An open-source alternative to QuickBooks • Hacker News Board

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#211

Post by jkepler » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #151

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…

> 'support' link is a link to Discord For a FOSS project targeting people who are comfortable using FOSS this seems entirely fine...desirable even. "We don't have money for phone staff who would put you on hold and only be reading off scripted responses anyway, but you can come chat directly with the leaders and maintainers of the software by chat".

Why don't they use IRC with public logs? Or a stack exchange style support wiki, so that it becomes documentation over time.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#212

Post by Element_ » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

drunkan wrote: post #184

Element_ wrote: post #51

I use freshbooks for my small business (timekeeping, expenses, invoicing) and I just received notice my annual subscription fee will be increased from $270/yr to $324/yr. Not only have they not added any new features to justify this fee increase, but they have actually removed a few features that I depended on like multi-currency reports. I am actively looking for an alternative.

Same here - mostly just need something for invoicing etc. and its just outrageously expensive. I have been eyeing up https://www.waveapps.com/ as a free alternative (not open source though) but I have not seen it mentioned much in this thread so either its just less known or not very good.

We started migrating our data to Wave a couple years ago, then it was purchased by H&R Block so we cancelled, I haven't seen it mentioned much since the acquisition.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#213

Post by TrueSlacker0 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:48 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #181

Ok well this makes some sense -- the Gitea business model, where a pretty complex piece of s/w is developed open source primarily funded by one or more business deploying said s/w as a commercial SaaS. But...while QB is a dumpster fire, it has incredibly deep and finicky functionality. Accountants know how to make magic "integrity override" journal entries in its data. It understands how to electronically file a W-2…

"It understands how to electronically file a W-2 report in all 50 states."

Filing a w-2 is payroll related not accounting related. While lots of accounting software does payroll it is not a requirement for accounting software to do so.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#214

Post by TrueSlacker0 » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

gamedna wrote: post #138

Payroll Payroll Payroll, please - Quickbooks has a hold on so many companies b/c of the payroll subscription.

give gusto a try, you will never go back.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#215

Post by guax » Fri, Jun 02, 2023, 8:08 PM UTC

callmeal wrote: post #189

icemelt8 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you want them to roll-out a discord like platform themselves?

No, I want knowledge-base style documentation and faqs. Something slightly better than this single question: https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq

I see these as complimentary, knowledge base for search and self support. Email for well documented transactions or low priority questions. Slack/Discord to avoid making phone calls when looking for real people responses quickly. Phone for emergencies.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#216

Post by ranger_danger » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 8:31 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #53

ranger_danger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna have to disagree with you. Most projects I interact act with are either on IRC or Matrix, or solely communicate through some type of git web instance. Discord is actively hostile to users by randomly banning and/or phone-walling users, especially any browser or connection that cannot be fingerprinted well enough, and giving them no recourse at all, just saying "yep our automated system is working, bye". There's…

Hostile to users as you're describing it is just "dealing with spam at scale." I find it hard to fault a service for doing sucky things that every other large service eventually succumbs to out of necessity. I can't be on some high horse and demand this company somehow magically solve problems no one else has. Anyone who figures out how to have pseudoanonymous identities that can't be endlessly minted to evade bans t…

What about requiring a proof-of-work solution for every important request? This could make bots prohibitively expensive.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#217

Post by ajdude » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

xvilka wrote: post #27

citelao wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used it, but the team (person?) that makes Buckets ( https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com ) makes SimpleFIN ( https://www.simplefin.org ), which seems like it exposes exactly what you want: simple transaction data from arbitrary banks. Plaid offers transactions APIs ( https://plaid.com/products/transactions/ ), but I guess to your point these APIs are geared towards fintech companies, not personal use. EDIT: I…

This SimpleFIN blog looks dead - last article is from 2016. Not exactly encouraging.

I'm currently writing a library that implements SimpleFIN. While the main website hasn't been updated in a while (even the demo endpoints are out of date, and I've written to the maintainer last month about it[1]), the demo endpoint described on the Simplefin Bridge the docs still works[2] so hopefully there's still movement.

[1] https://github.com/simplefin/simplefin.github.com/issues/14

[2] https://beta-bridge.simplefin.org/info/developers

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#218

Post by ajdude » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

api wrote: post #8

upon_drumhead wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any feed services that would sell an individual (person or business) license? It seems like they all strive to be a backend for a SAAS.

They probably don’t want to deal with individual subscribers but if enough open source users wanted feeds you’d create a niche for a SaaS that does nothing but provide bank feeds for a few bucks a month. That’s the kind of micro SaaS one person could run. There are some things that are “natural SaaS” and interoperability with ugly services run by huge banks that are probably moving targets and probably have administr…

This seems to be exactly what the creator of SimpleFIN is doing with their "SimpleFIN bridge". Pay a small price and you can use the simplefin API to access any banks that they've supported so far.