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Comment by pwpw | Hacker News Reader

As a CPA and software developer, I've been wondering if I should build my own product out, but there seems to be a number of options available in the ledger space. However, I'm surprised there isn't more of an overlap in software engineering and accounting. There's a bit of overlap in the fields that scratch the same itch. Although the theory behind accounting is a lot more interesting than most of the work in my experience.

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I'm also a CPA and develop software now (there are dozens of us!). I think part of this is that the perception among devs is that accounting is too complicated, and therefore can be radically simplified in software, which can be true, but largely doesn't meet real world scenarios. The problem is that accounting is generally complicated because business is complicated. I've seen software that throws away the ability to add more than 2 line items to a transaction. I've also seen software that goes too far the other way and automates every step of a process (okay great, how can we show the auditors now that this works?). It's a pretty classic misunderstanding of the domain, where most CPAs don't speak software, so there's a severe lack of communication (which probably makes CPAs who do understand software very valuable!).

The other factor is that while accounting software as a whole sucks, but at least for larger businesses, its probably better to tell the auditors that you use quickbooks, versus some custom in house software. From a risk management perspective, that's a much easier value proposition for the board/management.

That's great insight. When I was at big 4, I helped look over in house software and translate it for auditors to gain reasonable assurance that the software was correctly implementing accounting processes.

A buddy of mine is working on a YC-funded company (https://www.keeper.app/) that's designed around assisting the lives of bookkeepers using quickbooks. I think it's a great angle because I agree with you that quickbooks is the most logical option for an average company. Where software could really be improved in my eyes is SAP. Boy does their software make me want to hurl... But they have such a strong hold in the industry.

This is a bit tangential, but my biggest insight when conducting walkthroughs with the client's accountants was that there is so much valuable knowledge that is internalized in singular individuals. I'd have an accountant show me their month end close process with links between 5 Excel worksheets. Totally illogical flow and only that person understood how to follow the process from start to finish. There would be situations like randomly multiplying a line item by 32 because of some piece of paper on their desk that they had written down years ago. These people had been at the company for 20+ years. I have to think there's a better system for handling accounting processes like that. Weeding through a messy code base can be a nightmare, but going through someone else's accounting worksheets that are crucial for tying out the financial statements can be nearly impossible. I suppose eventually the audit team has to decide what's material, make a judgement call, and move on.

Could some of these issues you mentioned be helped by having the ability to make notes in each accounting stage of a particular customer's file?

> The problem is that accounting is generally complicated because business is complicated.

This is it. From a high level, accounting lends itself very well to software. You have accounts, money, and transactions, and it appears that the challenge is moving money between accounts and then adding everything up. Perfect domain for software, that's all stuff computers are very good at.

It's only once you start digging in with real companies that you realize the math is the easy part. The hard parts are the opposite of things that computers are good at - e.g. "given this change in rules that takes effect next year and is written in plain English, how do we account for this transaction?" Or "when an exception occurs, we need to define a process for how a human can handle it after month close."

The parts that are fun for a developer (look at the cool stuff the computer can do!) are not the parts that are valuable to a user; the valuable parts are super tedious and boring.

Hey I'm co-founder of Proper Finance https://www.properfinance.io we're building integrated ledgering and reconciliation software for fintech companies. Happy to be helpful where we can - most of the team were early engineers at Marqeta where we worked on the core ledger, as well as reconciliation and financial controls - so happy to provide perspective. shoot me a note - travis@properfinance.io

Making a ledger is step 0 at building ERP-like apps so many of us don't see it as big deal (until the complexities of it arise!).

Also it could be very local-dependent.

Here in Colombia how we approach it is different to how I see people in USA do it.

What I don't know is how make it both easy, universal, practical and pluggable.

If for example is a out-of-band solution (aka: a micro-service) will be a total NO for many of potential users..

I’ve often thought that had I been born into a world without computers I’d have been an accountant.

On high school career day I attended a talk by an accountant, and unfortunately he lived up to the stereotype. One of the most (superficially, anyway) boring people I’ve ever met.

I’m actually the founder is a startup trying to bridge the gap between Eng and finance. I’d love to hear your perspective on what a good solution would look like!

would love to connect as we're evaluating ledgers for rental properties. there are a gazillion management softwares with "accounting" ledgers but they were always an after thought. we're interested in building the defacto single source of truth ledger for real estate. taylor at apmhelp.com

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