[ZF] BoD meeting minutes 2011-10-19

[Jens Vagelpohl]

On Oct 26, 2011, at 07:18 , jp at nexedi.com wrote:

>> The treasurer has researched the options for buying access to
>> QuickBooks Online. He will do the actual purchase when his 
>> ZF account debit card is issued.
> 
> Please consider using open source ERP5. It is Zope based and includes an accounting package used by quite a few small and very large companies.
> 
> Nexedi can provide a hosted version for free. (using SlapOS, which is a Zope based Cloud operating system and billing platform).


Hi Jean-Paul,

So far we have only looked at QuickBooks Online because it is hosted, backed by a large provider and a quasi-standard. It fulfills several requirements out of the box:

- it's hosted and presumably highly available (the board does not have the expertise and/or people to run this ourselves)

- it conforms to all applicable US tax codes (the ZF is incorporated in the US)

- it supports accounting for foundations and so-called 501(c)(3) non-profit foundations

- it produces output almost any accounting company in the US can easily deal with, or it can be used easily by almost any US accountant if we give him direct access since it's a widely-used standard product. This is very important for us as we seem to constantly deal with accountants that are hard to communicate with. Any solution that minimizes the need to communicate with the accountant is preferred.

- we are sitting on a pile of old accounting files in Peachtree format that must be imported into the chosen accounting system. With QuickBooks we have at least some assurance that such an import can be done.

As I said, due to knowledge and personnel constraints the board needs something that leaves little or no gaps when compared to our requirements, and QuickBooks Online appears to fit the bill. If you believe ERP5 can handle it without extra work on our side we'd be happy to try it instead.

jens

--
Jens Vagelpohl
Member and Secretary, Zope Foundation Board of Directors