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The end of the accounting search

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Re: The end of the accounting search

#141

Post by bombcar »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #136
jimnotgym wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appro…

At least in my experience the “one and done” feels better, but make it so the new one is somehow faster or easier or something. (Not salesforce lightning, e.g.)

The other ends up feeling like death by a thousand cuts.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#142

Post by Noumenon72 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #110

More personal finance so only tangentially related but I thought Microsoft Money was as great program years and years ago. I wonder why MS killed it. Every now and again I look around for something similar.

The Sunset edition of Microsoft Money works on Windows 11. It was perfect for personal finance. Didn't make you learn double-entry bookkeeping like GnuCash.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#143

Post by projektfu »

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…

I think it's a legitimate complaint that packages like LedgerSMB are meant for larger businesses, with internal accounting departments, and do not have a default that works better for small businesses. Quickbooks has the concept of deleting a transaction and it resets the dependencies of that transaction. GnuCash does that pretty well, too. LedgerSMB expects a reversing transaction, so you are not really able to make mistakes the way a small business owner might. You have to start out at a higher level of accounting know-how. Putting LedgerSMB together with an external accountant/tax preparer/bookkeeper using it is a no-go. They already roll their eyes at Zoho Books and I imagine they didn't like Xero until enough people used it. Asking them to use your own LedgerSMB install, they'll just nope out.

GnuCash is fine for the solo but I don't think the external people will like it. I think LWN will do what it takes to make the reports that the accountant will need, but as it stands it is not ready for that out of the box in my opinion.

Other packages, like Odoo, treat double-entry accounting as a trade secret and so it's not really open-source. There are add-ons but their level of maturity is not clear.

If I tried to use ledger (plain-text accounting) I think even my business consultant would tell me to take a hike. I used it when I did a little contract work and it was fine, but my needs were very simple.

Still, getting off of QB and into Zoho for my business has been great. Everything can be exported if I need (to CSV files) and it handles almost all of my needs. But it's not open source.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#144

Post by enraged_camel »

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)…

One huge problem with Quickbooks Desktop is that it's hugely expensive to integrate it with anything, be it cloud-based software, or another piece of on-premise software. This inevitably results in it becoming an "information silo", and necessitates stuff like dual data entry (i.e. entering the same information twice, first in QB and then in some other software).

In contrast, QB Online has a REST API.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#145

Post by jiveturkey »

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)…

the online thing is one aspect, but even the desktop part is hostile. forced obsolescence when you think you are buying a "perpetual" license. disgusting.

i've not found any local solutions that i like, at a cost (perpetual license is a requirement) that i like. so i moved to xero. it's slow and annoying in lots of ways, but it's very usable. some things are less abstract than QB, ie the method of entry for those is closer to just doing a journal entry, i guess this is good or bad depending on the user.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#146

Post by shlubbert »

rvba wrote: post #21
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,…

Many companies have tons of desginers who need to prove they are needed, so they force change for the sake of change - at the cost of users.

Of course no engineers would ever make bad UX decisions.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#147

Post by aetherspawn »

Xero isn’t free, but it’s a good alternative to QuickBooks if you need one. It has a neat feature called Hubdoc, which automatically scans, renames, sorts to folders and archives your invoices when you email them to a particular email address.

The integration between Hubdoc and Office365 is clunky because for reasons I can’t fathom, they only support Dropbox and Google Drive for archiving, but we have a script that we run on our Synology NAS that copies the invoices from Google Drive to SharePoint (OneDrive).

Nothing against GnuCash or open source, we use a lot of FOSS. But we’re in Australia and we switch banks all the time. Those compounding factors would mean that we’d spend a lot of time updating bank roll integration with GnuCash

Re: The end of the accounting search

#148

Post by plantain »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #129
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)…

Xero do a similar pricing thing. I have to pay for the $100 a month plan to get multi currencies because I contract to an overseas company. The standard plan which has everything I need but that is 1/3 the price.

Xero's been juicing the lemon more and more aggressively every year...

Re: The end of the accounting search

#149

Post by jtbayly »

CydeWeys wrote: post #89
cameldrv wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how slow it is to get anything done with Quickbooks Online. The site is slow to respond, it has very limited keyboard shortcuts, if you open it in multiple tabs to cross reference information, it's constantly logging you out of the other tab, and they discontinued the desktop electron wrapper that let you have more than one tab open. Historically, a huge strength of Intuit was the huge population of bookke…

Similarly, Intuit Mint has gotten worse and slower over time as well. I used to use it to track all my spending (including manual entry for cash transactions and much manual categorization of all transactions), but I gave up a few years back because it was all taking so much time and was so slow. Now I just use it to see all my account balances in one place, but otherwise don't interact with transactions much at all.

Back before Mint allowed manual transaction entry (!), I was using it in spite of that. Until the day I logged in and suddenly three months of transactions had disappeared. They didn’t care. I’ve been trying to run away from Intuit ever since. But I’ve been unable to get rid of Quickbook, and now they bought Mailchimp, so…

Ugh.

Re: The end of the accounting search

#150

Post by lancewiggs »

aetherspawn wrote: post #147

Xero isn’t free, but it’s a good alternative to QuickBooks if you need one. It has a neat feature called Hubdoc, which automatically scans, renames, sorts to folders and archives your invoices when you email them to a particular email address. The integration between Hubdoc and Office365 is clunky because for reasons I can’t fathom, they only support Dropbox and Google Drive for archiving, but we have a script that w…

It’s transformed businesses and the business of accounting down under. Accountants are focused on helping the companies and tougher questions rather than bookkeeping. Most accounting work is automated and companies have constant control and understanding of their numbers. Not always - but far more often.

It’s astonishing how slow the transition to online accounting is in the USA.

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