READY FOR REVIEW

# 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.

## 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 (Partners 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 (to Partners), 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 Product Drive 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 practice, but it is not our strength.

[Next: Support](intro_ii.md)