Centeam

Reserve capital 24 February 2024

A new feature was added to Centeam: The Reserve Capital module which you can enable on the settings page.

In short this module allows you to create a separate buffer for really big expenses in the future.

A video in dutch is available with a complete explanation.

Newsletter module 05 February 2024

A new module was added to send a monthy newsletter to all the people of your group (with e-mail and checked option 'newsletter' on their profile). Before this option on the profile can be check the module needs to be activated by an admin on the settings page.

This monthly newsletter (sent around the end of the month) contains a financial update for the unit of the recipient

• Recent costs
• Status of owner cost buffer, occupant costs balance, reserve capital ... and what needs to be done
• Meals in the future
• Reservations
• Latest Centeam news

Updates January 2024 10 January 2024

A few small updates:

• The code of Centeam was cleaned up a bit, and made more HTML5 valid.
• All servers, software en dependencies were updated to the latest versions.
• Small layout improvements for mobile.
• The layout of the meals page was improved.
• In the meanwhile we are still working on the new reserve capital module and an (optional) centem newsletter.

Backups and price update 28 December 2023

Good news and bad news!

Good news first. Until now backups of the Centeam data were made weekly. This was not good enough. From now on, the database is backed up every hour, files (e.g. invoices that are added to the costs) are backed up daily.

Sadly, backups cost money, therefore we decided to do a price update. Previously the price calculation was simple: € 12 x number of units = price per year.

This price calculation was a bit off, because the server cost per project is defined more by the number of costs (and files) than by the number of units. The cost per project increases only a little bit with the number of units.

We could have opted for a flat fee per project but that would make Centeam too expensive for really small projects. So, we decided on a new approach in between. The new price calculation goes like this: € 100 + (€ 10 x number of units). So, a project with 13 units now pays € 230 per year.

Duplicate costs etc. 18 December 2023

Hard work was done on Centeam the last few weeks. Most of it was on the concept of a Reserve capital. That change will go live in Januari after we have tested it thoroughly at Cohousing Kerselaar. In the meanwhile, the following changes went live:

• When a Centeam-admin now opens a cost, a green button will be visible that can be used to duplicate a cost. This might come in handy for recurring costs like water, internet ... To facilitate this, the search field was given a more prominent place in the top navigation bar.
• More info about the financial status of a unit is shown on the detail page of that unit.
• More info about a cost is shown on the detail page of that cost.
• When adding new users, the password link used to expire after 3 days. That has now been changed to 1 month.
• A lot of bugfixes.

Argenta import, Owner cost buffer via key 06 October 2023

• Argenta import: Transaction files could already be imported as Coda 2.3 files or the .csv file from KBC. Now also the Excel files of Argenta can be imported.
• Owner cost buffer per key: Previously all units of the project had the same buffer. From now on you have to define a total buffer and with which key this should be divided.

Tallies e.a. 25 September 2023

The tallies have been improved. You can now group different types of tallies (e.g. hot wash, cold wash, dryer) in one list. It's now easier to submit and print the tally lists.

Was also added:

• Search: Improved searching of multiple words.
• Import payments: After importing payments the balances of the units is recalculated.
• Propositions: These are now ordered alfabetically (inactive are still order by latest costs)
• Reservations: Some reservations that started one month and ended in the next could be invisible in some cases.
• Added support for PDF, Excel, ODS ... as attachments.

Videos 20 September 2022

We made a new page with some videos that try to explain the concepts and workings of Centeam.

1. Intro: Management of users, costs and payments.
2. Jars and tallies: Management of a common fridge, washing machines and even a piggy bank.

Soon, also videos about the meals and shop module.

The last few weeks we crushed some bugs and modified some features:

• Costs: When you open a cost, you can now link to the jar and occupants sheet.
• Costs: In some overviews costs with a negative value were not shown.
• Meals: The option was added to supply a wanted number of dishwashers. People can volunteer when subscribing.
• Payments: When a part of a splitted payment is removed, its counterpart will also be removed. The original payment will appear again.

Updates July 2022 08 July 2022

• When occupant costs are recalculated in the background, you don't have to refresh the page yourself. This happens automatically now.
• On the owner costs page a history button was added, showing a graph totalling the costs per year.
• When there are open meals, these are shown on the dashboard.
• It's now possible for a cooking crew to add subscriptions themselves (editing and deleting was already possible).
• The birthdays on the dashboard have been reworked.
• The linking of paymens can now also link payments where the amount is equal to that of a cost and where the name of the other party is contained in the name of the cost.
• When while linking a payment is found with the message "owner costs unit XX" a linked cost is added to the active occupants cost sheet making sure Unit XX is more 'in the green'.
• An export was added for all budgets.
• The currency that your project uses can be changed in the settings (EUR, GPB, USD)
• While adding (or editing) a cost, you can now see the calculated values of the cost real time next to the fields of the distribution keys.
• The layout of the owner costs buffer and occupants costs balance info on the dashboard was improved.
• ...

Meals and other things 28 June 2022

The organisation of common meals can become more difficult than it should be. The meals module in Centeam allows for managing the subscriptions (adults vs children), for the different options (vegan, meat ...) of the meal you and your crew choose to prepare.

When you're done, add the costs and select for each which variations the cost applied. Centeam will do the calculation for you.

The meals module is off by default but can be enabled by the admins in the settings.

Also:

• Admins can now select any unit when adding a cost. Normal users can still only select their own unit and the ACO.
• The owner costs page was revised a bit.
• On the occupants costs page, the column with your unit is now marked in a different color.
• There is an extra setting to hide or show the balance of your bank account on the dashboard. Showing the balance is only interesting when you linked all the costs of your bank account to a cost in Centeam.

Update Juin 2022 14 June 2022

Lots of updates!

• Some items from the main navigation (search, settings, help, logs) were moved to the top navigation.
• Added search functionality to the payments page.
• On top of the payments page a button 'History' was added. This shows a graph with the full payment history.
• A similar graph was added to each jar!
• The cost search (now in the top navigation) has been improved and works like the search for payments.
• An extra counter is visible for admins for unlinked payments.
• The Unpaid costs page has been reworked. You now also see costs where the amount that was paid does not match the amount of the cost.
• A simple search was added to the persons page.
• When adding a cost, non-admins can now choose the jar too.
• When adding a cost admins can now approve in one go.
• When a page generates an error, it will now display a nicer error.
• The linking of costs to a payment is made easier with an extra search field for selecting the cost.
• Also, a lot of bugs were squashed.

Multiple units (and projects) per user 10 June 2022

From now on, it's possible to link multiple units to one user. In most cases because a user is owner of multiple units. To link extra units to a user, go to the Persons page, and open the user. There you will see the possibility to add more units.

It is even possible for a user to have multiple units across projects. The admins of the different projects don't have to do anything special. Just add the users with the e-mailadres and Centeam will make the link. This can also be interesing for multiple cohousing projects that also belong to a general ACO. Image you have three related projects. You registrer four projects. One for each project and an extra one for the general ACO. In this project you manualy add all users and units of the three separate project.

The result is that users that belong to multiple projects or have multiple units will see a menu on top for switching between these projects or units.

"Plnr" becomes "Centeam" 01 June 2022

For the past five years, ‘Centeam' was called ‘Plnr'. This original name came from its original goal: create a do-it-all tool for cohousings. Soon it became clear that this was a little bit too ambitious but also not necessary. There are lots of tools to communicate, share files, plan activities, video calling ...

The only thing that we couldn't find a decent tool for was the finances of our project Cohousing Kerselaar. Until then it was a labour intensive soup consisting of Excel, Shared folders, LibreOffice, Google Spreadsheets ...

So the focus of Plnr-development quickly went in the direction of finances. Thanks to a rather long Corona quarantine and a sabbatical the time was found to finish the tool so it could be used by other cohousings.

Because the tool is now mainly finance-focused, a new name was called for. Eventually we decided to not make it too difficult and chose 'Centeam', the name we use ourselves for our own financial team in Cohousing Kerselaar.

Together with this change other changes happened as well:

• Centeam is now also available in in English. This is a project based on the setting that only admins can change.
• On the page with old occupant costs the start and end date is shown.
• The interface of the shop is better integrated.
• The automatic linking of payments to costs is now case-insensitive
• It's now possible to make an export of budgets
• Bugfix: The log of a payment was incomplete until now.
• Bugfix: Detection whether a cost was paid is improved.
• Bugfix: In some cases when sheets were not reculculated when they should have been (e.g. when creating a cost from a payment).