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An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

bigcapital.ly

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Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#31

Post by heyoni »

Spivak wrote: post #28
nulbyte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help but feel compelled to pause my current tasks and contribute wholeheartedly to this. That is interesting to me, because I had the complete opposite take after less than a minute on the website. I actively avoid QuickBooks because I despise Intuit. But there is no way I would take a project like this seriously when the 'support' link is a link to Discord. Competing with QuickBooks means competing for bus…

For better or worse OSS communities organize on Discord now, having an active server where the core contributors participate is the sign of a healthy project. Honestly looks better than a public Slack imho and it's where they'll get the most engagement from devs. Discord is a serious thing now, I've seen enterprise products add support for Discord before Slack.

Free Slack tiers don’t allow searching beyond 10,000 messages so no one’s going to pick that over a free Discord server without such limitations.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#33

Post by jasonriddle »

This is very interesting and couldn't have come at a better time for me as I am recently self-employed and I'm having to figure out bookkeeping for myself.

Quickbooks blows my mind in how poorly designed and overly complex it feels. I would only use it if my CPA requires it and even then it would still feel like pulling teeth.

The main thing for me is as a real estate investor, quickbooks doesn't seem designed for me. It feels designed for a large enterprise with accounts receivable and with multiple products. I don't have any of that. I just have some basic revenue and expenses that I need to track, track my mortgage remaining, and understand cash flow as well as profit and loss. I don't know if BigCapital handles this, but I'm just glad to see a new open-source alternative to quickbooks.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#35

Post by themerone »

robomartin wrote: post #30

Good luck. Many layers of the financial system for small and medium businesses are used to working with QB. It's a means of communication. You can hire people who know it. It integrates with every bank and every, well, everything you might need. You accountant --internal or external-- knows it and has a process to work with it. Etc. While FOSS is great, it isn't always better. I think FOSS works well when you have a…

I know a small business running bespoke accounting software with a lineage predating the PC era.

They have some very specialized, industry specific, reporting and invoicing needs that can't be met with a general purpose purpose software.

An application provides a great way to modernize their software without a full rewrite.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#37

Post by jermaustin1 »

paddw wrote: post #7

For people who use QuickBooks, what's the main barrier to a viable open-source competitor? Does QuickBooks offer a ton of necessary integrations or something?

First - My accountant knows it (along with a few other), it directly imports into their other back-office intuit software that does my taxes.

Secondly - my bookkeepers are trained specifically in QB (same with most bookkeeping services), and if I replace the software, I need to find new bookkeeping, or do it myself (which if I wanted to be a bookkeeper, that's what I would have become).

Lastly - this wont apply to most and a lot of people will probably look down on me, but I really like their "QuickBooks Capital" short-term medium interest loans. It is easy to get a $50k 12 month loan at around 8%. It comes in handy when clients are slow at paying (happens way too often).

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#38

Post by jermaustin1 »

mNovak wrote: post #16
djbusby wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your accountant knows it. When you're on other software, it's a challenge for them - and that costs you extra money.

How hard would it be to export a Quickbooks file to hand over to the accountant (assuming read-only case)? Sort of like Google docs exporting to docx.

My accountant and bookkeepers go in and edit entries and accounts. So there is no read-only case where my CPA is concerned.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#40

Post by Jedd »

heyoni wrote: post #31
Spivak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better or worse OSS communities organize on Discord now, having an active server where the core contributors participate is the sign of a healthy project. Honestly looks better than a public Slack imho and it's where they'll get the most engagement from devs. Discord is a serious thing now, I've seen enterprise products add support for Discord before Slack.

Free Slack tiers don’t allow searching beyond 10,000 messages so no one’s going to pick that over a free Discord server without such limitations.

Even this is no longer true - current free tier of Slack (as of a couple of months ago IIRC) is 90 days of retention, which for low-volume groups of users is even worse.
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