Centeam

About

Centeam is created by me, Stef Bastiaansen. In 2013 I co-founded Cohousing Kerselaar in Oostakker, Belgium where I still live and do the finances.

I started the finances with lots of excels, word-documents and a lot of e-mails but soon grew tired of this. Since I was a programmer, I programmed an online tool to do these finances: Centeam was born. In 2022 the tool was ready for other cohousings.

Below you will find often asked questions and their answers that might tell something more about Centeam. For more specific questions feel free to get in touch via info@centeam.co.

Our cohousing exists for quite a while. Can we start using Centeam without transfering our current bookkeeping?

Option 1: Do transfer your bookkeeping: It probably will take some time, but after that all your costs will be searchable, you will have only one system and you might even discovered some errors in your bookkeeping.

Option 2: Use the initial values module: Centeam has a module that allows for entering the finale values of your balances, buffers, jars ... so you can start to work from there.

Option 3: A mix of option 1 and 2: For the parts that are easy to transfer to Centeam, transfer. For the other parts you can use the Initial values-module.

How much does Centeam cost?

The first year, Centeam is free. Then, the yearly price consists out of a fixed part of € 100 + € 10 x number of units. If your cohousing as 13 units, this means € 100 + (€ 10 x 13) = € 230 per year.

For cohousings that are still in the building phase, Centeam is free until the first unit is inhabited.

Can Centeam be used for projects where only costs for occupants have te be handled?

No problem! When registering your cohousing you can check 'We will use Centeam only for occupant costs'. The functionality for owners is then disabled. Should you want to change this later, send an e-mail to info@centeam.co.

Why does Centeam make such strict split between owners and occupants?

First of all, users can be both owner and occupant, but Centeam has the option to have a different person as owner and occupant for a unit. Each cost is then linked to or occupants or owners

This way, the correct costs will be payed by the correct persons.

This way, the changing of occupant or owner is simplified.

How about security? Backups? Server location?

• Centeam uses https.
• We try to keep up with the latest developments in website security. Centeam has an A+ rating on securityheaders.com
• We update te server regularly but only with stable releases of the software .
• The server is located in Amsterdam.
• The database is gets a backup each 5 minutes, the files once a day.
• When an error occurs, we get an e-mail so we can try the solve the problem as soon as possible..
• We try to limit the number of external parties to get Centeam running. Only for e-mail we use an external SMTP-server.
• We don't use any kind of analytics. Your data is never shared with another party.
• The only cookies we use are needed to keep your login session alive and to secure the submission of forms (CSRF). Without these two cookies Centeam would not work or would not be safe.
• Centeam is build so that when somebody leaves a project, the data of dat person will be deleted completely.
• The server has a firewall.
• We check for a list of known attacks on webserver. If we detect any, this IP-addresses are blocked..
• At last we try to communicate as clear as possible about changes but also about bugs via the newspagina.

How much time will we save with Centeam?

Depends on how much you are wasting now of course, but to illustratie, in Cohousing Kerselaar

• One person has about an hour of work each month paying bills, managing users, ...
• Once a year, this person also does the final calculation of the electricity, water, gas ... This takes a full day because our situtation is a bit complex with electrical cars, solar panels, washing machines ...
• The financial team meets about one time each two months

The rest of the work (tallies etc...) is done by the group or automatically in Centeam.