Requirements, install and configure

Requirements

• Install and enable the following Drupal 7 required modules
Chaos tool suite (ctools)
Entity API
Token
User Chooser
Views

Optional

• The following modules are optional
autocategorise, a way of bringing consistency to items provided by many users in a closed vocabulary
Offers & Wants, a simple-to-setup directory of categorised offers (and wants)
Uid login, for LETS groups who commonly use their User ID

Install Community Accounting module

• Option 1: The easiest way to install is through the Drupal interface
• Option 2: Another way is to install the module manually. The Community Accounting module for Drupal 7 can be downloaded here.

Configure

• At /admin/modules, activate the following Community Accounting sub-modules
Forms and form builder UI
Views for transactions
• Still at /admin/modules, activate the following Views sub-module
Views UI

• Visit admin/accounting/currencies
Each currency has its own config, theming and users
The accounting is all done to 2 decimal places, so any fractions of a unit are counted in hundredths.
Rather than writing hundreds on the transaction form, it can be configured to accept just certain fractions, like quarters (of an hour)
Note how the default settings are the strictest accounting standards possible, with no editing and no deleting of transactions

• Visit admin/accounting/fields
Notice that transaction entity is fieldable. Fields added in this way will automatically be available to the form template and in views
Its possible to add a description, or a date, or an image or categories to your transaction object
Ensure the modules which declare those fields are installed and add and configure those fields here.
Note the 'cardinality' field in the field_worth settings. This allows you to have one or more currencies per transaction.

• Visit admin/accounting/forms
Design the forms for users to create transactions
Like views, they can be exported and bundled in code with a distribution.
N.B I advise editing an existing one before creating a new one since it is possible to create invalid transaction forms.
Create menu links to the forms and/or wrap them in blocks.
Note that some modules alter existing forms or create new ones.
It should be possible to create forms in a few minutes for specific purposes.

• Visit admin/accounting/transact
This is the troubleshooting transaction creation form, intended for administrative use only, it allows filtering on all transaction fields.

• Visit admin/accounting/transactions
Using lots of views exposed filters allopws basic but thorough transaction management.
Notice that views queries even to this table respect the currency access control settings - this table could be exposed to users.

• Visit admin/people/permissions
Note that these are general permissions, but there is a whole per-currency permission system

• Limits
Most projects require that accounts have 'overdraft' limits and, in mutual credit, positive balance limits.
Enable the limits module and edit the currency and choose how you want the limits to be determined.

• Views
The extra views module creates a transaction index table which is good for producing transaction summaries.
Some default views are provided with many helpful displays.
Be careful not to mix the handlers of the main transaction table with the index table
More display plugins would help to make these more attractive.
Integration with Google Charts or equivalent is needed.
Note that there isn't access control on this table as individual transactions are not meant to be shown. it is more intended for aggregting for aggregating.
This module does not provide special access control for transactions to be aggregated. However the view access control should be adequate
The previous version of the module contained a cache table containing balances and suchlike, but here it is all dynamic,
or at least drupal/views caching needs to be used, especially on large systems

• Pending transactions
Causes transactions to be saved in a pending state, listing signatories.
Configure which transactions to effect, what signatures are needed, and notification on admin/accounting/signatures

• Now you can start assembling the pieces according to the needs of your site.
The first level of architecture is in menus, blocks, views, mcapi_forms
For more ideas visit demo.communityforge.net
The cforge_custom installation profile which makes the demo module, is available at https://drupal.org/project/cforge

For additional configuration information find the README.txt file that comes with the Community Accounting module