Thanks to memberships we have funds!
We need to start using the funds to improve the product.
We’ve employees on foundation payroll who can review and merge PRs and even collaborate if new contributors need any help.
I’m proposing a monthly bounty of 2000 USD to add community requested features into product.
This bounty will be sponsored by the foundation.
Details :
Start with 2000USD per month
4 features from Github issues will be selected per month (tagged)
Module volunteers and community can propose issues.
Issues for upcoming month to be finalized before month end
Service Providers, freelancers, developers or contributing users can respond on Issue if they wish to claim the bounty
Forum post linking to issues and pull requests will be setup and pinned every month to show updates on the bounty.
Bounty is awarded after PR is merged.
Maintainers have right to choose or reject feature to be added into core product.
Example, features dependent on proprietary API libraries or features inconsistent with ERPNext’s user experience will be rejected and not sponsored by bounty.
If this process works, we can increase the bounty amount.
I would like to propose Collaborative Project Management as something to tackle for the framework. It has a milestone under Collaborative Project Management Milestone · GitHub and is pretty straightforward.
Project Management is currently not really that useful but is something that everyone uses nowadays. Asana, Wunderlist or Trello are some examples among many. With a few improvements ERPNext could actually compete.
My company would contribute money to developing this feature. (We do have some ideas already moving along with a development team, which will be released to the core once they are completed as well.)
The ongoing development is not comprehensive. ASANA is free and extraordinarily powerful and easy to use. Any movement that direction would find financial support from my company.
ASANA is free for small teams, once you reach a certain size you can not add more people to your team. Also some essential features are paid features only. @Steve_Simonson please put money towards the cause, maybe you can push the collaborative project management by donating towards the development for the foundation.
If I know the scope of what I am contributing to and the timeline for delivery I am happy to be a contributor to help accelerate the project. I do not wish, however, to spend money without a clear unstanding of the deliverable and timeline. I am not sure if the foundation will take this project on, but the moment I understand the scope of the feature set and related budget, how much I need to contribute (and I am willing to be a key player financially on this), and when it will be delivered I am ready.
Since I am not familiar with the bounty/foundation system I want to learn about how to help accelerate projects of this nature into the core.
(I do see the github project which has 4 open milestones. How much will it take to kick this forward and where do I pay? Is the bounty released when milestones are released? Please forgive my lack of familiarity with the system.)
I would like to see a priority-based approach where priorities are set by how the maximum number of users will benefit.
In that sense, I agree with @rmehta…accounting being the core of any company… especially the sales/purchase cycles.
I believe here there is still quite some room for improvements…
Fool-proof work-flows including all the special situations that may happen (returns, corrections for too much or not enough payments, adjustments,…etc) that are intuitive, …Human beings do make errors, and repairing errors in a completed workflow is still not intuitive… ( eg I have a PO, Receipt, Bill, payment) and I see I have typed the wrong date in the Payment than I really have to understand how the system works to repair…An office-clerk may not be able to do it. The basic way taxes are dealt with (except the new developments for India and Emirates/SA) has never been changed since the beginning of Erpnext…Quantity bases taxes ($ per gallon or Euro per liter) are not possible without “tricks” and so on…Linking accounts to an external transactions file is standards in every European accounting programme, scanning of purchase invoices combined with some AI to automatically create a Purchase Bill…and so on and so on…
True! Many smaller software companys use features here that automatic scan incoming invoices. outgoing invoices are nice in erpnext but incomming transactions are not easy to handy so you do it not by yourself and have to give it to an accountant. but more and more businesses are seeking for automation incoming invoices also because an external accountant is expensive for some startups and accountants use software that offer these tings more and more.
Two general Workflows:
1.) BANKING > CSV > UPLOAD INTO ERP
you download from your online banking a .csv file with transactions (incomming and/or outgoing invoices)
you import the csv into your accounting software and just check the prices > and put it to the right categories/account nr. and taxes. At the end of the quater/year you have also all the incomming transactions and their taxes in one place and hand the tax ammount over to the officials.
2.) SCAN > AI ANALYSE > IMPORT
you scan your invoices with your mobile (simply take a picture) and upload it to erpnext.
a AI image software (open source AI frameworks out there already?) scans the invoice automatic for DATE, NR, TAX, or CUSTOMER and generates the Data for the incoming invoice.
Like @becht_robert said, these things started not long ago by startups-for accounting and are going fast, and is becoming more and more standard, and if a bounty goes in this direction it will be the right path to invest, for sure.
We are working to develop the 2nd requirement AI (3RD party provider). We will open source it. The 3rd party charges a small fee per invoice. But it’s worth it.
