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The end of the accounting search

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Re: The end of the accounting search

#101

Post by areyousure »

ricardonunez wrote: post #99
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)…

I canceled my subscription a month ago and moved to wave. What an awful piece of software and company. Slow, ads and promos and every interaction, slow, not very intuitive, did I mention slow? The only reason I signed up was because of a deal I got but it was not worth the gray hairs that I got. Edit: intuit and quickbooks

Which software and company is awful? It is not clear from your comment.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#102

Post by NoboruWataya »

> Getting our QuickBooks data into GnuCash took a bit of scripting using the capable (if poorly documented) Python bindings. Another set of scripts has since been written to import data from the site and from our bank account. GnuCash has a reasonably capable import mechanism for the data formats exported by banks, complete with a Bayesian system to assign transactions to accounts, but a bit of scripting makes the process quicker yet.

I assume the person who posted this to HN is not the article's author, but if the author happens to be reading, it would be very helpful to see these scripts. The difficulty of writing custom scripts for GnuCash data is one of its main limitations IMO.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#103

Post by coolestguy »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #33

Serious question - why are people stuck on QB when there are seriouly decent alternatives put there, like xero? My minimum price to go back to QB online would probably be $150k, maybe even more. Here is why: - constant down time - constant errors - clueless offshore support - inflexible reporting - constant UI changes for no reason Switched to Xero, havent looked back. QB Desktop was quite good but working offline is…

>why are people stuck on QB when there are seriouly decent alternatives put there, like xero?

When you're an business owners employee you don't have time or authority to change accounting software because you're overworked & thought of as a cost centre.

When you're a business' owner you do whatever your accountant says which is usually a legacy software because a lot of tax preparers & accountants aren't actually in the trenches anymore and don't know about the granular bookkeeping part of accounting and how much better software has gotten in the last decade.

When you're an tax preparers employee you don't get to talk to the client.

When you're the tax preparer director/owner you don't use software anymore.

Source: accounting startup who has doubled revenue 2 years in a row thanks to all of the above

Re: The end of the accounting search

#104

Post by jimnotgym »

Nevermark wrote: post #96
jimnotgym wrote: post #90

This article has some real problems. Here is one. > Such systems are unwieldy to work with and difficult to get started with. In truth, many of them appear to have been developed as platforms for consulting businesses, though surely nobody would deliberately make their software complex and tricky just to motivate clients to purchase their services. Or perhaps some businesses have complications to deal with that go be…

> Or perhaps some businesses have complications to deal with that go beyond what a newsletter website needs? So ... perhaps there should be a version of Quickbooks that serves the simpler needs of smaller customers better? Like: Simple. Desktop. Requires no upgrades as long as its functionality at-time-of-purchase continues to serve well. No forcing of upgrades via dropping of old formats, etc. I also have given up o…

Imagine you were relying on Quickbooks, and a major taxation change, like the European VAT OneStopShop came out. How would you deal with that without updates? What about the UKs Making Tax Digital, that would be tricky too.

That wasn't the point I was discussing, but there is an answer anyway.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#105

Post by andrewflnr »

greatgib wrote: post #53

Gnucash is awesome even if not perfect. The problem to use it in France is that there is regulatory barriers preventing to use it officially. In theory accounting solutions have to comply with rules that are complicated to follow with your own opensource solution!

Is it just me or is that an honest-to-goodness commercial open source support business opportunity?

Re: The end of the accounting search

#106

Post by r00fus »

areyousure wrote: post #101
ricardonunez wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I canceled my subscription a month ago and moved to wave. What an awful piece of software and company. Slow, ads and promos and every interaction, slow, not very intuitive, did I mention slow? The only reason I signed up was because of a deal I got but it was not worth the gray hairs that I got. Edit: intuit and quickbooks

Which software and company is awful? It is not clear from your comment.

This is a well-deserved Intuit complain-fest.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#107

Post by electroly »

corbet wrote: post #69
electroly wrote: post #6

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.

You do have to buy a subscription, but the desktop version is not done. There is a subscription for the desktop edition and separately one for the online edition. They are still perfectly happy for you to use the desktop edition.

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/desktop/ -- it's the "Work on desktop" options.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#108

Post by jimbokun »

jonah-archive wrote: post #88
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.

A favorite HN comment of mine from a few years back ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590482 ): > Outside of fundamentally better workflow improvements, most professional fields don't randomly change their tools. If you gave a professional artist a new pencil that had to be gripped differently for no reason, they'd throw it in the trash. > > But in software, we tolerate buggy tools that change all the time for…

That also speaks to the enduring appeal of tools like vi and emacs.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#109

Post by c5karl »

eropple wrote: post #50
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,…

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…

Those keyboard shortcuts (the ones that begin with a slash, at least) date back to Lotus 123.
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