Date   : Sun, 27 Oct 1985 20:37:38 EST (Sun)
From   : Jeff Edelheit <edelheit@MITRE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Accounting and Database pkg needed

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)