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Question

Good (free) projectbased financial software?

Sep 1, 2015 6:56AM PDT

Hello,

We're looking for software to keep track of our finances as a music label. This means our artists are all seperate 'projects', and they each have several sub-projects. We need to easily be able to keep track of the investments we make in them for the different albums / songs (recording, music, mastering, clipshoots, photo's, transport, marketing ...) and the return that flows to us by commission and other incomes (live shows commission, albumsales, online sales, merchandise sales. We'd also like to keep track of the associates' income that we work with on these projects.

Since we are a starting label we do not have the funds for a high-cost software package, we prefer free software ofcourse !
Does anybody have an idea of something that could be usefull for us?

Thanks in advance !

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: financial software
Sep 1, 2015 7:05AM PDT

Ideally, this is integrated in the financial (bookkeeping) software you use. Even the basic home user like you and me in such software can label his expenses to keep track of how much he spends on different categories. The more professional the package, the more flexible the reporting. Why not ask your accountant for a recommendation?

Those who don't use such software use MS Excel or free LibreOffice Calc and don't mind they have to enter everything twice and not are sure they forgot something and make errors entering the amounts.

Kees

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That's why we need an accountant in the band.
Sep 1, 2015 7:09AM PDT

I rarely see any successful endeavor without one that has the books in order. It's also a keen idea to get a lawyer on the drums.

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Re: That's why we need an accountant in the band.
Sep 1, 2015 7:48AM PDT

We have our books in order, but we'd like to be more specific on the 'projects', their individual ep's / albums on how much we invest vs how much return we get. This is not an easy thing to do with music since every investment is also an investment in the total artist package and will be usefull as the artist gets more succesfull and well known.

Still, we'd like something more than excel to keep track of this.

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This is where your accountant does the search.
Sep 1, 2015 8:11AM PDT

They are the one that has to live with the chosen app. If they didn't choose it, they will always tell you that's why you're not getting the report or such you wanted.

http://www.gnucash.org/ and others are out there. But easy? I've never found accounting to be easy enough to not let the accountant do the work.

As to projects, that's all about the chart of accounts. If need be the accountant will design the chart of accounts or just make a few companies to load and manage with the app.

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Re: Re: financial software
Sep 1, 2015 7:51AM PDT

We have a great bookkeeper that does our finances, but this is just for us to keep track of the micro- and total investments we make in everybody individually.

We'd like something more than excel for this one.
Do you have any software you can recommend?
I don't use any sortlike program myself, so I wouldn't know where to start.

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Answer
Solution found (?)
Oct 19, 2015 7:28PM PDT

I am super curious if this problem has been solved.

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Answer
Project Management Software
Nov 18, 2015 9:36AM PST

Hi there,

I work for a major city hospital and we were struggling with something similar- how to manage tasks that were still being done on paper. After looking and looking for software, the only programs that we could find were either really expensive, didn't do what we needed them to, or were way too complicated for everyone to use. So we wrote our own, assuming that there must be other people who were facing the same challenges.

The software has integrated modules for different tasks. You pick which ones you want. Our project manager module would allow you to track each artist as a "project", create custom Info Sheets to track all of investments you've made in them, and keep your team informed of any changes as you make them.

If you want to a feel for the vibe of our approach, check our introduction video: https://youtube/u0FAfx_KE0A.

Let me know if there's anything I can answer.

Thanks!

Caitlyn