that is irrelevant to reimbursement requests. In both settings, 
you need (at some point) to classify the expense as to fund, account, 
and cost center; you need to create a valid (proposed) journal entry; 
you need payee information; and you need to attach documentation. 
Ultimately, a sufficiently easy-to-use reimbursement request module with 
robust validation of the request and facile means to perform the 
classification would create journal entries requiring no bookkeeper 
modification, only approval by an authorized reviewer, prior to entry in 
the ledger. Moreover, I don't see any roadblock to that same module 
being appropriate for an actual bookkeeper (who has authorization to add 
journal entries without review) to enter invoices, contractual payments, 
and other such A/P entries.

Hope this perspective is helpful,  Glen
---
Glen Whitney
Treasurer, National Museum of Mathematics
http://momath.org


brett at sfconservancy.org wrote:
> You asked about the scope of this work in another e-mail. For version 1,
> I think our top priority is the submission process. The goal of the
> system should be to reduce the amount of back-and-forth required for
> people to submit reimbursement requests that have all the necessary
> documentation. This saves time for both submitters and bookkeepers, and
> it’s relatively self-contained. Once that’s done, though, I agree it
> makes sense to look at some of the other areas you named, letting
> organizations track the request through other stages of the lifecycle.