How do I use BetaPop?

BetaPop is a console application with a somewhat complex set of arguments. It has been successfully used on Linux and MacOS X.

Billing is done over some period of your choosing; you'll typically want to do this on a biweekly or monthly basis. BetaPop only tracks the current period and the summary of the last period. When a new billing period is started, the current period is amalgamated into the summary. If you want to keep track of period-by-period numbers, you will need to track those outside of BetaPop.

Before using BetaPop, you will need to configure the system to know of the items for sale and their selling prices. BetaPop can be set up to require an initial deposit. For a coffee/espresso pool, I recommend having final configurations only rather than billing for individual items (e.g., single latté vs espresso shot + 1 portion milk) -- it's much less confusing for users.

We generally have our users fill out a simple bubble sheet: as they consume an item, they black out a bubble. The bubble sheet is set up such that the first open bubble is the total count of items consumed.

At the end of a billing cycle, we transfer the contents of the bubble sheet into the system by editting a simple structured text file and indicating the number of items each user has consumed. This file is then parsed by BetaPop. You then instruct BetaPop to mail bills to individual users; we have a number of template scripts for using different emailers.

As users pay their bills, you simply record the payment in the system with a single command. This command will email a confirmation to the user, and report their outstanding balance.

BetaPop can provide reports for individuals and for the group, as well as for simple queries (e.g., who owes more than $5 to the pool?). BetaPop also manages credits on accounts.