Re: Investment Addon

[Luke <..hidden..>]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2011, Chris Travers wrote:

> First I think this is a great idea.  However I have a few questions:

Thanks.:)

> 1)  What segments of users are most likely to benefit from this?

Interesting.  I'm not sure, actually.  Not even sure how you define 
segments, but I'll take a stab.

Any business that stores standby capital in trackable security 
instruments, be they stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or even CDs.
Basically, anyone who stores money or invests money, in a way which can 
not be tracked by holding it in a cash account (savings, money market), 
and applying interest to some income account.

I think this might also apply to certain non-profits, although I'm not 
sure how big a segment that is for us.

To my knowledge, which is admittedly limited, the methods discussed in the 
article I referenced (cost or equity), only apply if you are some sort of 
corporation or corporate-like entity.  It may be that individuals, 
partnerships, and soul pros would have to handle this differently, and 
this would not be a useful module for that class of user, except as a 
tracking device.  I.E. the tracking of events or values might be useful, 
but the resulting asset account would not.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong about how such entities handle these 
things--I've never invested as an individual or similar class, but always 
through corporate-like structures.

> 2)  What new markets would we be able to reach by including such a module?

The most honest answer I can give, is probably none.  This is more of a 
value added concept for existing or future users--I don't really see this 
as a decision point feature for someone.
That said, if it's done well, and the other FOS accounting packages don't 
do something like it, it may be a decision point for someone who 
definitely has the intent to use such a feature extensively.

At the moment, my business, and that of one of my customers, would 
definitely use such a feature, which prompted my proposal of it.

 > Also if there are a significant number of users out there who would
> benefit from it today, it might be possible to spread the effort
> and/or cost around.

I will be very interested in community response to this--how often do 
users in the SMB space, do any kind of investing with free or dedicated 
capital through their businesses which use LSMB?

> If not, then what is the absolute minimum we
> would need to do to make life just a little easier for folks who need
> to track this sort of thing?

I have spent the last two hours going through potential ways to answer 
that question.

The problem seems to be that the absolute minimum, while it will work, is 
not scalable, at least not in the versions I've come up with.  By 
scalable, I should say that it can not be enhanced later, without 
requiring the user to re-input all associated data in a new form.

Whereas the enhanced version, by its very nature, does most of what would 
need to be done for several security classes out of the box.

So, the answer to your question is: I'm working on it.:)

I'll keep playing with different ideas for this until I find one or some 
that work(s).  May have to make some spreadsheets, and let the 
calculations play out with test data, to see what is needed.

Luke