Comment by stevoh

Comment by stevoh 10 months ago

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It is a good start but the hubris here is quite high (and maybe not a bad thing). Funny readme but rather harsh. Seems I have been trolled enough to provide a response here...

I am not a fan of "Qwakbooks" and I can't believe I am about to defend it but... it does allow you to enter journal entries manually. In fact, you do not have to use any of the screens overlayed on top of the GL. The additional features are meant to help users do things faster and more efficiently. The details are not hidden at all but most users don't need to see them to be successful.

QuickBooks has all of the same core functionality including a well structured database too. You can interact with the QuickBooks Online API with a few endpoints and achieve the same thing much faster with scalability depending on which features you would like to use. If you don't believe me, just read through the API documentation which is really easy to follow. https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs/api/acco...

So yes, this is a well structured database for an accounting system but beyond that there isn't much here.

Some other points:

"Due to its wide scope, the system is designed to be incomplete, allowing organizations to finalize the implementation." The customization involved to make this useable would be quite substantial and unaffordable unless you did it yourself (which would be a distraction from core business)

"Companies that adopt my system are far less likely to get audited..." This is false. You might survive an audit with a clean general ledger but it doesn't reduce the likelihood. There is also way more to audits than whether the TB balances - the substance of the transactions is obviously more important. ie. the accountant needs to know accounting otherwise audits with any system go poorly.

At quick glance... both this and QuickBooks do not have purchase order management, capex or prepaid amortization automation, approval workflows, muti-dimension transaction classification (for FP&A), or strong multi-company/currency support. These are all reasons why companies switch to a more robust (and usually more expensive) system. These features are needed for most but not all big companies with hundreds of employees moving around tens of millions of dollars.

elevation 10 months ago

> muti-dimension transaction classification

Is there an SMB package that supports this?

In a chart of accounts you might have a Travel/meals/lodging account. The IRS will allow you to write off an employee's meal if it meets certain requirements, but as a company, if your policy is to reimburse employees for meals regardless of the write off, you'd need two sub accounts:

Travel Meals Lodging (IRS Exempt) Travel Meals Lodging (Non IRS Exempt)

Now let's say I get a government contract where I'm contractually allowed to bill certain items to the program, but the contractual definition doesn't overlap with IRS definition, such that I need four categories to track all my expenses:

Travel Meals Lodging (Program Exempt, IRS Exempt) Travel Meals Lodging (Program Exempt, Non IRS Exempt) Travel Meals Lodging (Program Non Exempt, IRS Exempt) Travel Meals Lodging (Program Non Exempt, Non IRS Exempt)

While this technically works, it feels very wrong. I'd love a tool that would let you reconcile the general ledger against more than one Chart of Accounts, or even tag expenses for reporting purposes.

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  • stevoh 10 months ago

    You are correct in your example and yes, it should feel wrong. That workaround is totally fine though and most small companies will do something like how you have described.

    In your example, using multidimensional accounting you could book one entry to "Travel Meals Lodging" GL account and have the dimensions "Program", "IRS Exempt", "T&E Subcategory". This creates a one-to-many relationship with the transaction instead of having 4+ GLs. You could book to one GL "Travel Meals Lodging" with the dimension values "Program Non Exempt", "Non IRS Exempt" and "Meals". You could design the dimensions differently, but I am just trying to give you an example.

    No, I am not aware of an SMB package that supports this. It probably exists but from what I understand it makes the database more complex (cube?) and everything more compute intensive on the reporting side. Thought I haven't looked into it much - if you find anything, let me know.

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    • elevation 10 months ago

      I have a couple projects running on GnuCash, but it doesn't support dimensional accounting. Netsuite would work, but anything Oracle is a hard sell in my space.

      Do you recommend any resources for implementing dimensional accounting? Articles? Example schemas?

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      • stevoh 10 months ago

        If you are coming from GnuCash, Netsuite is probably overkill and/or out-of-budget. Even if you had the resources, I would probably consider Sage first.

        Multidimensional accounting is in effect supplementing the GL with additional data. For each transaction, you could have a database table that adds a column for each new dimension. Or if you don't prefer a relational structure, a json object attached to each transaction. Outside of setting that up, the problem probably becomes the user experience ie. how do you add that information at the same time as posting your entry?

        If you wanted an even more "hacky" way, you could embed the data into the memo/description field or another available field. Unfortunately, the off-the-shelf reporting would not be useable because it would not know how to parse the embedded data.

        Unfortunately, the multidimensional accounting space is dominated by enterprise accounting system offerings. So I don't know of any resources for implementing it outside of switching to those systems.

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  • itsthecourier 10 months ago

    I believe Odoo does this. They tag transactions and even if you have a chart of accounts for your reports, the tags allow these kind of customizations IIRC

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journal 10 months ago

Intuit has how many? I am one. Give it time.

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  • stevoh 10 months ago

    That is fair, I can respect that! Keep going!

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PopAlongKid 10 months ago

>muti-dimension transaction classification

Could you explain what this means? I've been using Quickbooks for both myself and clients for many years and never heard this term. Quickbooks does support classes (multiple columns on your P&L and Balance Sheet within the same company file), is that what you mean?

I'm also pretty sure that QB Enterprise supports multiple currencies, purchase orders, and some of the other stuff you mention, but I haven't worked with that version of QB recently. It also has inventory support that is more sophisticated than the basic support in QB Premier.

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  • stevoh 10 months ago

    "muti-dimension transaction classification (for FP&A)" - The data for internal management/operational financial reporting and budgeting/forecasting/modeling (ie. FP&A) may be quite different than those used for GAAP financial reporting and taxes. The multiple dimensions allows for added "tagging" which can be used to enrich a transaction with more information. An example would be using a dimension of "department" to classify a transaction as belonging to a certain team. Yes, QB has one dimension called "class" but more enterprise systems allow for 10+ or even unlimited. As I mentioned, you only get to needing this once the company is quite large or has more complex financial data needs.

    I don't know exactly what QB Enterprise has but one of the complaints I hear often that that consolidation with multiple entities and multiple currencies is difficult or not possible without additional tools using QB

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