On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:16:16PM +1000, Elliott-Brennan wrote: > I've just joined the committee for my daughter's pre-school; a > not-for-profit, community service. > > The Federal Government (Department of Family and Community Services) > requires that they provide information and funding/refunding material > etc, to them in a particular format. One of the recommended programs is > called CentreCalc, e.g.: > > http://www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/childcare/services-software_issues.htm > > Quote: > > "The software packages listed in the table below have been authorised > for disk lodgement of child care usage statements. The authorisation of > these packages is limited to the statements for payment summary and > child care usage modules, and does not extend to other aspects of the > software package such as receipting and invoicing" > > Finally, can anyone provide advice about where to start in looking at > encouraging an FOSS version. Other services around the country would be > in exactly the same position. If each contributed a small amount of > money, it would be, in total, quite a large amount of money (grass-roots > action etc). > > Is anyone aware of whom I may be able to speak about the possibility of > an FOSS version of such things? I've done a quick search but no luck. > Who would I speak to about getting such a package developed?
Can you give some concrete idea of what this software has to be able to do? I'm not finding anything immediately handy from the FaCS website. Given that you have a decent idea of what would the software would need to do, finding a commercial company to do the development might be a bit tricky, but perhaps you could pay someone to spearhead development in an OSS model? Without knowing what needs to be done, I can't suggest any sort of costs, timeframe, or likely model, but if you've got that info it'd be possible to do some sort of analysis and come up with a viable plan. Since this system appears to be dealing with money, perhaps some custom scripts and/or reports in front of an accounting package like GNUcash or SQL Ledger might be all that's needed? Presumably the FaCS reporting requirements are available, so it should be possible to write something to produce that format, if the data has been collected somewhere up the line. I hear that the schootool system is coming along nicely; perhaps it would have some or most of the necessary gubbins in it already. The hard sell part of the entire operation is going to be getting enough other childcare places to cough up dough. *You* see the benefit, but a lot of other places probably won't so easily, and certainly won't want to switch software packages away from something they're comfortable with. Also, since you're working from zero capital, getting them all to cough up the dough in *advance* of getting something useful (since you're going to need to pay people before they'll do so much work for you). - Matt
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