Time Banking/LETS projects with Drupal Commerce

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rerooting's picture

Does anyone have experience, examples or tips for building time banking systems with drupal commerce? I'd prefer to use something more flexible/stable than the mutual credit module. Anyone have any creative ideas?

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Omnui

omnui.com's picture

We've built a flexible time banking system - omnui.com - which can be used anywhere in the world.

We're still adding a number of features such as the ability to search for 'offers' and 'requests' in a local area but it's live and usable. We should have the final functionality finished by 20th March 2013 but please do log in and try it out.

mutual credit module

matslats's picture

Maybe you can be more specific about what flexibility you need?
And feel free to report any issues you have with the mutual credit in the issue queue - it is a participative process, and I'm working full time on it, and achieving stability is a high priority.
Commerce module is not ideal because:
- the marketplace functionality which in ubercart enabled more than one vendor, has not been built yet.
- It is likely to insist on the shopping cart => checkout approach, which is not how timebankers think.
- It is intended for the purchase of pre-listed products
- the payment process is still involves several clicks.

The mutual credit module is intended exactly for you and if you are not finding it appropriate then I'm failing in some way. Please write me and tell me specifically what you need and lets see if we can work something out.

Starting from scratch

matslats's picture

Omnui what factors led you to create a p2p accounting system from scratch?

Creating Omnui

omnui.com's picture

Hi Mat,

We created Omnui from scratch as we wanted to build an easy way for people to connect to time banking world wide, but also be able to focus on a specific local location. For example, on Omnui you can could focus on helping people geographically close to you by finding people/listings close by (search functionality in development).

Or you could help globally. For example, I'm a web developer based in Cape Town, South Africa but I often help friends and family (and others) back in my home country of New Zealand. On Omnui I can trade time with them no matter where they are.

I think it would have been impossible to do this on a global scale in the past as the technology wasn't quite there, but now with Facebook as a quasi-authentication system (along with many other checks and balances) we can ensure a quality time banking product.

Still lots to do and we're only in BETA and very open to input from people such as yourself.

Kind regards,

Carlin Archer
Omnui.com

Open

matslats's picture

Thanks a lot Carlin.
I suppose if you are in cape town that you have some relations with Tim Jenkin - did you know there are plans for CES to switch to Drupal but not yet any resources?
Did you not find the Community Accounting module in your initial research?
Its purpose is only to manage the payments between members of the site, but it is done with full awareness of the complementary currency movement and its needs and intentions.
Its easy enough to build a form and add up some numbers but I wanted to make something standard, simple and powerful that would lower the cost of all CC projects done in Drupal.
Timebanks USA is using my module, which should testify to its stability, and I'm personally hosting sites for 50 communities.
The drupal 7 version is still in release candidate phase though
http://drupal.org/project/mutual_credit
Matthew

Omnui

omnui.com's picture

Hi Matthew,

I'm going to catch up with Tim Jenkin's soon hopefully. I will take a look at your Community Accounting module as well. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm sure there'll be ways we can collaborate in the future as well.

Regards,

Carlin

Hi Matthew and Omnui, how

Yuri's picture

Hi Matthew and Omnui, how does your software compare to each other? On first sight they offer the same thing with regard to time banking, The global features mentioned by Omnui, is that included in Community Accounting / Timebanks.org too? What would be the benefits of Omnui?

Thank you for this very

ShaneWest's picture

Thank you for this very interesting and informative post. Many experts say that the division between commercial and investment financial institutions should have been left intact to start with. Now, even one of the staunchest voices calling for the repeal of Glass-Steagall has changed his mind. Some call the unpredicted reversal "ironic." If you need help with your bank fees, get an installment loan.

Check out User Points...

nodiac's picture

Hi There -

We've enabled several currencies with the User Points module. It's extremely stable and has a very flexible API. It makes it very easy to customize your accounting and transactions.

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