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Comment by internet101010 | Hacker News Reader

Looks nice. I am in finance and have developed reporting/querying tools for accounting teams. The most important thing is catering to Excel. That's just the way it is. What I mention below might already exist and if it does that's great, you're on the right track.

1. The ability to input a list of cost centers/accounts and export all journal entries to Excel is a requirement

2. An Excel add-in is a better selling point than the built-in spreadsheet feature.

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1 is supported 2 it's a fair point, I think something for us to keep in the back of our mind as we grow.

2 isn't a "fair point". It's... basically just correct. With respect, you just don't want to hear it.

Fair point, Excel is the standard, and we’re not trying to replace it. But an embedded sheet lets us do things that an add-in just can’t, like asking AI a question and having it generate a full sheet with supporting data instantly. The experience won't be the same if you have to open that sheet in excel instead of seeing it embedded in the app.

We think that’s a powerful complement to Excel, not a replacement. And of course, exporting to Excel/Google Sheets is always an option.

I think you can do that in an excel spreadsheet.

You can play Doom in an Excel spreadsheet.

You can probably have an AI agent using a model running in excel playing doom in excel.

Counterpoint: the product vision that is already on display here is going in a great direction, and colocating a spreadsheet with your accounting app is a great idea. I love the idea of being freed from having to use excel for particular aspects of my accounting flow. You've got the export. People that want to keep their painful workflows can be masochistically happy.

This is clearly not an attempt to replace Excel, it's an attempt to accomplish a set of use cases in a better way than clunky export-import flows.

The in-app sheets look great, keep going!

Thanks for your kind words.

> This is clearly not an attempt to replace Excel, it's an attempt to accomplish a set of use cases in a better way than clunky export-import flows

This is exactly how we think about this too.

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