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The end of the accounting search

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Re: The end of the accounting search

#41

Post by SoftTalker »

tialaramex wrote: post #19
bombcar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that pisses off the accounting people where I work is how often everything changes. They’re one step from just using excel because it won’t change on them.

> just using excel because it won’t change on them. Are your accounting people quite young? Excel moves and changes stuff, though not on quite such an aggressive timeline. Modern Office is not like 1990s Office where you buy it and then it doesn't change unless you decide to change it. This is fine, the universe's one constant is change, if we fight it we'll lose, but it's worth calling out that there will be change,…

I'm older. I still haven't gotten over the "ribbon" interface. It drove me to LibreOffice despite all its faults.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#42

Post by goostavos »

reaperducer wrote: post #27
asah wrote: post #23

"Getting our QuickBooks data into GnuCash took a bit of scripting using the capable (if poorly documented) Python bindings." I wonder if LLMs can help with these gaps in documentation and examples?

I wonder if LLMs can help with these gaps in documentation and examples? I wonder if LLMs can do someone's taxes. But I'm not going to be the first to try it.

I was trying to understand what box 2b was on one of my tax forms. Google wasn't helping me because I all I found was unreadable blog spam. So, I tried ChatGPT. "On form blah, what goes in box 2b?"

It descended into me arguing with the machine over whether or not 2b even existed. "GPT, I'm literally holding the physical paper in my hand and staring at the box labeled 2b!" "That is incorrect. Form blah has never had a box labeled 2b"

So, I'm going to go with: probably wanna hold off on the LLM taxes.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#43

Post by nordsieck »

rvba wrote: post #21
tialaramex wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just using excel because it won’t change on them. Are your accounting people quite young? Excel moves and changes stuff, though not on quite such an aggressive timeline. Modern Office is not like 1990s Office where you buy it and then it doesn't change unless you decide to change it. This is fine, the universe's one constant is change, if we fight it we'll lose, but it's worth calling out that there will be change,…

Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users.

> Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users.

That may be one part.

But another part is companies that need to demonstrate to their uses that a version change is a big change.

Microsoft is (im)famous for this: as far as I can tell, there has been little need for the constant UI churn in windows aside from convincing users that a new version is big enough to warrant that appellation (as opposed to a service pack/patch).

Re: The end of the accounting search

#44

Post by bombcar »

nordsieck wrote: post #43
rvba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users.

> Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users. That may be one part. But another part is companies that need to demonstrate to their uses that a version change is a big change. Microsoft is (im)famous for this: as far as I can tell, there has been little need for the constant UI churn in windows aside from convincing users…

You’d think that the SaaS Office would change less, but it seems to churn about as much as ever.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#45

Post by reaperducer »

goostavos wrote: post #42
reaperducer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if LLMs can help with these gaps in documentation and examples? I wonder if LLMs can do someone's taxes. But I'm not going to be the first to try it.

I was trying to understand what box 2b was on one of my tax forms. Google wasn't helping me because I all I found was unreadable blog spam. So, I tried ChatGPT. "On form blah, what goes in box 2b?" It descended into me arguing with the machine over whether or not 2b even existed. "GPT, I'm literally holding the physical paper in my hand and staring at the box labeled 2b!" "That is incorrect. Form blah has never had a…

It descended into me arguing with the machine over whether or not 2b even existed. "GPT, I'm literally holding the physical paper in my hand and staring at the box labeled 2b!" "That is incorrect. Form blah has never had a box labeled 2b"

So, 2b, or not 2b? That was the question?

Re: The end of the accounting search

#46

Post by Wronnay »

FredPret wrote: post #30
Wronnay wrote: post #18

I use beancount for my personal finances and Odoo as well as ERPnext for my company. ERPnext is my favourite while Odoo currently supports the taxation in my country (Germany) a bit better...

Any tips for getting ERPNext up and running? I just spent a weekend of yak-shaving, and I get to the point where nginx is routing my requests to the “bench start” process, but refuses to serve a page.

I currently just use a Cloud offering, but I also have setting it up on my own server on my ToDo list

Re: The end of the accounting search

#47

Post by SoftTalker »

zdw wrote: post #2

I'm somewhat surprised that GNUCash was picked over Ledger or another of the plaintext systems out there: https://plaintextaccounting.org Maybe this was primarily done based on the users being comfortable with a GUI driven system?

I used Ledger to manage the accounting for a small nonprofit. It worked for me, but I was the Treasurer and the only person managing the books. Multiuser would have required git or something similar to handle the updates and possible conflicts. That's all stuff I'm comfortable with as a developer but a complete non-starter for anyone else. These issues would quickly make text-file accounting infeasible for larger organizations.

When I moved out of that role, the next Treasurer wanted to use Quickbooks so I had to help import the data. That's another problem with using obscure software -- it's more difficult to hand it off to someone else who only knows the mainstream systems.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#48

Post by ktosobcy »

bombcar wrote: post #11
axiomdata316 wrote: post #5

I'm a QuickBooks ProAdvisor and have been one for over 20 years and the last few years has convinced me that Intuit is determined to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs by: 1) Forcing all their customers to migrate to the online version of their program. Many of the clients I've spoken to were happy with and preferred the Desktop version. The Desktop version is faster and can do more than the online version. 2)…

The thing that pisses off the accounting people where I work is how often everything changes. They’re one step from just using excel because it won’t change on them.

this is one of the more annoying things about the Web "apps" and the ecosystem.... virtually no control over what's being used...

Re: The end of the accounting search

#49

Post by Projectiboga »

andai wrote: post #24
rvba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users.

It might be like the thing at Google, where people want to get promoted and big changes or new launches are the only way up, regardless of the effect on user experience.

With M$ the bias is towards their certification and training business. They have to change enough to make training seem more important.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#50

Post by eropple »

tialaramex wrote: post #19
bombcar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that pisses off the accounting people where I work is how often everything changes. They’re one step from just using excel because it won’t change on them.

> just using excel because it won’t change on them. Are your accounting people quite young? Excel moves and changes stuff, though not on quite such an aggressive timeline. Modern Office is not like 1990s Office where you buy it and then it doesn't change unless you decide to change it. This is fine, the universe's one constant is change, if we fight it we'll lose, but it's worth calling out that there will be change,…

Excel is distinctly different from the rest of Office for a power user because while you're right that they've reorganized things (though only one real reorganization since at least Office 95, that's pretty good), the keyboard shortcuts have remained the same for literally my entire life. It's why Excel is nonstandard and weird compared to even other Office apps: Excel is the most this-is-for-work tool in Office, and they've been loath to break things for people like...well...me.

And I don't hate the ribbon interface, I think it's totally fine--but also, in Excel specifically, I almost never click a button on it.

QuickBooks's online version, on the other hand, has terrible discoverability and doesn't have standard keyboard controls.

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