Forum OpenACS Q&A: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work

1: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work

Posted by Fred Cox on 09/27/05 12:35 AM

Perhaps I haven't found it yet, but is there a way to keep track of hours/expenses billed to customers?

If I have to, I'll probably create a "project" where I log the billing, but if there's something more appropriate I would like to use that. It would be good to be able to see how many unbilled hours there are for the next billing cycle. For strapped clients, I also need to be able to do a partial billing where some work is performed, but not billed until later.

Also, I noticed that when I set up the logger to log both time and expenses, the project pages seem to always go to expenses, and the time entries are invisible, except when I attempt to add another time entry. Let me know if this is not clear and I'll submit a real bug report.

2: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/27/05 08:37 AM

There is an invoicing package in HEAD that allows you to link a project to an offer (which you can create as well). Once the project is finished, you can create an invoice for this project and bill accordingly.

If you want to have a support for keeping track of hours already billed to a customer you would have to write some support for it.

3: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/27/05 09:03 AM

Ups, and this wont help you as it is incompatible with OpenACS 5.1. Therefore take this as an announcement for a brighter new future. And what you have in mind is something which we actually could use as well for our company though we wont be able to work on it soon... Therefore, anyone who is interested in having such a functionality, the bits and pieces are already there, you just have to connect them :).

4: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 09/27/05 06:14 PM

See also this post... http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message%5fid=324865 more particular Thorben's response.

5: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Fred Cox on 09/28/05 01:10 AM

Thanks for the info, Malte.

So far, the people I've contracted for prefer to pay as they go, and not get one invoice at the end of a project.

What kind of time frame are you talking about for this invoicing package to be ready for use?

Thanks,

Fred

6: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/28/05 08:56 AM

The invoicing is now ready for "pay when project is finished" as well as "pay when milestone is finished" as milestones are subprojects.

You can "simulate" pay as you go by having one project for a customer per month and changing the cost sheet at the end of the months, looking (manually) which projects the client has spend hours on. Alternatively you could run a manual query for the logger package. Writing this should take a couple of hours, but is fairly straigtforward (you first lookup all project_item_ids of the customer you want to send an invoice to. Then you loop over each project_id and add an entry into the invoice_items table with the amount of hours spend (looking up and aggregate over the month in logger with the project_id). Probably you have to make some minor calculations for the total amount etc to insert the invoice into the invoices table.

Hope this helps and I'd be delighted if you could get this working.

7: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Fred Cox on 09/29/05 12:38 AM

Is this available with 5.1.5?

I found some of the fields you referred to, but nothing about invoices in what I have installed.

Do I need to install more than Project Manager, Organization, and Logger?

8: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Frank Bergmann on 09/29/05 01:52 PM

Hi,

I don't know if you've seen it, but ]project-consulting[ implements a complete solution for consulting companies "out of the box", already preconfigured and ready to install in 12 minutes on a Windows XP box.

There is _no_ programming necessary for you anymore, and there are some 15-30 companies already using the system in production use to run their companies. ]project-open[ is in the Top-100 List of SourceForge most active projects...

Download link: http://www.project-open.org/download/, ge the V3.0.0.6 installer and install the "]project-consulting[" option.

Bests,
Frank

9: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Fred Cox on 10/04/05 01:43 AM

Is ]project-consulting[ based on the OpenACS schema? I don't want to end up with disparate sets of users, etc.

A quick perusal of the web site doesn't make this clear.

Also, the licensing page is remarkably obfuscatory.

Is a stock installation covered by the GPL, the "Free License," or the "Commercial License?"

Does the ]project-open[ installer understand how to deal with an existing OpenACS/AOLserver installation?

Thanks for any info,

Fred

10: Re: Using Project Manager/Organization/Logger/??? for accounting for consultation work (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 10/04/05 08:00 AM

It is using OpenACS Core, but that's about it. It has it's own Project Management, Invoicing (which is only GPL in part), CRM System and so on. The reason for us not to use PO for one project were rooted in the fact that most of PO is a rewrite of the ACS Intranet and is therefore a little bit harder to maintain from a developers point of view. Furthermore it blocks you from enhancements in Contacts, Project Manager, Invoices or the new Accounting Software written by Torben et.al (datamodel is incompatible). On the other hand you get a product that does what you want (hopefully) out of the box, albeit with a somewhat interesting licensing model (depending on whether you want to deploy the software on your own for yourself or for your customers).