Ask HN: 'Accounting' for startups / product businesses?
Whilst building our current startup we have found that there is no tool ideally suited to recording the expenses, revenues and other transactions within a startup. We've tried a few and, in our opinion, none of the current accounting packages are _really_ working for us.
Most packages tend towards companies that sell product in a store or mail out invoices. SaaS businesses don't work like this.
The ideal solution would let us automatically add revenues directly from our web app via an API, capture expenses from our email or an iPhone app, capture these figures against individual users and allow us to more easily monitor metrics such as cash burn, cash left in the bank, user contribution margins and others that we now calculate with a spreadsheet. All of these are of course extremely useful in making good decisions about our product.
It would make sense to me if this product also kept the numbers organized for our accountant. I.e. it was built around a compliant accounting engine, without the fuss.
We've had a think and we feel that the accounting system we want would treat data entry like programming. Here's a landing page we have built: http://moneeapp.com.
Is there a pain point here? What are the flaws? Let the open discussion begin! We would love your feedback.