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Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

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41–50 of 65 posts

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#42
post #2

"thinking about possibly moving to a web based accounting system" If moving the opposite direction is an option: http://www.ledger-cli.org/ If you're here, you already know all about programming/text editors, and storing files in a backed up git (or similar) repo... And again, if you're here, and you later need to export, writing a text parser/convertor for ledger-format into "whatever" is not going to be a challenge…

I'm a big fan of ledger as well. I wrote a series of articles about how I use it[1], which is not exactly how others use it but it works very well for me.

[1]: https://www.petekeen.net/ledger

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#44
I'm using BudgetInMind from softurion.com for my personal accounting. It works on Mac and is very powerful. It uses double-entry accounting principles, so I can get all my spending and assets in one place, with multiple currencies which I need (since I've accounts in different currencies).

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#45
A combination of FreeAgent and a human accountant. I love FreeAgent, the workflow is dead simple - import transactions (automatically), explain them, occasionally get prompted to run payroll or submit a tax return. It doesn't support some esoteric stuff in the UK (e.g. National Insurance holiday).

I've run previous companies off custom spreadsheets and experience an almost constant low-level stress from that. FreeAgent makes it easy to get stuff right first time, our accountant has a login, and it takes basically no time to keep things completely up-to-date. I imagine Xero has a similar feature set. Whichever software you choose, I'd look for something that optimises that 'import transactions, explain transactions, submit correct returns' loop so you never have niggling feelings of being behind.

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#46
post #13

I use freshbooks but mostly just for invoicing clients. I understand they have more advanced accounting features that I don't have a need for since it's just me doing solo consulting.

Contractor here, too. I've been using FreshBooks to do all my invoicing for the last few years. I have an accountant who handles my taxes so when they added the basic accounting features, that was enough to get me off of the online accounting software I was using. It syncs with my bank, allows me to categorize expenses, and then spits out the requisite reports. As a plus, the accounting software I was using was more expensive than my FreshBooks account, so I feel like I'm getting a great deal. This already sounds like an ad, so I'll stop here. Really, just a happy customer.

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#47
For tracking sales and producing/maintaining invoices properly, a custom webapp (which also takes and reconciles payments for said sales). For "book keeping" everything together (sales, expenses, payroll, etc.) to give to the accountant at year end, Excel(!)

Why? We're a UK business that mostly deals in USD and after spending quite some time researching 3 years ago, we couldn't find anything Web-based that could deal with all of the technicalities of multi-currency accounts, strict VAT invoice specs (particularly involving alternative currencies), and arcane VAT rules (reverse charging, EU sales lists, digital content sales, etc.) I believe there are a couple of systems that'll do it all now but we'd already developed our stuff before they caught up..

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#48
post #16

I use an accountant. Although I'm a one-man shop, taxes and regulations are quite complex here in France and it's much better to have a specialist deal with it.

same here - it costs more than an app, but less time wise, and I worry less about doing something wrong or forgetting about some new regulation or optimization.

In my opinion, once you know enough about accounting, it's the perfect thing to delegate.

(obviously trust but verify)

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#49

Use whatever will work best with your accountant. Unless you are an accountant yourself and that's your function at your company my standard advise is to stop trying to micro-manage everything and move accounting off your desk as quickly as possible. Focus on your product. Most accountants in the US are setup to ingest from and work with tools like Quickbooks. If you use a tool that provides a low impedance path for…

Exactly this.

Reinventing the wheel in this case is really risky. Screwing up accounting is a sure fire way to get into trouble. Don't take unnecessary risks when you don't have to.

Re: Ask HN: What accounting software do you use?

#50

My best online accounting experience so far has been with Xero. Xero has pretty good bank and payroll feed integration, good customizable tracking classes, and it's geared towards the small business user. It ends up being a little pricier than buying a prior year desktop version of QuickBooks but it seems to be the best online package and they're actually pushing and working to make accounting easier vs. QuickBooks o…

My company decided to eat-what-we-were selling/telling customers to do and went 100% cloud (google apps + xero), it's been awesome. We still use QB for payroll, planning on moving to ADP (or something else) soon.

I haven't tested it out yet but ADP supposedly integrates tightly with Xero and will auto import once you've mapped the correct accounts.
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