Boebert@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (10/26/85)
Anybody have any recommendations for an accounting and a database package which runs on CP/M and which would serve the needs of a church? The accounting package would have to handle the sorts of financial data one would expect for a church operation and the database would have to handle membership and mailing lists. Simple user interfaces are naturally a premium consideration.
edelheit@MITRE.ARPA (Jeff Edelheit) (10/28/85)
I spent a lot of time and energy trying to find a package similar to what you have described for my synagogue (there are a lot of similarities between a church and synagogue package.) Bottom line was that the one's I found were generally written for MS/PC-DOS and that the affordable ones ($2,500 or less) weren't very good. (My congregation felt they couldn't afford more than $2,500. There are some packages for $3,000 and more but I didn't bother to look.) Since there is a market for a relatively good package at a reasonable price, I decided to write one. (Maybe I should say integrate one.) I am using the Micro Business Applications (MBA) Accountant Series (G/L, A/P, A/R) and dBaseIII. I am using dBase for membership data (Name, address, phone #, children's names, birthdates, youth group activity) and for some billing data. I am writting some dBase code generate some monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual billing data. This data is passed to the MBA A/R for statement generation, account aging, and G/L posting. Since we have about 50 employees (school teachers, custodians, office staff) we are using MBA's payroll system. (It passes data to the G/L). All of the MBA software was originally written for CP/M-80 systems and was then ported to PC/MS-DOS. It has a pretty-good user interface and the documentation is really complete. I chose dBaseIII for two reasons: the "Assist" program makes it easier for the novice to generate queries, reports and address labels; and the MBA software included a conversion utility to go between the MBA files and dBase II/III. I am not suggesting that my choices were the best; they just seem to work fairly well and you can't ask for much more. Hope this was helpful. Regards, Jeff Edelheit (edelheit@mitre)