NYCPHP Meetup

[Dn. Kirill Sokolov]

Hello,

I'm trying to work out several different options for integrated 
software to administer our small (<100 students) graduaate school. 
One option is to purchase a commercial integrated system designed for 
the purpose -- very expensive, naturally.  Another option is to stick 
with our current system (poor text-based user interface - Informix 
SE).  A third option would be to try to put together various software 
components that all together are still significantly cheaper than the 
integrated system.

The components we have now include:

Accounting
Donor Management
Bookstore (POS)
Academic Records / Registrar

The glue that holds this all together in a relational database is the 
contacts table.

I think that for our needs, one of the higher end Quickbooks 
applications would do perfectly well for accounting; almost any donor 
management program would be fine (e.g., Donorperfect or even the 
nonprofitbooks program designed for Quickbooks).  POS and Academic 
programs need only to share a contacts database.

If I could get Quickbooks or an equivalent package and a donor 
management program to share an SQL database, I think I could 
straightforwardly enough implement open source / php applications for 
smaller tasks such as academic records.  Any thoughts as to whether 
this is worth further exploration?  I think I've "googled" everywhere 
I can and haven't quite been able to figure out accounting and donor 
management WITH an open/shared contacts database short of very 
expensive packages...

Thanks for pointers,
-- 
Rev. Dn. Kirill Sokolov
Director of Systems and Information Technologies
St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary