Best Open Source Business Tools?

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?

Comments

Divergent Interests

[causality]

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.

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.

Re:Divergent Interests

[Anonymous Coward]

You can disclaim liability over "legal advice" as well as legal document templates. This is the premise by which websites such as www.docstoc.com get away with offering free legal document templates. (They're actually a great source for start-ups.) It's basically just a matter of making it known and understood that you're not an attorney, nor have the templates been altered specifically for your use, and so you should use them at your own discretion and at the advice of your own legal attorney.

As for the various open source software applications you mentioned, I am not sure, but open source *Business* accounting software is basically non-existent.

For our web development startup, Forward Interfaces, we developed our own time-clock web application with which we can track our hours (we're a small operation of 3 company members thus far) and we plan on developing our own quickbooks-style accounting software, project management and CRM suite. We figure, even if there is existing software out there, it's probably not going to be *exactly* what we need - and hey, we're a software development company!

Re:Divergent Interests

[greensoap]

In light of the topic, I am not giving anyone legal advice nor do my comments intend to replace, compliment, or supplement the enlightened advice of an attorney in your state. In fact, I might be completely wrong so do not rely on anything I say. These are merely my uneducated opinions on the topic at hand.

Interstingly, Legalzoom is a corporation and as such, is not legally allowed to provide legal advice. Many states, allow for Limited Liability Partnerships which as similar to corps. but do not entirely insulate an individual from a lawsuit. In an LLP, one partner is not liable for the malpractice of another partner, but each is liable for his/her own malpractice. Thus, LLPs do not provide absolute insulation from professional liability but the firm as a whole is insulated for another's liability.

Corporations have much broader insulation for shareholders to encourage investment. LLP's aren't allowed to have non-professional investors. Thus, if the LLP is a law firm then only lawyers may invest in the LLP. If the LLP is a medical practice, then only doctors. Basically, most states don't want to guarantee no liability for people in these fields but still want to encourage efficient partnerships. Thus, the LLP was formed.

The fact the Legalzoom exists as a corporation tends to promote the idea that these form providers are not handing out legal advice, at least not under the definition of the states where they provide there forms. Of course, they may be "risking" it and might be in violation of some state's law, but I didn't take the time to go check any individual state's law on the unauthorized practice of law with reference to "legal" forms. There is likely some case law out there with respect to tax forms and wills/trusts forms since people have been publishing self-help books with template forms in those areas for decades.

I'm not sure there are any Free templates...

[reimero]

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.

Re:I'm not sure there are any Free templates...

[NewWorldDan]

Second, the sources for those templates would generally be the experts who derive their living from selling that sort of information

I'm not sure I follow... there's a ton of open source software out there and it's produced by people who make their living producing software. There are also a lot of low cost legal templates available (see nolo.com, there's also a similar section at my local office supply store). In any event, the templates aren't a big deal - laywers use them routinely. The bigger problem is knowing all the stupid legal quirks that aren't shown on those forms (filing deadlines, limits, proceedures, etc.). Personally, I think it's shameful that we have a legal system that the common man can't use without professional help.

There is none

[supervillain]

The answer is there is none. Tax laws change yearly and unless get a team of lawyers from each state to donate their services to an open source project the software will not comply with those changes.

Re:Wine

[nametaken]

Most of what he's talking about sounds like things there are already existing PDF forms for at IRS.gov.

I will say it and await the flames

[jimicus]

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

[Shandalar]

You want legal forms generated by Phil Grognard from his basement? No thanks - I trust Phil (mostly) to write software that doesn't crash all the time, but I don't want him looking out for my legal interests, and I don't particularly believe that he understands, for example, the limits of nondisclosure agreements with regard to pre-existing works in my particular state. Just use the Nolo books. They are inexpensive, far less expensive than 10 minutes of an attorney's time (literally).

File W2's electronically

[xyzzy42]

http://www.ssa.gov/employer/

Pay for it

[Trailer Trash]

You can get quickbooks from intuit for around $200 that will provide a lot of that. I also use a payroll company for $40/month to handle all the taxes and filings for payroll.

The issues here are legal, not technical, and you *need* to have legally competent people backing the products that you use in these domains. Also, tax law changes on an annual basis. Intuit has a team of lawyers helping them stay abreast, as does my payroll company. You do not want to end up in front of the IRS (or worse, tax court) and not have a leg to stand on.

I hate to say it, but it costs money to be in business. I just saw statistics a few days ago that 1/4 of payroll tax forms (941s) are erroneous, with the average cost being $670. Do the math. It's cheaper to pay the pros up front. I could go on and on, but, take it from me. I've paid plenty due to stupidity over the years. It's cheaper to put the right professionals in place to support you in your non-core tasks in the same way that people have put *you* in place to support them in their non-core tasks.

Re:Wine

[Trepidity]

There's lots of web-based stuff too, which is increasingly being offered as a part of a package with other services. Payroll processors are common, for example: they handle paying your employees (check or direct deposit), and as part of the deal withhold payroll taxes and applicable income taxes, send out W-2s to the employees, send the appropriate filings to the IRS, and keep the appropriate records. It's not just the software, but the fact that they also handle things like doing the direct deposit, which otherwise you'd need to set up and keep maintained.

I'm usually a fan of doing things yourself, but for $300-600/yr for a small company for services like those, I would probably just let them handle it, because the fixed costs for dealing with payroll for only a handful of employees are too high.

(I have in mind stuff like Intuit Online Payroll and SurePayroll.)

Nolo books at the library

[vlm]

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.

Little do you know, you are looking for the "Nolo" series of books at your local library, you know, the library, the place where homeless people go for internet access... Your local library, unless its total ghetto, probably has the entire nolo series available to read and/or borrow.

Nolo has a website with a lot of marketing, yet also some information, at:

http://www.nolo.com/

Your best strategy is to skim thru, maybe even check out, the books that look interesting at the library, then purchase the most recent version from nolo for daily use.

I think, based on your description, you want their book "Legal Forms for Starting & Running a Small Business"

I have absolutely no connection to Nolo other than reading their educational books at the library when I was a kid, convinced me that the profession of lawyer-ing or whatever was not quite as interesting as it appeared on TV.