[Noisebridge-discuss] Proposal: Discounted full-year dues
Ronald Cotoni
setient at gmail.com
Wed Jun 16 19:44:21 UTC 2010
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 3:40 PM, aestetix aestetix <aestetix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are we actually in the red?
>
> There's a big difference between not having a few months wiggleroom, and
> having our checks bounce.
>
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> oooh I had no idea! yeah i'll get in touch with them right away. i did
>> search various open source repos and found nothing useful...
>>
>> Christie Dudley wrote:
>> > Katie from Hacker Dojo was mentioning they'd put together a complete
>> > open source package for managing things, including payment tracking and
>> > so forth that they're interested in sharing. It might not be a bad
>> > idea, and foster a bit of goodwill if we at least had a look at that,
>> > don't you think?
>> >
>> > The problem may already be solved for us.
>> >
>> > Christie
>> > _______
>> > "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.
>> > The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
>> > to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
>> > intelligence." -- Albert Einstein
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com
>> > <mailto:rachel at xtreme.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> > It's all done by hand right now, there's no automation. I mean the
>> > bank
>> > account (and paypal, etc) tracks that $X has shown up, but there
>> > isn't
>> > any system to associate it with a particular member. Sometimes a
>> > payment comes with a note; if it's a check you have to go look at
>> > the
>> > name on the check, etc.
>> >
>> > jim wrote:
>> > > Y'all have reminded me of payment, so there must
>> > > be some tracking in place, yes?
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 10:29 -0700, Rachel McConnell wrote:
>> > >> I like this in theory but in practice it would be folly to
>> > officially
>> > >> promote it until we have an accounting system that can support
>> > it.
>> > >> Already we don't know who is paid up and who isn't; work is
>> > underway on
>> > >> a system to manage this but let's get it working first before we
>> > make
>> > >> massive changes to it.
>> > >>
>> > >> Rachel
>> > >>
>> > >> jim wrote:
>> > >>> (seems like a discussion of policy.)
>> > >>> per the proposal and the points:
>> > >>> * how much to discount for a one year pre-payment seems
>> > >>> the difficult part: too little and no one goes for it;
>> > >>> too big and we miss out on possible income; variable
>> > >>> (maybe within some limits, hoping for generosity) may
>> > >>> work....
>> > >>> * if we don't have a "real accounting system", as long
>> > >>> as we can track payments with respect to members, this
>> > >>> seems a non-issue. for example, i pay by the quarter
>> > >>> and haven't had any problems. if a payment is recorded
>> > >>> as income for the current month, is there a tax
>> > >>> implication?
>> > >>> * we should certainly try to help our current cash
>> > >>> crunch"; the overall downward trend scares me.
>> > >>> * grabbing a year's supply of money may help the
>> > >>> initially excited retain their interest over a longer
>> > >>> time period, which seems an additional value.
>> > >>> * i'm not convinced of your arithmetic, but certainly
>> > >>> money today is worth a fair amount more than money
>> > >>> some later day, especially if there's some question
>> > >>> about getting money on those later days. a real
>> > >>> answer to this might help settle the discount problem.
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>> On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 09:49 -0700, Shannon Lee wrote:
>> > >>>> Hi All,
>> > >>>> This idea has been brought up at several meetings now and no
>> > >>>> satisfactory resolution reached, so obviously it's time to
>> > expand the
>> > >>>> conversation!
>> > >>>> The specific proposal brought up last night was this:
>> > >>>> If you pay your dues a year at a time, you can knock $20 off.
>> > Or one
>> > >>>> month's dues off. Or some amount of money.
>> > >>>> Many perspectives were voiced on this. I think it's a good
>> > idea;
>> > >>>> others disagreed, primarily because, as we do not have a real
>> > >>>> accounting system, this amounts to counting a year's dues as
>> > this
>> > >>>> month's revenue.
>> > >>>> Again, I think this is a good idea, for the following reasons:
>> > >>>> * it could help with our current cash cruch
>> > >>>> * it means that people who get very excited about noisebridge
>> > for just
>> > >>>> long enough to be members and then never show up again have the
>> > >>>> opportunity to pay a whole year's membership upfront
>> > >>>> * the economic value of a bird in one's hand is double that of
>> > a bird
>> > >>>> in a bush
>> > >>>> Thoughts?
>> > >>>> --
>> > >>>> Shannon Lee
>> > >>>> (503) 539-3700
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from
>> > science."
>> > >>>> _______________________________________________
>> > >>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> > >>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> > <mailto:Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>
>> > >>>>
>> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>> > >>>
>> > >>> _______________________________________________
>> > >>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> > >>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> > <mailto:Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>
>> > >>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>> > >
>> > >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > <mailto:Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>
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>> >
>> >
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FYI there are two other software solutions that could do this. One is
Freshbooks. It is for accounting and the other is OfficeDrop. You
can scan and upload your documents to officedrop and link them to
freshbooks statements. I happen to work for the latter but this is
exactly one of our use cases. We convert stuff into text searchable
PDFS. We also provide a web interface for searching them. We accept
documents via email, our web interface or physically sending them in.
We do have a FREE offering that might be exactly what Noisebridge
wants since you guys prolly have a scanner SOMEWHERE there. I don't
know much about the freshbooks side of things but this could link both
the physical piece of paper, paypal email or whatnot to a statement in
your account.
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