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Comment by madhadron | Hacker News Reader

There are several things wrong here:

1. The author doesn't understand bookkeeping. 2. The author doesn't somehow believes that emulated teletypes are a good substrate for building user interfaces. 3. The author has spent significant time writing a bookkeeping tool for his business instead of doing something that will move the business forward.

If you're thinking about writing an open source accounting program, spend time mastering GnuCash first. If you feel like you can't do what you need with that and cannot possibly extend it in the way that you need, then write your own.

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1. Feel free to back up your claim, otherwise I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion 2. It has a user interface … just not graphical 3. Well, I guess we just have different opinions on where forward is 4. I've been working with GnuCash, Ledger and Hledger and I've written several scripts to extend them (e.g. to support timestamps and not just dates, which shouldn't be asked too much for an accounting tool ), but it was always a nasty hack and so I wrote my own. Just like you said.

I can only answer 1 from the perspective of a non-US, very junior, auditor with little experience, but I'll try.

I don't see how it handles complex transactions very well. A simple example would be VAT. Assume a 25% VAT (which is standard here). If you sell a product for $1000 cash in hand the relevant transaction would be:

C: Revenues $800

C: VAT payable $200

D: Cash $1000

An even better example would be payroll which can involve 5-15 different ledger accounts for a single employee.

The next bit can probably be solved through the notes part, but how would you attach invoices and documentation with Transity?

How do you do accounts payable or receivable with it? In addition to the balance sheet sum, the accounts pay/rec should also show the balance for each individual customer and supplier.

A single transaction can contain multiple "transfers", so this next should handle your example. (I don't know the name of any organizations that collect VAT, so I used "vat-authority".)

    transfers:
      - from: robert-q-customer
        to: john:cash
        amount: 1000 usd
      - from: john:payable
        to: vat-authority
        amount: 200 usd

this just seems way more confusing to me than debits and credits.

> No more confusing debit / credit / asset / liability mumbo jumbo

How is separating what you have (assets/liabilities) from your revenues/expenses confusing? It's basic tools to get a view of the profitability vs the Balance sheet (what the company owns) vs the cash flow.

The idea of looking at it in terms of transaction is interesting, I recommend looking at https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-compu... for a good take on this idea.

Edit: typo

Hey madhadron, you sound like you understand bookkeeping. So I have a quick question. After using Mint (from Intuit) I have everything balanced & tagged and 99% automated. I have reports, ways to export, daily/monthly/yearly totals, breakdowns by types, handle liabilities & debts, i can project net, see assets over time, etc etc. Why wouldn't a business just use mint? After watching vidoes on GnuCash like you recommend - it is like watching someone make Mint by hand. When people out there get a check (income), do they open GnuCash and start typing stuff? Really?? Mint on the otherhand, detects the income by scanning all accounts, automatically categorizes it, etc etc.

GnuCash - I could see mistakes everywhere. I don't see how this is much different than what an accountant would do in 1740 england. Why not have it all automated -- with computers??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAaScYVeRQ

Intuit has a history of squeezing their users:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080321021644/http://www.infowo...

https://www.cnet.com/news/intuit-products-phone-home-more-of...

Also, your company's accounting information can be sensitive, and hence you may not want to share that information with Intuit (and whoever they choose to share/sell it to).

> Mint on the otherhand, detects the income by scanning all accounts, automatically categorizes it, etc etc.

Does this mean that you literally hand over your online account log in details to Intuit? Or how is this "scanning" done?

> GnuCash - I could see mistakes everywhere. I don't see how this is much different than what an accountant would do in 1740 england. Why not have it all automated -- with computers??

What kind of mistakes were you noticing? (in the Youtube video below, I assume?)

"Does this mean that you literally hand over your online account log in details to Intuit? Or how is this "scanning" done?"

Yes. They use your banks credentials and scan the accounts. It is really awesome. Because you can centralize 20+ accounts into one flow in an automated fashion ++ you don't need a bookkeeper. Ironically, it is actually more secure since I can catch things within minutes.

"Also, your company's accounting information can be sensitive, and hence you may not want to share that information with Intuit (and whoever they choose to share/sell it to)."

Worse! Intuit does all my TAX RETURNS. Their tax system is absolutely worth it. I trust them more than "Jeff" at my local small bookkeeper firm. They handle a large percent of american's taxes. [Yes, yes I understand their lobbying is terrible].

Worse! Intuit does all my TAX RETURNS.

Tax returns are generally a lot less sensitive than bank/credit card statements. Plus they have your plain text credentials too, so if they get hacked someone could transfer money out of your bank account.

And my understanding is generally that your bank will disclaim liability for any "fraud" that occurs due to you intentionally and willingly sharing your credentials.

Exactly!

> Yes. They use your banks credentials and scan the accounts. It is really awesome.

Interesting. Is your bank OK with you handing out your web bank login to 3rd party?

I found it strange how LinkedIn could trick people into handing over their email password. But the web bank login..!?

Does this mean that you literally hand over your online account log in details to Intuit? Or how is this "scanning" done?

Yes, mint screen scrapes any bank that doesnt have an api. The sheer number of sites it works with is impressive. I have moved away from it, because if the security concerns, but I wish there was a self hosted open source solution that had connectivity into everything you could want.

The way this is formulated it looks like an automated response from an advertisement bot.

Also you know that Mint is a proprietary company which keeps and uses your data as it pleases, right? That's a huge difference to any open source tool which allows you to keep your company's data inside your company. If it uses a good file format you can also automate everything if desired.

Second, Mint sadly is not supported in many countries. If you are in the US, fine. But if you are not, e.g. your corp has a shop in Germany, then you simply can't use it at all.

I think the basic idea though is the difference between the "pay someone else to solve your problems" vs "solve problems yourself" approaches/mindsets. Each of them has their clear advantages and disadvantages and I hope we don't have to reiterate them here.

"The way this is formulated it looks like an automated response from an advertisement bot."

Yes. That is what a happy user sounds like.

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