Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The end of the accounting search

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 208 posts

Re: The end of the accounting search

#131

Post by emeril »

jimnotgym wrote: post #86
SoftTalker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you a professional accountant? EDIT: rather than downvoting, maybe you could engage? Following the thread back the question was about accountants using Excel and then someone weighed in that they use Libre/open office. I have never seen an accountant use libre office for accounts work, hence my question. Are you an accountant who moved from Excel because of whatever, or was your comment irrelevant?

I'm sure he's not, I am one and I have to use excel though I also hate the ribbon but I just use excel 2010 + ubitmenu and will continue to use that version or similar until I can't anymore

I had used excel 2003 until I was forced to use win 10 at which point it barely functioned anymore (i.e., it worked great in win 7)

I still miss excel 2003, it has been downhill from there

As for accounting software, they all mostly stink though serve a purpose in larger companies where you need some degree of separation of duties to reduce (at least in appearance as much internal control is theatre) error/theft risk...

Re: The end of the accounting search

#133

Post by kortilla »

jimnotgym wrote: post #92
jonah-archive wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The converse story is all the people that complain about $enterprise_software saying things like, it hasn't had an update since 1996!

Those are people who don’t use it judging by superficial things.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#135

Post by semi-extrinsic »

sopooneo wrote: post #112
jimnotgym wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to work with ERP a lot. I once offered to fix the tab order on an input form, so the cursor started in the right box. The manager of that team got very excited and asked me not to change anything, the team had got used to the keystrokes!

I've found that once a behavior is released in the wild, even a bug, people will build it into their workflows and rely on its presence. Frustrating but unavoidable.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re: The end of the accounting search

#136

Post by Gustomaximus »

jimnotgym wrote: post #92
jonah-archive wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The converse story is all the people that complain about $enterprise_software saying things like, it hasn't had an update since 1996!

There is middle ground between doing significant changes all the time and no changes in ~30 years.

I was working at a software company years back that was doing this significant interface change. I suggested we have an 'end goal' interface and breakdown changes into multiple releases over time, organised it so each version change is easier to adapt to and educates somewhat in the changes as they occur, but this approach got no traction. I still wonder if its the correct approach or its better to get it over with in one go and then try to be stable.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#137

Post by greatgib »

andrewflnr wrote: post #105
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?

Maybe there is business for developing the missing features. I would pay for that.

But there is also a requirement for certifying that the data of the software can't be altered, and you are not allowed to certify yourself. This is the bad catch 21 situation. Even if it was possible to ensure that data can't be modified on your computer, something like android protected storage, I guess most people would not like that because if you use open source it is to have control over your machine.

So the only solution is the "cloud"/hosted solution by a provider, but again, if you use open source in the first place, probably it is because you don't want some external people to have control over your data.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#138

Post by jacooper »

jmainguy wrote: post #80
the_only_law wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Argocd is pretty nice

Wait, argocd is owned by intuit? It's under the CNCF, is it not?

Re: The end of the accounting search

#139

Post by detaro »

jacooper wrote: post #138
jmainguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argocd is pretty nice

Wait, argocd is owned by intuit? It's under the CNCF, is it not?

but intuit started it (I think, they bought the company behind Argo overall, but Argo CD came out after the acquisition). Being a place for companies to host projects they started but want to share is kinda CNCFs thing after all.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#140

Post by projektfu »

wrycoder wrote: post #14
PopAlongKid wrote: post #4

I am strongly considering a switch to GnuCash, but not for the reasons in TFA. >Crashes were frequent; QuickBooks users know to make backups every few minutes to avoid losing work.[...] More recently, Intuit has discontinued support for the desktop version entirely in an effort to force all users to its online, paid-by-the-month service. Both of these statements are not true, based on both my professional and persona…

QB Online works pretty well, I've used it for many years. Intuit has an obvious disrespect for their customers - some important bugs have gone unfixed for years amid continual complaints, while the newbie support people suggest they be reported to Intuit! I handle the accounting for a small non-profit. We need the ability to categorize our revenue and expense, which now requires the full QBO. At $850 / year, the cost…

That's where I am. Our 2017 QB desktop was getting to the point where it felt likely to stop working so I switched to GnuCash. However, I am worried about another user learning it and being able to do it right. I do a lot of babysitting of the program as it is.

QB online would be too expensive. Xero might work. The fact that entering bills is an "advanced feature" in most packages gives me pause.

Post reply on HN