On: The end of the accounting search

[tomrod]

Why would people not go to Gnucash or Fresh books?

[molsongolden → tomrod]

They are just not as good as QuickBooks and not many accountants are familiar with these other packages. The prices keep increasing but the QuickBooks online functionality is the best out there and it is the platform with which most other tools make sure to integrate.

[clashandcarry → molsongolden]

Also, none of the open source alternatives support simultaneous multiuser access.

Users can slowly adapt, but most businesses larger than a sole proprietorship need multiuser capability.

[toyg → clashandcarry]

One would think it can't be that hard to put together a webapp to freaking sum up some numbers, but nobody seem to want to do it in open source.

It could be because it's indeed so easy that it's boring, or could be that anyone with the necessary knowledge of accounting standards makes way more money doing other stuff than coding for free.

[antiloper → toyg]

I'd assume that the overlap between capable open source developers and people who enjoy accounting enough to write their own accounting solution is fairly small.

[wrycoder → clashandcarry]

This is a big one. I switched from GnuCash to QBO for a non-profit because of that.

[gwbennett → tomrod]

Quickbooks is currently a necessary evil for me. I have to use it, because that is what my bookkeepers and accountants use.

If you want to change either your bookkeeper or your accountant, your new bookkeeper and accountant know how to use it.

Every time I have to open up QB, I cringe. Painful!

Agree with the points above about updates and $$$ increases. The worse!

[xupybd → tomrod]

Gnucash is hard to use.

I recently attempted to help a non profit setup Gnucash. It turned out to be cheaper to get commercial software (Xero) as they were spending too much time on upskilling in Gnucash.

They took a week to onboard to the new system and are amazing at how quickly they can do everything they need to do.