Thank you for your answers, I still have to study 'Turbocash' a bit more as suggested by Frankbell which I will do within the next few weeks although there are a few problems with it as explained in its Wikipedia page and it must run under "wine" in Linux.

As an international Not-For-Profit set up mostly by volunteers we often find it difficult to determine which way to go about basic and elementary things about which a commercial organisation is likely to have someone with sufficient knowledge allowing it to bypass this step or easily resolve it. The purpose of this thread was to find if the Internet could be of assistance in this case and it looks like the answer is a resounding "no". It also seems that, except for corporations, the adjective "international" is not of a use common enough yet to detract from the automatic association with "money laundering".

We do not have yet suitable accounts with banks and this thread was intended to apply for bank accounts with a sufficient understanding of what to expect in terms of services as their advertising websites are intentionally vague and invariably limited to telling you they are the best or have the best.

A particular problem we were expecting to resolve easily and as a test was to automate payments for thousands of small contributions made by free-lancers on the basis that if we budget and request some work, the payment for the work should automatically be made on receipt of the goods. If the said work is unsatisfactory, we have lost a small amount and this particular provider is removed from a list of "automatically-paid". As an example of what we expected to resolve for which we did not think a bank could help (cheaply), a personnal bank account allows a bank client to make payments to a nominated account holder with the same bank or with another financial institution but if many payments are to be made, every one needs to be entered manually, we anticipate the same will apply to any starting business (with a business account) and we want to automate and customise that which appears not to be the bank's responsibility even if they do provide a similar service. We also assume we could be reinventing the wheel if we did not look for existing solutions first.

A search of Debian software packages deceptively lists 3 packages, GnuCash ("..unmaintained because of complexity"!!) and 2 others apparently designed for fun or very small use.

Any comment regarding the explanations above is welcome.

Earlier too (a few months back) you were on the same subject.. Right?

You can't expect the bank to do your job. What you ask for isn't the bank's work. You need an internal supplier payment system where each free lancer is a supplier.

Upon receipt of goods the system should

1. Record the goods receipt - whether or not the supplier is blacklisted.
2. Check whether the supplier is blacklisted. If yes, convey the bad news to the supplier and arrange to return the "goods"
3. If not blacklisted, then generate a pay order, trigger the corresponding payment instruction to the bank with details of recipient's bank name, account number, currency, amount payable in ASD etc.

Separately have what my organisation used to call an AUTOMATIC BANKvBOOK reconciliation system that should be able to download bulk data of all payment entries from the bank match it against your pay orders and highlight errors and omissions.


OK

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this is starting to sound more like records management (open-erp) ?zeke ?

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If you're creating applications that manage credit card data you need to test those applications based on the PCIDSS (Payment Card Industry Security Standard) Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi44mL7mcq0

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Talk to the banks you need to manage accounts with, and ask them which off-the-shelf software they recommend.

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I'd contact sites like GoFundMe or well known charitable organizations and ask them directly for some recommendations. Also a point of merit is that non-Profit still has a board of directors and paid employees. Nothing saying that you can't have paid services which provide the portal for charitable contributions or paid accountants for tracking the flow of donations across continents. And then look for ways to streamline that or internalize it where you aren't spending money you consider to be in excess.

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I never have.

Charitable organisations (many) have been approached in the past in the candid hope of getting some basic advice that was anticipated not to affect their privacy or their possible little "trade" secrets in any way and simple to suggest but we have been systematically rejected, charity is big business these days and little else (unlike charities, we're not solliciting funds or donations).
The latest answers seem to confirm my initial view that, in the example provided, there is nothing from which we can gather inspiration and we need to write our own software.

If the amount of money you can afford to budget for this is zero, then that's a hard requirement that you should specify.

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Since banking/accounting is vital from the start, it is that way although we have an unsatisfactory plan B. The priorities of a NFP that forbids itself to borrow are different than that of a usual business who must prioritise a requirement first and its cost second while we are under pressure to do the opposite, hence we rely heavily on volunteer work and existing low-cost solutions that may not be what we need in the long-run.

I found that Debian has software to automate transfers: "abtransfers"

That's a great article. One of my biggest take-aways is this:

The biggest bottleneck on that 57 year old machine is the java application itself.

I worked on IBM 360/370 nearly half a century ago, I thought there would not be a single one in use today which, to my astonishment, seems to be a wrong assumption, any comment?

these things are used heavily in major health insurance companies. my corporation bought another corporation in the 1980's. some of the internal cics panels still have the acronym of the old company.

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