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The end of the accounting search

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Re: The end of the accounting search

#61

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)…

It's crazy how slow it is to get anything done with Quickbooks Online. The site is slow to respond, it has very limited keyboard shortcuts, if you open it in multiple tabs to cross reference information, it's constantly logging you out of the other tab, and they discontinued the desktop electron wrapper that let you have more than one tab open.

Historically, a huge strength of Intuit was the huge population of bookkeepers and accountants who would recommend QuickBooks to clients, but I don't see how anyone would recommend it at this point.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#62

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)…

It's crazy how slow it is to get anything done with Quickbooks Online. The site is slow to respond, it has very limited keyboard shortcuts, if you open it in multiple tabs to cross reference information, it's constantly logging you out of the other tab, and they discontinued the desktop electron wrapper that let you have more than one tab open. Historically, a huge strength of Intuit was the huge population of bookke…

From quickbooks to TurboTax, Intuit software has been some of the most god awful both to use and to develop against in my experience.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#63

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)…

Genuine question: do you find there is creativity and the satisfaction of creating something from nothing in accounting work? It has always seemed so dull from the outside looking in (cue the joes about accountants) but is this the reality?

Many people don’t see software engineering as creative but it certainly can be!

Re: The end of the accounting search

#64

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)…

Genuine question: do you find there is creativity and the satisfaction of creating something from nothing in accounting work? It has always seemed so dull from the outside looking in (cue the joes about accountants) but is this the reality? Many people don’t see software engineering as creative but it certainly can be!

Creative accounting and tax avoidance do exist tho

Re: The end of the accounting search

#65
I'm a huge fan of Manager.io [1], which is free for single-user desktop use. They make money from their cloud plan and from a self-hosted server licence.

It's not open source, but I can export practically everything as CSV or TSV, so there's data portability.

[1] https://www.manager.io/

Re: The end of the accounting search

#66
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,…

> Are your accounting people quite young? Excel moves and changes stuff, though not on quite such an aggressive timeline.

Excel UI interface changes but it won't change your spreadsheet content, which is the core functionality Excel users care about.

I've been using 15 year old .xlsx files with no issues across Excel 2007, to 2021, and Excel online.

I've seen companies using files with an absurd amount of worksheets within the file, or with an absurd number of rows (up to the limit), and those haven't been broken.

And I don't remember transitioning from xls to xlsx to be that painful, but this might be untrue for people using some very specific features.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#67

FYI, I recently updated scripts and documentation for migrating from QuickBooks to GNUCash : https://github.com/erikmack/qb-escape Would love if someone tried to package it into a standalone migration tool, so non-technical folks could make use of it!

Please consider sending patches back if you think they would be of wider interest.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#68

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)…

This sounds like what Adobe and Microsoft are also doing. It seems like they assume that they are somewhat invincible and therefore can do whatever they want.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#69

It's not true that Intuit discontinued support for the desktop version. Where did they get that idea? It's a subscription, yes, but the desktop version is alive and well. I WISH they would kill it so I could force my own users to upgrade to the online edition but no, it hasn't happened yet. We just upgraded to QuickBooks Desktop 2023.

I got the idea from the emails Intuit kept sending me saying that the desktop version was done and I'd have to buy a subscription from now on.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#70
look at https://gitlab.com/gnukhata/gkapp/-/issues

this is a AGPL V3.0 licensed accounting software aimed at small businesses and schools and professionals.

Its currently being developed for indian market because devs are all based out of india so if anyone wants to implement for their own country, please submit a PR.

we need more accounting softwares that are free and open source

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