We’re planning to combine this with a default user role of author/editor-ish (author with category management permissions, preferably) so that we get the same general functionality of Moodle’s blogs plus comments, better management, RSS, etc. This is my first plugin and I tried to follow general layout conventions of wordpress – hope it works for others, too.

It’s hosted on WordPress under External Database Authentication. About the only update I may think of doing is somehow disabling users from changing passwords and user info in wordpress, as it will be overwritten by the moodle data anyway…

Causal pathway:

Fried pies (at least in the South) are most definitely pies. Empanadas are fried pies, albeit with meat and other goodies. Empanadas are also from the South, just moreso. Therefore, empanadas are pies that count. Bwahahaha…and with a shortening crust, only the bravest shall dare consume them! Despite their wonderful tastiness.

As a side note, while my laptop mostly works, I have discovered that its coffee immersion has also messed up the network/modem port on the back such that it doesn’t work (but wifi, more safely interiorized, does) and that my speakers don’t either (although headphones do). Professional advice: don’t spill liquids near electronics. In case you didn’t read the warning label.

March 24-26. Precisely ending the day before I return So come visit melissa! You know you want to see som Michael “Piano Squall” Gluck! The picture after the link…is priceless.

Work was unexpectedly fun – demo’d the Cerberus ticketing thing and people were let loose on it – random shenanigans like creating projects to delegate who should make coffee, who should remind them, and who’s bringing donuts, then I assigned all the tickets to Derek, bwahaha…then Peter learned that he can tell who did that by using the ticket auditing system. So, things being learned. Super cool.

That and the setup we have for building machines is working like a charm – built on a Dell desktop and genericized, and I built a Thinkpad laptop with it flawlessly – about an hour, incl. downloading the image – except for sound card.

Had a croissant and finished some readings, and then went to class where I apparently impressed the presenter with random bits/opinions on community development and so forth, ending up getting an unsolicited business card. super score…

Then back here

Yes, that’s my idea of a good day

Anyway. Link’s on the right if you come to the site directly, or the presentation link is here.

Back to my stump: The point of group work is that it is a gestalt both in scope and process – it is assumed that the sum of the project is worth more than the individual tasks within it and that those who work on it are worth more together than individually. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a group project, much less a group? Correspondingly, it’s a lot harder to handle than you’d think if just based the legwork and all on the individual tasks and collaborators. To handle that stuff, I think it’s best to be able to make the group, well, agile – can attack problems from many directions due to past experiences and personal strengths to come up the best solution. In other words, in order to really unleash this group gestalt goodness, it’s like hearding cats. Wet angry ones who somehow have decided it’s your fault they’re wet.

Many projects and groups, I think, fail to deliver their potential due to energy being wasted elsewhere. Most times, it’s because of things like inefficiencies, egos, feet-dragging, or whatever. And I think a lot of this, in turn, is due to the adverse feelings people often have about how to go about working together. I think everyone needs to know where everyone else is coming from. I think people should agree on how to progress structurally – timelines for general parts, deliverables, and what not. And then the sticking point – actually enforcing those rules and that respect. Or agreeing, if you prefer to use the iron hand/velvet glove conceit. Somewhere, the buck has to stop. It would be nice to have it happen by consensus, but sometimes a person emerges from the group as the enforcer of sorts. Ideally, this person would be semi-official, as in, everyone agrees the person will be the manager of the group, so as to minimize resentments and ‘you’re not the boss of me!’-type reactions. Tired now, though, so check out the link for more about this and the tools that, erm, help.

One magazine I’m subscribed to (make) has a “digital edition” which ostensibly is so I can print out articles flat for use in, well, making things. It’s the entire magazine online, plus extras that weren’t published. The more interesting feature, I think, is that I can “share” articles with friends. I can designate an article I think a friend would particularly like, and they get something like 3-day access to it, though they don’t have the print option. From what I’ve seen and heard about people getting other people into particular comics series, this would be a great option if comics were also distributed online. I could send a segment of Fable or Ex Machina or Tom Strong to a friend, who would then ideally become hooked

And even though it’s questionable whether it would be better quality than the trades out there, it’s definitely more portable. And what with comics companies bemoaning (at least, I think they are??) the lack of profits and widespread comics distribution, this could definitely reach more audiences. Hell, there are webcomics out there (Penny Arcade, for one) that can be shown as a definite proof of concept.

And for the collectors, well, there would be less books out there, so maybe it’d make them more valuable, no? Even if it was something like, say, ABC or Vertigo, who would for a set fee let me read certain comics every month – or even all of the comics – but limited to only current issues, for something like $10 a month, I’d be willing to pay that. I’m not as much into collecting as reading the story – it’s like having comics (or graphic novels, you know) at the library, except I’d get the latest issues and the companies (evil corporations that they are) would be getting money. No problem with that.

As a side note, the Seattle Public Library has a collection of electronic books that, I’d assume, would act much the same way said hypothetical comics distribution would work. I can get em in two formats, both of which are DRM’d and expire in 3 weeks. The PDF formatted ones I can print or save, and the MobiBooks one I can’t print and are definitely gone after three weeks.

I’d be happy to hear thoughts, if anyone has any, on such an idea…

After a few days of hitting machines, cramped thumbs (thanks, eraser nubs), and general irritation, I’ve slogged through learning to use these accounting softwares. Disclaimer: this is only attempting to be somewhat methodical. YMMV.

Take into account that my only semi-real accounting experience has been in entering in the register for Quicken where someone else set up the categories for expenses/income and that I’m looking at this from a small business/web development company standpoint. Also, I’m looking for something that could ideally work in a mixed systems environment – Mac and Windows, at least – and super ideally something that could be accessed remotely – perhaps with a VPN connection – if anyone is doing billable time on the road. The way I’m testing this is literally as if I were planning to adopt the software as the real deal – I tried entering in sales and purchase data for both and printing out invoices, customizing features, and what-not.

This review will be organized by the general feature I’m looking at, the results with either software package or both, and which I consider to be better in that aspect. Continue past the break if your eyes haven’t glazed over yet…

Company setup
Both:
In both, you start out by giving information about your company. They’re both pretty easy, and have a variety of default account lists, including for Web Development!! In other words, without me having to figure out whether it’s an asset, a liability, equity, or whatever the hell is the right accounting word, line items like Website implemention fees, Web Design (income category), Software Purchases, etc are predefined. For payroll, both can setup manually entered FUTA and FICA percentages (would’ve been sweet if I currently had any employees).

SA:
Has option for selecting company organization type, which adds more accounts, like Partnership A and Partnership B withdrawals, loans, investments, etc. The categorization system also has a few more details/options than MYOB. I also found, though, that adding categories was very odd for the uninformed. You add them (and reference them; more on that later) by account or line item number, rather than description or text name. The numbers, according to the help file should correspond with the main headers roughly. That means, of course, that you know what the main headers mean. And that you remember that number when adding a new account, cuz it doesn’t let you go back and check during the add process.

MYOB:
The MYOB setup wizard lets you optionally go through all sorts of lookup customizations, so even if the default lookup for accounts is by number, you can easily change it to search by description/name. MYOB also uses the asset/liability/etc etc verbiage, but I found its help file more useful in explaining, at least roughly, what those words mean. I thought it was really useful to see from the start what, based on your company location data, the state, city, etc. taxes were. MYOB also seems (seems, mind you) to do a lot more data backup prompting and core data checking than SA. Just saying.

Edge: Neither
Both pretty much cover the basics; SA’s accounts were better, but user-adding processes unnecessarily difficult. MYOB’s wizards were useful for more subtle system settings and the tax tables I found very cool.

SA – Reconciliation – requires you know acct number – lookup not possible – bleh.
Way of processing invoices/bills to customers – create receipts. Not quite intuitive to me…
How to view recurring bills/payments?
If you go through the daily business manager, tho, it conveniently puts all these items in a time-based organization – easier to pay/account for, almost, by not using the main menus.

Also has better electronic bank statement integration that MYOB – from initial checkout, I think that MYOB can also use electronic statement downloads, but you have to import them specially, while SA will connect and import on the fly. Gives options for small business checklists for day-end, month-end, fy-end, and calendar year-end to-dos, which is neat (tho took a bit of exploring to reveal) You can also add your own to-do items to the lists.

I found it hard to decide which kind of invoicing to use – Service or Professional – more based on the invoice printing outout rather than any difference in initial, company-end, data entry.

Entering Sales/Quotes/Invoices/Purchases
SA: You can’t add accounts on the fly, and some of the options for inventory/sales items are a bit iffy for me (is web hosting annual cost an item or a service? as you buy it pretty much once, but it’s not tangible and you don’t have an inventory for it…). It also doesn’t autonumber items; like I know or care what I want to call the products? And you have to search for accounts by number, not by name or desc., in the main entry windows. And maybe I missed it, but I don’t see an option for automatic lookup of tax codes. Paying/creating checks, though, is easier than with MYOB – fewer buttons to hit. It also doesn’t seem to differentiate between company contacts and individual contacts – sorting by last, first as opposed to company name.
MYOB: Nice recurring payment/integrated customer tracking feature. Very useful flowchart-like display for all areas, kinda directing you to enter data/accounting in a certain order. I had some trouble with this in SA, and it’s very possible that using MYOB first helped get me through. SA has howdoI… sections that pop up when you switch to different tasks, but if you don’t know what the words mean or why you would want to do that, it’s not as helpful.
Both: Can track jobs/projects, do timeslips (tho this is mostly geared toward independent contractor timesheet accounting, it could prolly apply to costing out hourly technical services).

Edge:
Hourly timekeeping
SA – works. Find setup a bit odd, but still, figured it out. Limited shipping options list (prolly addable, but not as nice as MYOB). Has project creation – but pretty much a label for grouping together costs by project as well as user – no tasks, subtasks, etc as found in MYOB.
In both, you pretty much have the employee keep track of the hours, then you bill based on hours (and optionally pay based on hours too)
In our case, the payroll aspects aren’t immediately useful – as owners, we don’t get paid in quite the same way – but at least worth a checkout.
Entering Purchases by the Company
SA – confusing. Product numbers for things you buy from other people? No obvious way of telling if a payment (or sale, for that matter) is recurring based on the invoice – only through the startup business manager tool. There are quite a few options for vendor management tho – print 1099s for companies, taxes that apply from that vendor, current balances, statistics about ytd purchases from em, etc.
Also can run payroll checks pretty much on its own – click on run payroll checks and if all data’s been entered from previous invoices, time billing, taxes, etc., it’s good to go. Also keeps track of benefits, vacation time, etc.

Customer/Contacts
MYOB – Seems to have a form email function for periodic emails to all outstanding balances, or even just receipts. Also can export for mail merge instead. Sweet.
SA – Good integration w/ networking. Can store URLs and emails and email/jump to sites as necessary.
Graphs/Charts/Budgeting
MYOB -
SA – Budgeting is based on the accounts you have set up – you can set up their budgets as you go. The graph options also make a lot of sense – the pictures are good and scales well. One annoying thing is that it’ll pop up a little “advisor” if, say, hypothetically, you’re overdrawing on your checking and it’ll ask you if you want advice about preventing it. The reports are also pretty good, allowing you to print up reference charts of your own (for, say, accounts, or inventory items) as well as things like balance sheets and cash flow. These reports are strictly utilitarian, and you’re given the option of custom reports, though not custom graphs.
Both -
Edge –
Compatibility Issues
MYOB – Mac and windows, tho it requires purchasing both products if you want both of em to use it.
SA – windows-only
Price
Current price searches are the following (non-Ebay, lowest I could find):
MYOB AccountEdge (Mac) -123.94 w/ rebate
MYOB Business Essentials Pro (Win) – 123.94 w/rebate
SA Pro – 149.95

SA 2004 is roughly half the cost of, while I haven’t found much cheaper than the promo price of the current MYOB as compared to 2004 software.

MYOB – *big* issue is that it doesn’t play happily with Thunderbird for emailing statements and invoices. Based on support sites, it appears that both developers are going round and round on this one, with the end result that the vast majority of MYOB people can’t use it. I can print to pdf, tho, so I can work around it, but that’s not so cool.

I haven’t looked at the basic software, which may fill my needs, yet, but I shall in a bit.
Actually, looking at MYOB BusinessBasic after the pro thingy is rather sad. A lot of features that I liked – the mass emails, the customer contact management, the managing purchases – are all gone, tho the account setups are still there.

So, internet search commences.

The first two I’m trying (downloading slowly and sadly — damn you wifi!) are MYOB and Simply Accounting. Both aren’t the bigname types, but they’re cheaper and, more interestingly, come in Mac and Windows editions. So, when things go to Melissa eventually, assuming she wants to do it, the ledgers can still move gracefully with her. I’m especially interested in the forecasting bits and integration with electronic access to bank accounts, and both of em say they have special templates for “certain businesses” tho of course without installing the product you don’t know what those certain businesses are. I think one of em talks about their super duper bits for project/service estimates, which would be nice from an invoicing perspective if they’re tailored to our kinds of products.

For those still reading (as I’m of the opinion that accounting articles prolly aren’t top priority for my friends), I’ll be writing more about the usage results later in true happy charlene style.