Treasurer Plans, for discussion

All,

Below are two actions I am planning to take in the near future. I do not
believe that either of these items requires formal board approval as they
are both in line with my duties as treasurer and well within our budget.
To uphold the expressed member desire for greater clarity of communication
from the Board, I thought I'd post them for discussion here.

LedgerSMB
------------
As noted in the Treasurer's report, I'm up to date with our money but it is
not in a formal accounting system. This is partly due to some bugs and
needed additional features in LedgerSMB I need addressed. While I could
fix these myself in theory, I don't know when I'd get around to it.

As the project lead for LedgerSMB makes his living contracting support for
it, I plan to pay him to "make it happen" so that I can stop making
excuses as to why it's not ready yet. This will provide several benefits:

1) It will put us on a sound, automated, accounting footing so that I can
turn things over to the new treasurer in July (no, I don't want to stay
Treasurer) and for years to come.

2) It will Promote the Cause of Free Software because some of these
features will end up being features of LedgerSMB, which is GPL-licensed
and fills a poorly-served segment of OSS, small business software.

The budget for this work is an estimated $1200, with a maximum of $2000.
For reference, we have $8000 in accumulated SPI overhead funds from 2006
available.

Bank Accounts
--------------
Key Bank has, to date, provided us excellent service. We have no
outstanding checks with FirstIB. As such, I plan to close our FirstIB
account at the first opportunity (after we get some needed data from
them).

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Oops, one paragraph got cut off from "Bank Accounts"

Bank Accounts
--------------
Key Bank has, to date, provided us excellent service.  We have no
outstanding checks with FirstIB.  As such, I plan to close our FirstIB
account at the first opportunity (after we get some needed data from
them).

Debian has almost $100,000 accumulated in funds. Most of this is in a
checking account. I wish to move at least $50,000 to a securities account
so that it can be interest-bearing. I'm not sure whether the DPL's
approval is required for this. I may have a board resolution if this
requires opening a new account.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org