We have been working on a FOSS desktop based alternative to GNU Cash with a modern UI for the past couple of years: Frappe Books
- https://github.com/frappe/books
Do check it out!
The end of the accounting search
171–180 of 208 posts
Re: The end of the accounting search
#172I'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!
Accounting work is in many ways similar to a garbage collector in program runtimes (e.g. JVM). Their primary goal is to manage available resources: keeping track of current usage, anticipate future availability and prevent misuse. In that sense, there can be a lot of creativity in the optimization of that process just as software people have from tweaking a piece of code to work better.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#173The main issue towards adoption is the ease of fetching the transactions from various banks. Sure we can write some scripts to process the PDF files etc but it is still very manual compared to, e.g., allowing transaction query via REST api by granting users API keys.
I'd take an API which dumps CSV files. It doesn't help every bank times out cookies in less than one day.
CSV, JSON, XML - any plain text format accessible via API would be better than some binary blob you need to download manually.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#174I'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!
At one point many years ago I did tax preparation. I liked to joke the secret to being a good tax preparer was to be creative. But not so creative that the IRS gets angry.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Frappe Cloud is by far the easiest way to run an ERPNext instance if you're okay with shared hosting. It's a Frappe framework-based app hosting service from the developers of ERPNext and it supports data file imports from other instances of ERPNext: - Frappe Cloud: https://frappecloud.com In addition to the Frappe Bench setup process, Frappe provides instructions for self-hosting ERPNext with Docker and Kubernetes: -…
Thank you, I’ll check these out.
I resisted Frappe Cloud because I want to own my ERP code and run it on my own server.
I recently started using Beancount, and liked the concept of plain text accounting so much, I want an ERP with the same spirit.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#176Earlier 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…
That also speaks to the enduring appeal of tools like vi and emacs.
yeah, imagine if a new version of vim changed keybindings.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#177We have been working on a FOSS desktop based alternative to GNU Cash with a modern UI for the past couple of years: Frappe Books - https://frappebooks.com - https://github.com/frappe/books Do check it out!
Can it do multiple simultaneous users?
Re: The end of the accounting search
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
My sister is an accountant and she genuinely enjoys working with the numbers. She finds it, not exactly fun, but kind of fun? She describes it like every situation is a puzzle she gets to solve, and then maintain. She also likes working with her customers and enjoys those interactions, like she gets a good feeling from helping her customers out. That's enough for her. Not the vocation for me but it's very interesting…
Note your sister doesn't just work with "numbers". She works with a structure of interrelated accounts. In a sense she is working with the structure of the business. She is observing the business-process which is a bit like looking at a simulation.
Very true and well said!
Re: The end of the accounting search
#179We have been working on a FOSS desktop based alternative to GNU Cash with a modern UI for the past couple of years: Frappe Books - https://frappebooks.com - https://github.com/frappe/books Do check it out!
Can it do multiple simultaneous users?
Hey, Frappe Books developer here. Not as of now, but it is something that we will be adding in. There has been a lot of requests for multi user support.
Re: The end of the accounting search
#180Earlier 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.
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!
That’s interesting, catering to an employee(a) over catering to the customer.