Bookkeeping module

I want to help assemble a team to make and support a free, and open source bookkeeping module for Zen Cart. I see the module being able to support double entry, the cost of goods sold (FIFO), and accounts for income and expenses. It will include functionality to support data required to fill out the IRS Sch C and Form 1120.
I have some HTML, SQL and PHP knowledge . We would need more and smarter programmers than me:smartalec:. Someone who can catch spelling errors, plus an accounting grue.
Would you like to help? Lets talk about it.

Dennis

While I like the idea...this is IMO, more than a module and more of a complete application. Things like FIFO require tracking the cost per unit on each inbound shipment, the separation of the goods cost from the shipping cost among other considerations.

Schedule "C" items would include many many things that are not part of the cart at all like, hosting fees, advertising(pay-per-click etc etc), telephone, computing equip, depreciation, and the list is long.

The cart currently does not have the tables to record any of these ancillary costs, and then double entry requires a whole other realm of tracking.

The cost of say Quick Books, or maybe another Open Source application for this can take the Zen Cart info and include it in the bigger picture and it might be wiser to find/select a viable Open Source canidate and develop a module to export the Zen Cart info to.

JMO and 2 cents

All opinions are requested, and I thank you for yours. Your suggestion has also been my original consideration. But I have not succeeded in automating the stores sales data into another app. You are absolutely right on the depreciation and other super complicated stuff. I would not want to build those into the program just yet. Let’s start with the simple numbers.
I suggest two or three input forms:

• Inventory purchases. This form would input the order date, model and description, quantity and cost of inventory purchases. The quantity would automatically be added to the stores product quantity.
• Expense of sale. Accrual accounting states each sale needs to have its expense's date match the date of sale. I do not have the design of this form in mind yet.
• Other expenses. These two expense forms may be combined into one expense form.
  Trying to keep the requirements to a minimum, Zen Cart stores the income, this new module would store expenses and cost of inventory. Reports would help the store owner give Uncle Sam and cousin governor with data. A few new table will be needed but that’s not odd for add-on modules to include new tables. I do not see or at lease hope no Zen Cart core code gets changed. Input forms and reports would be started from one of the Admin drop downs.

Here is an overnight attempt at designing one of the input forms. At this time its just HTML and javascript, no PHP yet.

Comments encouraged.

But I have not succeeded in automating the stores sales data into another app.
Have you looked at the QB module and QB for this?
A few new table will be needed but that’s not odd for add-on modules to include new tables.
Right, not odd for a module but as I initially stated, I do not see this as a module nor something in the Zen Cart admin - more as a separate appliation that can link to the Zen Cart DB.

I might be showing my corp background here but you might look at either Quick Books(no need to re-invent the wheel) and or a couple of things that I use being "Crystal Reports" and "NaviCat"(I think that there is an Open Source comparable to Crystal Reports that uses JAVA) and this is for repetitive reports that you can create and save - albeit fully off cart(not in/from the admin).

Full business accounting is not, as I see it, part of a shopping cart application. I view this(Zen Cart) more like being a checkout register/station where the days results are then combined and recorded into the companies General Ledger application that exists separately.

thanks for the tips Kobra,

Since this has been asaked for many times in the past I guess there are others that would like to have the store and the accountant and inventory management all in one place and NOT have to download to import into another program.

thats the kool thing about this,

everyone has an opinion

Merlin,

Since this has been asaked for many times in the past I guess there are others that would like to have the store and the accountant and inventory management all in one place and NOT have to download to import into another program.
And a man in the desert wants "Ice Water"
Yes, while I am sure that this would be a desired item - it is my opinion that based upon the size of these applications that in a "Full Blown" GL package that the cart functionality would become an add on module for it and not the other way around.

Owing to the fact that Zen Cart is not generally thought of as "Modular", making it an add-on to a full accounting package seems a bit over the edge. But I am php challenged.

What would make this powerful is a "Single" admin interface for all functionality, and then looking into what an accounting pkg has to deal with - some are manufacturing concerns - some product retailers - some drop shippers - etc, etc. And wanting a "Double-Entry" system for larger company concerns and not just the small mom&pop concerns where a Single-Entry system is sufficient.

Each with their own specific accounting requirements i.e. short list for manufacturing-retailing:
cost of raw materials
cost of goods in process
cost of services apportioned to manufacturing(elec, gas, maintenance of production equip, supplies, etc.)
cost of goods produced
cost of inventory
cost of goods sold
Gross profit from mfg
gross profit from sales
gross profit from operations
all other expenses
net profit from operations

Bottom-line: IMO this is over and above the mission for Zen Cart and as most of these GL packages are on the order of 3x the code base size of Zen Cart - the support to cater to all the types of businesses in all the different locales across the globe with their unique and individual requirements is also over and above what could be handled without a definite and significant increase in Dev staffing.

Take a look at the US IRS 1120 - with all the required tables and schedules that must accompany a return.

What about the Turbocash module? I believe Turbocash has recently been updated, too:

http://www.turbocashuk.com/

And a man in the desert wants "Ice Water"

you think.. LOL

thats neither here nor there,

if you dont like the project dont contribute, thats easy no one says you will have to use it

[QUOTEif you dont like the project dont contribute[/QUOTE]
Be nice now. I have asked for all thoughts. For and Against. A true brain storm of thoughts.

I will agree that my original thoughts were to fill out all data one the two forms mentioned. That is really way out of my reach. Nice dream, but maybe someone will be able to help with that?

I love this statement on the home page, "could be and should be done differently".

Here is what brought me to this subject of a bookkeeping module, "money". Two years ago I bought a copy of Microsoft Money for Business. I used it for a few months until I found its inventory management was not FIFO and it only allowed 2 decimals for the cost of a product. So I put that program away and started working the business data into spreadsheets. I am comfortable with spreadsheets but I think I can do better. So I went to a Microsoft event in Nashville and got a free copy of Office 2007. Downloaded the package which included Microsoft Accounting Pro 2007. Pretty cool but way overkill for what I and maybe lots of others really need. In order to use QB with inventory management I would need to get the Pro edition. I retired from GM two years before my wife will be able to teach at the local schools. That puts me in a no spend mode for the next 2 years. I have more time than money. If I am not over at grandmas watching wheel of fortune, I am working on my store.

This is what I need. Maybe others can add to it.
Calculate income from one date to another (Already done with Sales Report)
Enter expenses related to each sale. Like transaction fees and shipping. (see preview)
Enter other expenses like advertising and office.
Enter the wholesale purchase and shipping into inventory and cost of goods sold.
Push a button anytime to see the value of my inventory.
Push a button and get and cost of the goods that I sold and the stores expenses for the year.
I dont need records for employees or depreciation or manufacturing.

The reason I brought the IRS corporate form into the subject is because as small as I am, the business really should be a corporation. And someday I will. You don't have to be big to own a corporation, you just give the state a few hundred dollars each year for the privilege.

Folks, I may be completely washed up here, but I think the code will be only on a few pages and not over 100KB. Go ahead get the soap and water bucket but I don't think this is going to be complicated as long as the goals are kept simpler than originally thought.

Anyone what to help? raise you hands and clap. :clap:

Added some navigation input and buttons.

1. Log into admin
2. copy the bookkeeping.php file into your admin folder
3. call it manually "http://www.yourstore.com/youradmin/bookkeeping.php

I personally think this is a wonderful idea. I am not a very good coder, but I have a physical store opening up in about 2 months. Shortly after that, I will start selling online with my newly updated version of zencart. I will be donating money to zencart regularly as the store becomes lucrative.

I would personally love to see zencart take over the additional functions of a FULL PHYSICAL STORE quality POS system which could be run on the back end of the site by employees and look nice for customers that may inadvertently see the checkout screen. It is already not too far from this - besides POS software costs a lot of money per register. Zencart could save me thousands of dollars and I would be more than happy to invest that money directly back into zencart.

I know quite a bit of accounting, and I would be more than happy to review anything suggested or help with the basic design.

I think trying to take over quickbooks itself might be a little bit too ambitious.
Besides this, an attempt such as this would need constant updates with tax prep software from around the world. This still requires a large corporation to keep up with the constant upgrades in tax code - individual coders would have a hard time keeping up.

I know quite a bit of accounting, and I would be more than happy to review anything suggested or help with the basic design.

This is great news. Please continue to monitory this thread for updates and questions. I will not have much time this week due to a funeral for brother in law:sadwalk: . But I will be back next week.

Thank you so much for you offer of help. You will be needed!

Hi,

Early today, I just opened another thread on "Inventory module". Maybe I should have searched well before I did that, since your subject here is pretty tie to what I'm looking for: SO - PO - Receiving - Shipment - Invoice - Accounting.

Stagebrace, I hold double degrees in CIS & Finance. And I've been filing my small biz taxes for the past years since I started one. I know exactly how you feel. Maybe it's time for me to do some real programming work. I've done VB and Java applications, but had no motivation on php until now. :flex:

I also have experience on erp package for the big smb, like Everest ICODE, Microsoft Solomon, Compiere (was open source, not so open now and has a shxxx webstore never been updated and only used by its own), Opentaps (pretty good open source one; except maybe too much for what you ask here; and I'm learning on it.) Hopefully, with your simple functional requirement, and with complicated structure from Opentaps and Compiere, I could come up something. Any other php developer want to dip in could discuss getting pay job from me :cheers:

Lastly, only 6 day left for tax filing :bangin: It would be much easier if we had the module in place ...

Turbocash is overkill unless you're a totally accountant. Besides, it's written in Delphi. If I remember right, it's kind of like VB and used in ICODE as well. It's easy to start but difficult to expand.

This one zen cart + ck-erp is another close thought. But went to the demo, I didn't really see any inventory, warehouse or accounting functions other than regular zen cart.

Here's the latest CK-ERP:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=670818

A new release, v.0.22.1, of CK-ERP, has been posted at SourceForge.Net, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ck-erp .

This release features connectors for Moodle, Atutor, vTiger, XRMS, WordPress, b2evolution and e107.

CK-ERP is an open source accounting/MRP/ERP/CRM system that runs on top of multiple middlewares. It comprises 22 modules - Administration, i18n, Contact Management, Customer Relationship, Customer Self Service, Vendor Relationship, Ledger, Bank Reconciliation, MRP, Warehouse, Inventory, Service, AP, AR, PO, SO, Quotation, POS for Cashier, POS for Manager, HR, Staff Self Service and Payroll. Operating platform can either be LAMP or LAPP. It provides accounting and back office functionalities to SMEs and utilizes the underlying middleware to administer accounts/groups. Please report error and suggestion to the discussion group / mailing list, CK-ERP-en(at)googlegroups.com or CK-ERP-zh_CN(at)googlegroups.com . General history and expected development is available at the discussion group's Archive.

Supported MiddleWares: eGroupWare, Horde-GroupWare; Zencart, CRELoaded, osCommerce; Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, e107, XOOPS, Xaraya; Moodle, Atutor; vTiger, XRMS; WordPress, b2evolution; TikiWiki; phpBB.

beilana:

I would personally love to see zencart take over the additional functions of a FULL PHYSICAL STORE quality POS system which could be run on the back end of the site by employees and look nice for customers that may inadvertently see the checkout screen. It is already not too far from this - besides POS software costs a lot of money per register. Zencart could save me thousands of dollars and I would be more than happy to invest that money directly back into zencart.

I know quite a bit of accounting, and I would be more than happy to review anything suggested or help with the basic design.

I think trying to take over quickbooks itself might be a little bit too ambitious.
Besides this, an attempt such as this would need constant updates with tax prep software from around the world. This still requires a large corporation to keep up with the constant upgrades in tax code - individual coders would have a hard time keeping up.

Yeah, Quickbooks is way powerful and constantly updated. And isn't there already a way to sync Zencart with it?

But using Quickbooks as a POS is a POS, from what I understand. :smile: And this is exactly what I've been searching for. Inventory control and POS from Zencart for our physical brick-and-mortar store. From what I can tell, doesn't quite exist yet for Zencart. All the parts are there, they just haven't quite been put together.

My thought is to code up a 'Register' module accessed from the admin screen. People would sign on to the Admin account, then open up the Register module and everything they need to sell things to physical customers would be right there.

What do you guys think? We have a couple coders and a fair amount of free time. Where should we begin? :wink:

Craig Rickel
Tech Gurus

P.S. I tried out that CK-ERP thing, and it seemed both highly user-unfriendly and ... er... broken. ' Please inform System Admin: /ck-css/reportfilter.php MD5 checksum failure' was all I got on most pages.

Here is the next set of changes. We are reading database info now but not saving it yet.

Place the bookkeeping.php into <your admin name folder>.
Log into Zen Cart admin and manually enter "bookkeeping.php" into the url address line.
I will be back in Tennessee on Sunday. To start on the data save function.

All comments requested..:clap:

Hello Guys,

I Noticed Several Links To Ollecart Which Is A Pos System That Works With Zencart. It Has A Nice Set-up, But There Is One Major Problem, --> I Understand That It Does Not Work With The Multiple Attributes Module (a Big Draw-back). This Is Likely Because It Is The Most Difficult Coding To Include In Any Pos System. It Additionally Has To Be Part Of The Base Coding Because It Makes The Number Of The Queries Expands Exponentially With Each Attribute Dramatically Reducing The Speed Of The Whole System. Therefore, I Think We Should Look At Ways Of Decreasing The Queries And Then Start By Integrating The Attributes & Upc Code. Only Then Does It Make Sense To Then Build The Pos Around This Code.

The Zencart's Own Dr. Bite Has Posted The Road Map Which Addresses Many Of These Major Issues (stream-lining The Database, Integrating The Upc Codes, And Make The Cart Accept Attributes.

***so Before We Consider Methods Of Building The Pos Around The Core, We Should Have The Zencart Team Chip In Some Ideas They May Have Already Started To Implement. Also, We Need To Know What They Are Planning So We Continue To Compliment The Zencart Team Rather Than Constantly Have To Re-work The Core Of The Module.

Ideas:
Quickbooks Uses A Grid System Which Assigns Numbers To Each Attributes And Then Reads The Numbers Something Like This:

                Item: Xxxxx

Attribute A (color) Blue (1) / Red (2) / Yellow (3)
---------------------------- /----------------------- /---------------------
Attribute B / /
(type) Rough (1) A1b1 / A2b1 / A3b1
---------------------------- /----------------------- /---------------------
Smooth(2) A1b1 / A2b1 / A3b1
---------------------------- /----------------------- /---------------------
Bumpy(3) A1b1 / A2b1 / A3b1
---------------------------- /----------------------- /---------------------
Lumpy(4) A1b1 / A2b1 / A3b1

Therefore, A Rough Blue Item Would Code Something Like This

Xxxxx.a1.b1

I Would Be More Than Honored To Have One Of The Zen-cart Team Help Direct Our Task To Help Them Eventually Include Our Code Into Their Module.

Please Help Our Direction....

It Additionally Has To Be Part Of The Base Coding Because It Makes The Number Of The Queries Expands Exponentially With Each Attribute Dramatically Reducing The Speed Of The Whole System. Therefore, I Think We Should Look At Ways Of Decreasing The Queries And Then Start By Integrating The Attributes & Upc Code. Only Then Does It Make Sense To Then Build The Pos Around This Code.

beilana, would you be able to build a fake store with the above issues then send me a copy. So I can see your issues with my code, live. Dennis