Create Accounts Payable

[crossan007]

Create accounts payable for tracking expenses

[dschwen]

I was just about to add this as well. Payable accounts are an essential part for managing a budget. Right now with ChurchCRM we'd have to deploy a separate accounting software, which would mean duplicating the effort of entering revenues.

[crossan007]

@dschwen Yes. This is going to be a fairly involved task, as there's not really a framework for fund accounting within ChurchCRM at the moment.

It's something that I need for my church, and will build at some point, but I'm not sure how quickly that will happen.

As a stop-gap, what would you think of an export of the deposits as QFX/OFX?

[dschwen]

Yes QFX/OFX output would be a great fix for the mean time.

[crossan007]

Working on an OFX Exporter here: https://github.com/crossan007/CRM/tree/feature/export-OFX-Deposits

Not ready for primetime yet, but it presents an OFX for a single deposit with a total of the deposit for each fund.

Let me know if you think there's anything else that should go into an OFX file.

[dschwen]

Yeah, not bad. The <DTSERVER> tag should probably contain the timestamp the export was made though.

[crossan007]

@dschwen how strict is the OFX format for the DTSERVER tag? I haven't really done much with OFX files before. Thoughts on my latest commit?

[crossan007]

See Pull request #66

[dschwen]

Yeah, looks good. I don't think this would be a format violation, but some software might use that field to order transactions, who knows.

[crossan007]

See Pull Request #76

[crossan007]

Let's leverage some of the work done in the GNUCash project (with regard to schema and layout). I use that app personally, and it's great - I only wish it was web based.

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/SQL

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/images/8/86/Gnucash_erd.png

[dschwen]

I use Gnucash, too, but I have to say that reimplementing it as a webapp within CRM is pretty much a lost cause in my opinion. One big thing for us is entering payroll data to get the data for the 1099 forms, another one is making the annual budget. I enter all checks written and payments received there. For us to give up on Gnucash there'd be a lot to implement in CRM. If one single thing is not working as well as in GC it would still mean using two separate systems.

[crossan007]

I'm wondering if there's either

1. A way we could start a separate "web GNU Cash" project, and "composer" include it in CRM.
2. Find some similar project with a compatible API and include it in CRM

Ultimately, I'd love to see a consistent interface in CRM for A/P and general fund accounting. I know it'll be a lot of work, but I think the reward would be good.