Re: [Fsfe-uk] UKFSN makes a profit

[ian]

On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 16:30, Jason Clifford wrote:

> 1. Lots of people continue to state that one area where Free Software is 
> poor is business accounting (financial) and it's true but not for the 
> reason a lot of people put forward. The software does exist for small 
> companies. The reason, in my view, is that things such as tax and paye 
> tables are not available and the code for them not written.

Yes, we are looking for a Sage replacement at the moment. We need
something our accountants will recognise for the audit.

> This is something that can be addressed without much expense at all. 
> Writing the code to handle the data is fairly straight forward. Getting 
> the data and publishing it in a timely manner is the thing and it need not 
> cost a lot of money.

> I suggest that affs takes responsibility for getting an accountant to 
> produce the data each year and pays for it out of the money ukfsn raises. 

Or perhaps enter a partnership with a firm of accountants to do it. The
first ones that do stand to gain a niche market for new customers who
want to use free software and so will use accountants that will support
it.

> So long as the data is available in an easy to parse format it can then be 
> processed into whatever structure each accounting package requires.

> It could be done by anyone however having the data prepared by a qualified 
> accountant gives it credibility.
> 
> 2. Some of the money should be used for non production projects such as 
> lobbying and promotion. Both are vitally important - real lobbying will 
> help to prevent bad laws that threaten our ability to produce or use Free 
> Software and promotion will bring in more users and developers, thus 
> giving more muscle for the lobbying too.
> 
> Obviously both of my suggestions will only be relevant once the money 
> starts flowing in and that's not happened yet - the cheque I write in 
> October will probably only be for £100 or £200 however I am confident that 
> this time next year we'll be looking at 100 times that amount (and hopeful 
> that in a year beyond that another 10 fold increase will be on the books).

We would certainly be willing to contribute to a project that freed us
from Sage as its really the only thing preventing us going entirely free
software here. Another issue is simply the time it takes to swap over.
Probably only sensible for use to do it at the end of the financial
year.If all the small companies using free software put say £1000 in the
pot, we would would probably have enough to pull a project together,
especially if we could entice a firm of accountants to take part. We use
Haines Watts so I could talk to them. I guess they would need evidence
that there was a market benefit to them but that shouldn't be too
difficult to demonstrate if we do a bit of homework.

-- 
ian <address@hidden>