QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model • Hacker News Board

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#61

Post by neltnerb » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #53

chromatin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are too expensive per hour to ask them to learn an entire new software program Many of us here are way more expensive per hour than our accountant ;) -- but to your metapoint that the accountant is more expensive than a new quickbooks subscription, that probably remains true even in the face of the price hike.

If you are not more expensive than your accountant, you should probably do the work yourself. You're not making enough money to pay extra to avoid taxes, and unoptimized taxes are easy enough.

This is only true if you will do the job correctly in a similar amount of time to your accountant.

But I do agree, when I had just W2 income and a mortgage it was no big deal to do them myself. I definitely wouldn't use an accountant if my taxes were simple enough to handle it. They're just not that hard.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#62

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

Ive used both Xero and Qb, and QBO.

Xero is the best of the bunch. Far more reliable than QBO. QBO has more 3rd party apps and QB works offline.

Again. QB works offline. Thats the killer feature. Try as you might. It wont crash on you. QBO load times are brutal and crashes are common.

Xero 2FA and unrecognized IP firewalls are becoming a real pain (for someone using a VPN, good luck)

I think everyone is willing to pay $9-$29 for software that works offline, is reliable, and has banking connections that dont die every 10mins.

Solve the above, and watch as you become the next viral app.

If there is an accountant with good UX/UI skills and a solid backend team, they could clean up shop.

Accountants will ALWAYS be late to adopt new software, but if frugal HN founders buy the product because its so damn easy to use to account for transactions (and cheap, for a bootstrapped outfit), accountants will have no choice but to follow thru.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#63

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

mariushn wrote: post #45

chess8504bc wrote: post #18

I also use QB and it is probably the worst software I've ever used. Its clunky, slow and antiquated. I really hate it, but on the same boat as others here, can't really dump it.

> can't really dump it Why? Because your accountant requires it? Are there other reasons? Could you change your accountant?

You keep asking the question.

I'll make it simple.

The reason you wont find the answer you seem is also the reason there wont be a competitor (3rd competitor for xero and qbo) in the space.

There is no 1 killer feature to solve for.

There is a long list of pain points that need to be addressed. This is why any accounting software needs to be built by an accountant for accountants. Otherwise its just another piece of software.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#64

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #25

Just by reading the comments here, there seems to be a business opportunity in having a frontend for business owners / non accountant users that fixes the usability of quickbooks and maintains some level of feature parity, but has some way to export to a quickbooks compatible format to hand over to the accountant, who would be none the wiser, no?

You are correct.

Any enterprising software developer could take some accounting classes and work as an accountant for a SME while developing the product on the side.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#65

Post by xtiansimon » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

I use QuickBooks Enterprise at work, but I'm not involved in the software license. That said, I do some automation programming in Python using QODBC [1]. QODBC is a great product which makes interfacing your scripts with QuickBooks very easy.

What would be better is something entirely in Python. :) There is an interesting project, django-ledger [2]. It's still under development, but very interesting.

[1]: https://qodbc.com/ [2]: https://github.com/arrobalytics/django-ledger

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#66

Post by nulbyte » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

mariushn wrote: post #43

nulbyte wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use Xero for a nonprofit. They seem to be trapped in a growth mindset to the exclusion of finishing half-baked functionality, but still better than QuickBooks, IMO. Their support is also a lot easier to reach, compared to Intuit, and the folks at Xero seem to know their product better, too. Luckily, our accountant was perfectly fine figuring out Xero. While it's said to see more software go to subscription mod…

What would an alternative solution need to offer for you to switch?

That is a great question. Some feature parity would be needed; I appreciate much of the Xero API, though some parts are incomplete. Built-in support for Stripe is great. Both have been beneficial for integrating with some business processes, notably reporting.

More flexible reporting would be a killer feature. They have standard reports, but they aren't flexible enough for a nonprofit, and the reports through the API are pretty lame. I have to pull 7 reports just to automate a proper balance sheet, because a) I don't want to export reports manually and b) the API only lets you filter by a single tracking category at a time.