DRAFT USER GUIDE

Is Human Essentials right for you? (what we help with and what we don’t)

Human Essentials is a free system for essentials banks

Human Essentials is for essentials banks – by which we mean organizations that distribute essentials (diapers, period products, etc) to other organizations that work directly with people in need.

If you only deal directly with people in need, this is probably not the system for you.

We are an all-volunteer organization

We can offer this system for free because we are an all-volunteer organization. We have sponsors who provide funding or in-kind services for the servers that the system runs on, but changes/support can take time.

What we help with

• managing your partners
  • gathering the information about your partners that you need
  • your request / distribution cycle (partner agencies can provide requests to you through the system, and you fulfill them)
  • monthly reminders to the partners re request deadlines
  • calendar that shows when you’ve scheduled pickups and deliveries
• inventory
  • when you record donations, purchases, and distributions, your inventory record is automatically adjusted as of the date/time you enter the information
  • audits and inventory adjustments
  • handles multiple storage locations
  • making up kits for distribution from existing inventory (this is mostly used by our period supply focused banks)
• community management
  • keeping track of your donation sites, product drives (and participants)
• reporting
  • yearly report with much of the information the NDBN annual survey requires drawn from your activity in the system
  • itemized distribution breakdown over time
  • trend reporting

    Things we don’t help with

• general business needs (like payroll and office supplies and the like)
• volunteer coordination
• donor tax receipts
• direct distribution – there are some things that help with that in the partner side, and some banks run a partner for their direct distribution, but it is not our strength.