Re: Towards a LedgerNPO

[Josh Berkus <..hidden..>]

Chris,

> 1.2 will make this far easier for you.  I will also add the skeleton
> of an en_NPO translation so that people more knowledgable in the
> terminology can add necessary translations.

Hmmm ... what's the schedule on 1.2?  I need to get going on data entry 
right away.   Or will we have upgrade scripts?
 Objects

> Parts could be used, but it would be better to see these as "services"
> which are bought and sold.  You can handle markup automatically this
> way by using a sell price of $1.00 and a purchase price of $0.95 for
> example.

Hmmm .. do we have "services" right now?

> >         Designations also need to be associatable with Users in some
> > fashion, so that specific Users can run reports only on specific
> > Designations.
>
> That will require some custom database extensions.  May require some
> additional generic API's to be created.

I was thinking of using the reporting interface.  Is it possible to 
assocate specific permissions with running specific reports?

> > Transfers:  between bank accounts, and between Designations.
>
> Transfers between accounts is already handled.  Designations might
> require more work.  I would need to understand this requirement more.
> Can you send me some useful scenarios?  I suspect we can make this
> work with existing functionality, but I would want to make sure.

The most common would be this:

Donor gives unmarked donation on Feburary 11th.
I call them to find out what they were donating to.
On March 3rd, I find out that the money was for Debian.  I transfer the 
obligation from SPI General Fund to Debian.

Alternately:
DebConf has some special accounting or legal requirements. They offer to 
kick in extra money to the SPI General Fund to cover these.  So I transfer 
money from Debian::DebConf to SPI General Fund.

> > SPI-Specific
> > ===============
> > SPI claims 5% off the top of any Designated funds Donated to be used
> > for General Overhead.  This should somehow be automatic.   Few other
> > NPOs do this, however.
>
> Again, this could be handled by treating designations as services with
> a purchase price that is $1.00 minus markup and a unit of USD or the
> equivalent.  Again, this could be adapted to other currencies by
> varying the unit, etc.

This sounds interesting.  Fortunately, SPI only needs to support USD.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco