Proposal: Applications (Work Apps & Accounting)

[Ryan Taylor]

This is a cross-post from www.dashwhale.org/p/infra-applica-201608

For the July payment cycle, we submitted a proposal for Google Applications that was approved for $300. You can see the original proposal here for all of the details on the request (I will not rehash them here): https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-google-apps-for-work-subscriptions.9222/

Community members suggested that we might be able to gain savings by purchasing an annual subscription through a reseller, so we investigated the option. We have a quote from a firm in Canada that offers a discount. In addition, by prefunding the full year, we can avoid a monthly proposal, which is obviously a lot of work. The quote includes 32 Google Apps accounts for $4,896 CAD. This equates to ~$3,717 USD for 12 months.

In addition, we have been researching accounting packages to allow the core team to keep much more accurate track of budgets, expenses, backup documentation, and enable reporting of an "income statement" and balance sheet quarterly (starting with the current quarter). This will provide much more transparency to the community on our financial position broken out by budget, and enable us to have fully auditable books with copies of invoices and/or contracts directly attached to each transaction.

After trialing more than a dozen potential solutions, I can tell you there is no accounting package that easily accommodates fiat, Bitcoin, and user-defined currencies in a single package (we will be using all three types). However, Quickbooks does contain the option for manual support of Bitcoin, and allows users to "confiscate" other currencies by overriding exchange rates. It is the most feasible package I have found for our needs. Additionally, Quickbooks has demonstrated a much greater willingness to work with us to enhance the product to support our needs.

The trial period is coming to an end, and we'd like to request a single-user annual license for $290 to enable formal accounting / record keeping for all core team managed funding. This is a substantial discount vs. the $324 a month-to-month payment would cost.

Requested funding is as follows for the August 5th budget cycle:

• 407.53 Dash for annual Google Apps subscription for 32 users ($4,896 CAD @ 1.3173 CAD / USD @ $9.120 per Dash based on July 26th average rate at https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/price-dash.html)
• 31.80 Dash for annual Quickbooks license ($290 USD)
  
• 5.00 Dash reimbursement for the proposal cost

Total: 444.33 Dash

Manually vote YES on this proposal:
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 1c396ec098edfde4a3c53ae53e7e8ffd5ff5ed51d209e625795dac53dad3e3a4 yes
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 1c396ec098edfde4a3c53ae53e7e8ffd5ff5ed51d209e625795dac53dad3e3a4 yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 1c396ec098edfde4a3c53ae53e7e8ffd5ff5ed51d209e625795dac53dad3e3a4 no
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 1c396ec098edfde4a3c53ae53e7e8ffd5ff5ed51d209e625795dac53dad3e3a4 no

 

[fuzzyduck]

There is a lot of money being pumped around and into dash expansion but at the moment i wont vote this one just yet. The amount of proposals without any core development being explained to me is starting to annoy me. I thought we were supposed to get a new version and a statement right after D10e, but the testnet topic is dead.

I dont mind bad news or delays or even a failure of some degree, as long as there is at least some newsupdate about the current state of the core development, but the silence is getting frustrating.

Ps. yes im i silent MNholder who doesnt post that much. I do read the forum on a daily basis.

 

[TanteStefana]

Fuzzyduck, they have explained that they're waiting for Evan's commit on the final touches of the new budgeting system. You can never tell how long something will take to make it work perfectly and Evan is kind of a perfectionist. He also will come up with a revelation to make things better and will scrap a ton of work to re-work it, as he isn't married to what he initially came up with, which I find extraordinary. True, it sometimes lengthens the development time, but at the same time, the solutions he comes up with are quite refined and brilliant.

I want to say that this proposal just warms my heart and gets it pumping out of control. I didn't know you all have been researching accounting software that will clearly account for all the funds being spent. I mean, it's something I would have loved to nag you all about, but felt it might be too soon and was giving you all leeway on it. But you're all already on top of it! What, excuse my French, a Fucking Awesome Team you've put together. You seem to want to be as open and clear as humanly possible with the project as us serious Dash enthusiasts (those that aren't just invested for profit but are here for the revolution Dash represents)

Knowing you're committed to being this organized and clear and documented makes me feel so at ease with the future of Dash. I know that when the time comes, we'll also take the steps I feel will eventually be needed in hiring a law firm and lobbyists and whatever we need to keep government off our toes, and win!

Oh, and I'm voting YES!

 

[Stealth923]

I am voting yes.....however fuzzyduck has a point, I think the core team need to provide updates IF they state new features will be announced prior/post d10e and then just go silent. I dont care if there were stuff ups, delays etc, regular communication is the key to engagement and this is where I feel the team lacks and has been brought up time and time again from the community. Not asking for a blow by blow account of whats happening, it takes 5 minutes to write a few sentences on whats happening.

I have also noticed that Evan does not post on any forums anymore and hasn't been around for a long time. I realise he is flat out, but it would be nice for him to continue to interact with his investors which is an important aspect of being the lead developer of this movement. Not to mention the fruitful and great technical discussions it leads to, plus keeping the community engaged. I have noticed that as time goes on the forums become more quiet although this could be attributed to everyone now being on slack.

 

[n00bkid]

I appreciate the detail of this proposal, but like @fuzzyduck, I will not be voting for it at this time. This proposal is for transparency in accounting, but transparency of development needs to come first.

The announcement that new information would be revealed at d10e -- and the lack thereof and subsequent silence -- was quite the let down. An all-around unattractive move.

 

[demo]

transparency of development needs to come first.

You are tottaly right.

And also transparency on how we built, make and compile this dash thing is needed.
Have a look at this. This is the kind of transparency you should demand, regarding making and compiling the project. But who is the one to ask such a documentation from the developers? Is any whale listening to my talks?

 

[flare]

You are tottaly right.

And also transparency on how we built, make and compile this dash thing is needed.
Have a look at this. This is the kind of transparency you should demand, regarding making and compiling the project. But who is the one to ask such a documentation from the developers? Is any whale listening to my talks?

Have a look at this:

https://github.com/dashpay/dash/blob/master/doc/build-unix.md
https://github.com/dashpay/dash/blob/master/doc/build-osx.md
https://github.com/dashpay/dash/blob/master/doc/gitian-building.md

This is how we compile and package the software. You can easily run through the process and check if you get the same file signatures. I know at least 3 community members who have done so using the documentation. I am not saying the documentation is perfect, but if you feel there is something missing feel free to add it.