[Finance] Introductions?

[seeblind at hackerconsortium.com]

Hail hail all Hackerspacers,

I'm Gabriel a.k.a Seeblind from the Hacker Consortium in Nashville, TN. 
As SkyDog said earlier I am the interim Treasurer and VP.  We were
inspired by the Chaos Computer Club Cologne (C4) paper that came out a few
years ago and have spent many hours planning and organizing.  Our space
has been up and running for 3 years now but it only seems like 1.  It has
been a trial but anything worth doing is never easy.  We have lots of
wood, metal, and electronic tools.  My current "large" project is putting
together a Makerbot.  The next big spend will be CNC mill or lazorsaur. 
We were initially a pretty closed shop for awhile but recently have
started opening up to local robotics and electronics groups.  That has
started to bolster our ranks and diversify the skills that are brought to
the workbench.

As far as legal and financial setup we are a mutually beneficial
non-profit.  When we were 10 guys and not sure if the venture would fold
we choose this option to guarantee that we could all reclaim our stuff if
it went south.  As mentioned before we are still kicking after three years
and look forward to many more.  Our fee structure includes a sign on fee
of $100 for setup and a $40/month dues fee.  We wanted to price ourselves
close to a gym membership to be affordable.  After several starts,
fumbles, and restarts we decided to use a donated copy of Quickbooks for
our accounting package.  We got some flack from our FOSS zealots but in
the end it has been worth it.  The setup was quick (no pun intended), we
can report on about anything, and it has support.  Something that is very
nice to have since we want to spend time on projects and fun instead of
tending to the financial systems.  It is not cheap but we estimate that it
saves 1-2 hours of time a month for recordkeeping.

Glad to see this list have some activity.  As we have found legal entity
composition varies from state to state but I look forward to hearing of
any pitfalls or wins we can learn from.  In the spirit of hackerspace
community, if you guys ever get to Nashville look us up.  Myself and some
of the other members get to travel a bit and when we make it to your
cities we hope to drop by.

Be safe
-Seeblind

> I'm Trevor a.k.a. SkyDog from the Hacker Consortium in Nashville, TN.
> I'm the President, and Seeblind, our Vice President and temporary
> Treasurer is on here also. I don't want to steal his thunder by telling
> our processes at the moment, but we had a M$ box set up with Terminal
> Services and M$'s free accounting package. The person in the treasurer
> position wanted to use an open source package, and would not touch a M$
> program. I think that deciding on a package and sticking with it is key
> to good recordkeeping. The hard part is that it's hard to know what to
> use up front, and sometimes it's easier to just throw it in excel or
> GoogleDocs and run with it. Maybe this list can help the new groups to
> get started on the right foot.
>
> Past that, I'm tickled that someone setup this list, and that we're able
> to discuss finances on it. Looking forward to hearing from everyone!
>
> -Sky
>
> On 7/12/2010 11:30 PM, Ben Brown wrote:
>> Haven't seen anything on here yet despite the two-dozen people
>> subscribed, so perhaps introductions are in order?
>>
>> I'm Ben, hailing from the Kwartzlab hackerspace in Kitchener, Ontario.
>> I've been the treasurer there since it's founding last July (So far so
>> good though!)
>>
>> My big tip (from talking with frustrated treasurers) is to use a REAL
>> accounting package -- with good reporting! Google Docs/OO Calc/Excel
>> just doesn't cut it. We use a donated copy of Quickbooks. Yes, it's a
>> proprietary, Windows-only hellspawn (Don't even get me started on the
>> company behind it) but it generates any report you could ever want,
>> takes care of most of the mundane tasks (that a spreadsheet can't solve)
>> and should you ever need to see a book-keeper or accountant, you'd be
>> hard-pressed to find one that isn't at all familiar with it (at least in
>> North America). I've also heard some good things about LedgerSMB if
>> you're on the open source-only kick, but don't expect to find local
>> support for it.
>>
>> Other than that, If anyone has questions or comments about the
>> intricacies (idiocy) of Canadian finances, collecting ridiculously high
>> federal taxes etc, let me know!
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> Ben Brown
>> Treasurer, Kwartzlab Society Inc.
>> http://www.kwartzlab.ca
>>
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>>
>
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