Changes to the accounting system in 2020

[Peter Cock]

Thank you Martin,

While I have no comment on the merits of cash vs accrual basis, having a
more documented and more automated process sounds like excellent work.
Reducing the "bus factor" is also really important but hard work.

Kind regards,

Peter
(Open Bioinformatics Foundation)

On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 10:06 AM Martin Michlmayr <tbm at spi-inc.org> wrote:
>
> SPI has made two substantial changes to its accounting system and
> books in 2020:
>
> * Migration from cash basis to accrual basis: the accrual basis is a
> method of accounting which gives a more accurate picture of the
> financial status.  It also makes it easier to track outstanding
> payments.
>
> * Migration from ledger to beancount: both are text-based, FOSS
> accounting systems.  Beancount offers a number of advantages, in
> particular a Python API which can be used to access data and to extend
> the functionality of the accounting system.
>
> We have used the migration to beancount to improve the accounting
> process in a number of ways, in particular to add more automation and
> checks.
>
> * Importers for various donation platforms to reduce the amount of time
>   it takes to import data while making the process less error-prone.
>   We use OFX/CVS importers from beancount, but we have written importers
>   for a number of donation platforms that are used to donate to SPI
>   (e.g. Network for Good, CyberGrants).
>
> * Scripts that encode business logic in order to automate common
>   processes.  For example, when importing bank transactions, scripts
>   now look up outstanding accounts payable and assign transactions
>   accordingly.
>
> * Validation of data through plugins, such as ensuring that payments
>   match the accrued amounts, checking payees for misspellings, and more.
>
> * Bank reconciliation: due to the way checks are handled, a bank
>   reconciliation showing differences between the bank statements and our
>   books of record has to be generated every month.  This process
>   is handled by a script. (Checks are recognized immediately when they
>   are received/sent, not when they are actually deposited by the bank.)
>
> Finally, we improved the internal documentation considerably,
> documenting not only the accounting system, but also common tasks and
> areas, such as onboarding of new projects, vendor management, and more.
> While the documentation isn't 100% complete, I'm pretty happy with the
> current state, in particular I think it does a good job of reducing the
> "bus factor" (i.e. someone else could take over if I'm hit by a bus).
>
> # Future work
>
> * Reporting: the reporting script is still the old one, and it's no
>   longer fit for purpose.  I need to replace it completely, which is
>   more complex than one would expect for a number of reasons.
>   (One reason is that projects want monthly reports that are fairly
>   stable, but, especially now that we're on the accruals basis,
>   things change sometimes: e.g. donation platforms often inform us
>   months later of donations but we recognize the donation on the
>   day it was made, not when we were informed.)
>
> * Customized reporting: we sometimes do some customized reports for
>   projects; it would be good to automate those.
>
> * Item-level data for projects: we intend to share transaction data
>   with projects, but again this is slightly more complex than one
>   might think. (One reason is that one transaction can involve
>   multiple projects, so we have to write a script that splits up
>   such transactions.)
>
> * PayPal importer for beancount: almost everything is beancount "native"
>   now except the reporting script (we convert from beancount to ledger
>   and run our old ledger reporting script) and PayPal (we use our old
>   ledger script and convert to beancount).  The reason I haven't
>   converted the PayPal importer is because it contains quite a bit of
>   business logic, but I'll convert it eventually.
>
> --
> Martin Michlmayr
> Contractor, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
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