

Ask HN: 'Accounting' for startups / product businesses? - chexton

Hi all,<p>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.<p>Most packages tend towards companies that sell product in a store or mail out invoices.  SaaS businesses don't work like this.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Is there a pain point here? What are the flaws? Let the open discussion begin! We would love your feedback.
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patio11
That name is a non-starter for me. I couldn't show it to my bookkeeper with a
straight face. That said:

a) I have this problem and would prefer a SaaS w/ a web hook and API to my
current homegrown bookkeeping kludge that I built. My bookkeeper would prefer
it, too.

b) As I say a) I realize that I've known that for four years and have never
made good on my threats to switch to QuickBooks or anything else.

c) ... And for that matter, I don't have an accountant (yikes).

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dmils4
QuickbooksOnline has done an amazing job innovating over the past few years -
it's the best product in its class now, easily. Yes, there are certain things
it still can't do - and that makes it very frusturating, but I don't see a
reason to use any other service.

I think the main flaw with this idea is that everyone wants to make accounting
"simple." Unless you are going to focus on a specific niche, I think you're
not going to solve the problem.

It sounds like you want to solve the problem of visualizing accounting data
better than any other product or service. Why not build an app that works with
the quickbooks API (Bill.com is the most notable app out there that sync's
with QB). Just an idea..

