Ask HN: Small business owners on HN. How do you do your accounts? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Small business owners on HN. How do you do your accounts?

#21

Post by dhruvkar » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 7:50 PM UTC

ricardonunez wrote: post #11

I use waveapp, I try everything else and I it worked the best for me. Fresh books is good too. Do not use quickbooks, their web version is buggy, slow and is and ads machine to sell you more services.

I use waveapps for my 1 person company as well.

Are you using it for a larger operation? Does it scale well?

Re: Ask HN: Small business owners on HN. How do you do your accounts?

#22

Post by sandreas » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

I've heard good things about invoiceninja[1], but for my small business, I use a small a markdown git repository and a php script to generate pdfs out of the following file format:

data/timetracking///timetracking.md

  # Customer
  ```
  John Doe
  Mainstreet 5
  10001 New York
  My project to work on
  ```

  # Time tracking

  2023-02-27
  - 17.52-18:41 A project task
  - 18.42-19.49 Yet another project task

  2023-02-28
  - 11.52-12:11 Something else
  - 16.43-19.01 And even more
  - 00.05-00.00 Refund

With this structure I can build PDFs by parsing markdown all calculated and branded with my logo. But you can also see a good overview in the most markdown Wysiwygs or Gitwebs. On the last page of my invoice I automatically add a tasks summary listing for every task I worked on. It's simple, can be edited with vim or within the development environment, can be `grep`-ed and still pretty flexible (as you see you can even do refunds). For my little business this is enough...

[1]: https://www.invoiceninja.org/

Re: Ask HN: Small business owners on HN. How do you do your accounts?

#23

Post by p0d » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

Xero and give accountant access

Re: Ask HN: Small business owners on HN. How do you do your accounts?

#24

Post by unmole » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 3:37 AM UTC

dhruvkar wrote: post #20

unmole wrote: post #16

I use a locally hosted ERPNext instance. It's opensource, endlessly customizable, and has a workable API. It's also quirky and a bit annoying at times but it beats having to deal with the limitations, ever-changing quirks and annoyances of SaaS offerings.

Interesting. How big is the operation for which you're doing accounts this way?

The operation is little more than a hobby with less than 200 orders a month. I tried to automate the boring stuff so I only need to spend 15-20 minutes a month on book keeping and GST filing.