Best Open Source Business Tools? 164
An anonymous reader writes "My wife and I started an S Corp in 2009 mainly to provide small scale consulting services for friends with small businesses of their own (we build them websites and do odd technical jobs). Now that the year is closing I'm giving thought to our corporate tax filings which will be due March 15th. I've scoured the web for free/open source legal templates for hiring contractors, issuing W-2s, keeping shareholder minute meetings, etc, but haven't been able to find any decent sources. It seems like this should be a priority of the open source community since reducing the cost of entry into small business could drive open source development. What are the best sources of open source legal templates, tax filing software, corporate compliance templates, etc?" What experiences have others had with open sources businesses and the best way to consolidate the necessary corporate mojo into a workable model?
Divergent Interests (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that this could only be a good thing. However, most of the Open Source community consists of developers, sysadmins, and other technically-minded folks. By contrast, this is more of a legal issue.
I also wonder if anyone who provides such open-source legal templates might be exposing himself to liability. Suppose someone uses such a template and it turns out to be incorrect, even by some minor technicality, and as a result that person has additional legal expenses or other damages. They just might try to sue the person who produced the template. Unlike software, where disclaiming liability is a standard practice, legal advice or legal documents might be much more problematic. I am definitely not a lawyer but I hope a lawyer might take a moment to explain whether this is a legitimate concern.
There is none (Score:5, Insightful)
I will say it and await the flames (Score:5, Insightful)
You are wasting your time.
The reason I say this is that, IME, OSS doesn't really deal very well with very niche requirements that aren't directly related to technology or anything that is not interesting from a technological standpoint.
Sending, relaying and receiving email? There's a plethora of products.
Writing a web application? Again, more options than I can even contemplate.
Filling out your tax return or paying your staff? One or two options which are generally terrible. Frankly, tax software is a fairly simple problem: start with a few numbers, add/subtract/multiply a few other numbers, send a cheque for the result to the tax man. The technically interesting bit is writing a generic engine to deal with whatever addition/subtraction/multiplication is necessary but writing the rules for that engine to deal with the various tax laws worldwide is mind-numbingly boring and there's no standard way such as an internationally agreed XML schema for the taxman to publish this years' tax legislation.
Software for your specific business niche? By definition, a niche.
Groupware? The only reason anyone's writing replacements for Exchange is because they can't stand Exchange. It's a mind-numbingly boring set of problems that nobody in their right mind is going to go near unless Exchange has seriously pissed them off or there's real money in it.
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm not sure there are any Free templates... (Score:2, Insightful)
the sources for those templates would generally be the experts who derive their living from selling that sort of information
Isn't that like.... our mantra, or something? I make a living making software and I make free crap too. It may or may not be in my financial best interest, but I like to pretend I'm not selfish ALL the time.
I think you may have missed a step (Score:2, Insightful)
So, on December 21, 2009 you have decided it might be a good idea to have some accounting and corporate secretarial records for the year 2009? Here's some free business advice - this is really something you want to sort out BEFORE you start operating, at least in draft form. Knocking up a bunch of retrospective meeting minutes, W-2s etc from memory and a box of unsorted receipts or correspondence is NOT a good idea.
That doesn't mean you have to become an expert accountant/lawyer yourself, but you should know the key ideas so you only have to pay accountants and lawyers to tidy up your accounts, taxes and contracts. When you see how much an accountant will charge you to create a complete set of accounts from a box of unsorted receipts in the peak Jan-Mar season, you will lean not to make that mistake again...
In any event, how is this "open source"? Template forms do not really have a "source", they are not programs. You mean "free", as in "I don't want to pay for them".
hire an accountant now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I will say it and await the flames (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax software is hardly simple, though I agree it is on the technical side. Not only is there no "internationally agreed XML schema for the taxman to publish this years' tax legislation", but there is no formal record of this year's tax schema at all. The tax laws are riddled with vaguely worded provisions, some of which (in the US) have been clarified by IRS advisory opinions, tax court precedent, or regular court precedent. You basically need a team of lawyers from every jurisdiction to even figure out what the tax code is. Encoding it in software is the relatively easy part.
Oh, and there are constant updates to it, some of which come out so late that patches ideally should be out 1-2 days after the new regulation is announced. Who is the volunteer who is going to spend their life monitoring the IRS's press releases and patching tax software?
Re:I'm not sure there are any Free templates... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an expert in this field, but it would surprise me greatly if there were Free templates of the sort you seek. For starters, most business law is governed by state law rather than federal law, so the requirements will depend in large part on where you are incorporated. Second, the sources for those templates would generally be the experts who derive their living from selling that sort of information (i.e. lawyers, accountants, tax firms, etc.) It is in their own financial best interests not to give away that which they need to make their own ends meet. Business law and tax law are very convoluted and generally require quite a bit of specialization.
I can see the possibility of Free tools for W2s and meeting minutes, but I'm skeptical as to the availability of legal and taxation materials. Also, even if they were available, I would go in with both eyes open because as a business owner, you're on the hook for making sure you're using correct and current information, and taxes in particular change with alarming regularity.
Another thing occurred to me when I read your comment. You can buy a good book, use online tutorials, examine source code produced by others, etc., and teach yourself how to be a competent programmer. There is no professional organization that you must join in order to be considered qualified. You're qualified if your programs compile and function and are decently well-written and that's about it for software development. By contrast, it's not nearly so easy to jump into practicing law, not even on a minor scale like the boilerplate forms this discussion mentions.
Incidentally, I view this as something of a grey area. Forms like this are something a layman can probably do on his own (that's a guess, not a claim), though it is of course much better to have a lawyer take care of it. What I am getting at is it's nothing like being in a courtroom (other than small-claims) where you're quite foolish and don't really have a prayer if you don't have a lawyer. If the challenges can be overcome, comparatively minor issues like business forms probably would lend itself to an open-source approach, but like you explained, even that is questionable.
Re:Wine (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds to me like he needed to consider all of this before starting a business.
hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
``It seems like this should be a priority of the open source community since reducing the cost of entry into small business could drive open source development.``
translation:
``It seem to me that the open source community should develop these tools so I don`t have to spend money on any of the other day-to-day costs of running a business.``
Re:Stick to your business (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had hired one of the two, he probably would have advised you to form an LLC rather than an S-Corp. But since you decided you knew better, you made a LOT more work for yourself.
Its possible he had good reasons that didn't make it into the article. No idea what they could possibly be, but ...
The real value of a wiki or form collection website, is building vocabulary and knowledge BEFORE meeting with the pros. It is possible the original poster had never heard of anything but a S-Corp, therefore he walks in saying he's getting an S-Corp, end of story. A glance at a "forms collection" for an LLC vs an S-Corp could have been very educational...
Professional meetings are much more productive when you can evaluate the professionals advice and actions. If you can't, then don't waste time meeting, just hand them barrels of money and hope they do the right thing for you, which is not exactly a recipe for business success.
Re:Divergent Interests (Score:4, Insightful)
One key to a successful business is, so much as possible, to only do things that contribute to your bottom line.
Guess what? SAP doesn't work the way the way the really big business who use it want either. They change their entire business process to use SAP.
I work for a Fortune 200 company. We sell food.
Decades ago they wrote the accounting software in COBOL. I work with some of the guys who did the work. But now they're implementing Oracle Financials, and they're changing business process as necessary.
Quickbooks or a similar package is probably sufficient for you - even if it doesn't work exactly how you want. You can almost certainly live with it, and unless your business is the sale of accounting software (web-based or otherwise) you have no business writing your own.