VOTE: QuickBooks Implementation Support

[Dave Velzy]

The finance committee has determined that our best use of time is to hire some expert setup guidance from an actual QuickBooks Pro Advisor. We can hire a local QB pro with lots of experience in Non-Profits using QB for $55 / hour. Her estimate for the time needed is 2 to 5 hours. Rounding up to $300 will cover contingencies.

Once we get past the set up we can maintain QB.

Dave Velzy
Hive13 Board Member

[Brad Walsh]

I vote YES

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Thanks,

Brad

[Jim Dallam]

I vote YES

JimD

On Aug 24, 2021, at 6:55 PM, Brad Walsh <br...@hive13.org> wrote:



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[Tim Yelvington]

Yes

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[Dave Velzy]

I vote Yes. 

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Dave Velzy
Hive13 Board Member

dve...@hive13.org
513-410-6174

[Dave B.]

Quickbooks is one of the most heinous pieces of software I've had to deal with on a somewhat regular basis.  It is also ubiquitous.  I assume alternatives have been explored?  It always seems like quickbooks is the best piece of shit software there is for smaller organizations.

-D

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[Dave Velzy]

QB wins the software selection. It is widely used, flexible and discounted to nonprofits through TechSoup.

I suspect that one of the more heinous aspects of QB is double entry bookkeeping.

It seems to be an offence to engineering efficiency, but is really a way to assure error free accounting.

At issue is the flexibility of QB and the best way to transition from excel to QB, including a chart of accounts.

Dave Velzy
Hive13 Board Member
dve...@hive13.org
513-410-6174

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[Dave B.]

My issues with Quickbooks are primarily architectural/IT/supporting it.  It's heinous as a shared application.  Having multiple people at different locations interacting with the same dataset is challenging.  its flat file database limits scalability in multiple user situations severely.  It's built like it was 2001 not 2021.  As long as people are always working on finances on one PC and not trying to collaborate or work on things independently, it's fine.

this is my experience supporting my CPAs who use both "normal" Quickbooks (for liaising with clients) and Quickbooks Pro Series (internally).

-Dave

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[Dave Velzy]

We have a 5 user QB online version which supports online integration. Seemingly solving many of those issues. I did explore QB desktop and rejected it for your reasons. 

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[john.o...@gmail.com]

I vote yes. 

Who is on the finance committee? I found this page which mentions committees but does not list them or their members. 

John

[Dave Velzy]

John, Not to dodge the question, but the action is on SLACK at #finance.

Dave Velzy

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[Paul]

Committees are still in their infancy. During the last board meeting we initiated the following committees:

• Outreach
• Technology
• Finance
• Operations
  

Since we are still working on starting up the committees a lot of documentation still needs to be done. Thanks for pointing out the Governance page, that will go on the list of pages to update.

At this time, the home page for the wiki ( https://wiki.hive13.org/view/Main_Page ) has a new section heading labeled 'Committees' with links to pages for each committee. Again, these committees were just launched and many of the pages are just rough drafts at this point. Ideally, I would like it if eventually each committee had a full documentation of its members on those wiki pages, but that has not been done yet.

I know the Outreach committee discussions can be found in the #outreach slack channel and finance is in #finance. I am not aware if the 'Operations' or 'Technology' have dedicated slack channels at this time.

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[jsiko...@gmail.com]

yes

[Dave Schwinn]

I vote YES on this with the faith/expectation that this will lead quickly to a true implementation of QB to manage our finances and that there will be a demonstration to the membership (Tuesday talk?) to show how we are using it and what benefit it brings us.

[Kate Cook]

YES

[Chris Hodapp]

I vote yes.

[Ryan Anderson]

I vote yes

[Rob Wetterer]

Yes. 

Thank you,

Rob 

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Thanks, Rob

[Drew Weller]

yes

-Drew Weller

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[Dave Schwinn]

John Clark wrote: "This is a large amount of money and from what I have seen in the finance committee, finances are a lot tighter than the Open Finance part of our website would indicate. We may have to cut back on some other things to do this. But I think it's worth it from a safety standpoint."

This is exactly what I am hoping that our QuickBooks implementation will address.  We need to be able to have accurate, transparent, real-time and forecast views of our finances.  We are playing fast and loose with votes right now and our members are counting on our financial reports to be in order in order to make their decisions.  It's not cool to assure prospective voters that we can afford something based on stale and incomplete data when the finance committee themselves are saying that the picture isn't that rosy.  The Quickbooks implementation MUST bridge this gap.

[Kevin McLeod]

All the up-to-date financial information is available to anyone who cares to look at it.  The finance website is a once-a-month report, but it's just one tool we have (that honestly is pretty nice). 

Jim does an EXCELLENT job of keeping the day-to-day finances up to date and easily readable in these spreadsheets: Votes and  Warden/MRO budget.  Both are easily found on the wiki, under the Finances section on the main page.  Additionally, Jim has always answered any questions I have messaged/emailed to him about the finances VERY thoroughly, always responding within a few days.

I don't say this to try and persuade people against supporting this QB effort, if that will make people's lives easier, let's do it.  The reason I point these things out is because people regularly claim that the information isn't available now, which is just NOT true.  All the information needed to make evaluation about our organization's financial situation is freely available with minimal effort to all our members, and many of us have made efforts to generate forward looking budgets including all aspects of our cashflow, including planned large purchases, unplanned impulse buys, warden budgets, fixed expenses, etc. several of them can be found quickly just by searching this mailing list, or searching slack (most recent one is in the #finance channel).

QB will make it easier on our leadership to keep track of expenses and budgets, and it will make it easier to generate reports to share the state of our finances, but I firmly believe that people's willingness to actually LOOK for the information will be the roadblock that makes people feel like there is a lack of transparency or planning.  That's the case now, and it will continue to be the case with QB.

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[Heath Blandford]

This vote has passed unanimously.