7 ms·

Ask HN: What do you use for bookkeeping?

14 points by dustyreagan 17y ago

Quickbooks, spreadsheets, some fancy web based solution? Do you like it?

jacquesm 17y ago
A bookkeeper. I basically collect all the receipts through the year, do my own quarterly VAT and then have the bookkeeper do the annual reports, integration of all the companies and the actual filing. I don't send out a lot of invoices and I don't have a lot of stuff I buy on the company so that is relatively easy to do.
- thibaut_barrere 17y ago
  Almost same here - I send all the receipts each quarter, pay my VAT and other taxes based on what my accountant says. My accountant also does annual report. If it's useful to you, I use freckle (http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com) and/or google calendar (see http://blog.logeek.fr/2009/11/27/how-to-use-google-calendar-and-rufus-google-for-time-tracking http://blog.logeek.fr/2009/11/27/how-to-use-google-calendar-...) for time-tracking/invoicing.
aditya 17y ago
Billings.app - switched from quickbooks since it didn't have time tracking and Billings does that and invoicing pretty well. Also, prefer it over freckle since freckle is WAY more expensive ($40 for Billings vs $12/mo for Freckle)
cpr 17y ago
I was about to ask the same question. I've been using Quicken Mac for over a decade, but I need something more, given a business change, so I'm going to try out Quicken Online. (One of the main features I need is check printing, and most of the online accounting packages don't support that.)
dustyreagan 17y ago
Quick interjection on my own question: I just started looking at http://outright.com http://outright.com. I've been playing with it for the last 30 minutes or so. Seems like a pretty nice system. It sucked in all of my PayPal history from last year, and even properly expensed PayPal's fees. First service I've used that did that.
tow21 17y ago
We use xero.com. Your best solution might depend what tax jurisdiction you're in, though.
- forkqueue 17y ago
  Another vote for xero.com Used GnuCash for 5 years, and whilst it was OK, Xero is a hell of a lot nicer to deal with.
ars 17y ago
GnuCash. It has modules for vendors (so you can track how much you owe them) and clients (how much they owe you), and employees (including expenses).
rs 17y ago
Using Sage for everything now (I've got the Instant Accounts Plus). Not the prettiest, or easiest to use, but once you get used to it and over the learning curve, its actually plenty useful and powerful. In a nutshell, the user thinks in terms of invoices, customers, suppliers, payments, etc.. and Sage takes care of the rest and produces a full set of accounts. You'd want to get some accountant to help out initially (I did), as some of the concepts in the accounting world can be a little unintuitive and then you end up with unbalanced accounts.
wglb 17y ago
Quickbooks Pro. If i started now, I would probably use Gnucash. I would certainly not put my financial books in the cloud.
izak30 17y ago
freshbooks
tubaman 17y ago
I use a combination of a quick-n-dirty double-entry accounting django app, and web scraping scripts for my bank/credit bards online accounts so I don't have to enter stuff in manually.

14 points by dustyreagan 17y ago

Quickbooks, spreadsheets, some fancy web based solution? Do you like it?

A bookkeeper. I basically collect all the receipts through the year, do my own quarterly VAT and then have the bookkeeper do the annual reports, integration of all the companies and the actual filing. I don't send out a lot of invoices and I don't have a lot of stuff I buy on the company so that is relatively easy to do.

thibaut_barrere 17y ago
Almost same here - I send all the receipts each quarter, pay my VAT and other taxes based on what my accountant says. My accountant also does annual report. If it's useful to you, I use freckle (http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com) and/or google calendar (see http://blog.logeek.fr/2009/11/27/how-to-use-google-calendar-and-rufus-google-for-time-tracking http://blog.logeek.fr/2009/11/27/how-to-use-google-calendar-...) for time-tracking/invoicing.

aditya 17y ago

Billings.app - switched from quickbooks since it didn't have time tracking and Billings does that and invoicing pretty well. Also, prefer it over freckle since freckle is WAY more expensive ($40 for Billings vs $12/mo for Freckle)

cpr 17y ago

I was about to ask the same question. I've been using Quicken Mac for over a decade, but I need something more, given a business change, so I'm going to try out Quicken Online. (One of the main features I need is check printing, and most of the online accounting packages don't support that.)

dustyreagan 17y ago

Quick interjection on my own question: I just started looking at http://outright.com http://outright.com. I've been playing with it for the last 30 minutes or so. Seems like a pretty nice system. It sucked in all of my PayPal history from last year, and even properly expensed PayPal's fees. First service I've used that did that.

tow21 17y ago

We use xero.com. Your best solution might depend what tax jurisdiction you're in, though.

forkqueue 17y ago
Another vote for xero.com Used GnuCash for 5 years, and whilst it was OK, Xero is a hell of a lot nicer to deal with.

ars 17y ago

GnuCash. It has modules for vendors (so you can track how much you owe them) and clients (how much they owe you), and employees (including expenses).

rs 17y ago

Using Sage for everything now (I've got the Instant Accounts Plus). Not the prettiest, or easiest to use, but once you get used to it and over the learning curve, its actually plenty useful and powerful. In a nutshell, the user thinks in terms of invoices, customers, suppliers, payments, etc.. and Sage takes care of the rest and produces a full set of accounts. You'd want to get some accountant to help out initially (I did), as some of the concepts in the accounting world can be a little unintuitive and then you end up with unbalanced accounts.

wglb 17y ago

Quickbooks Pro. If i started now, I would probably use Gnucash. I would certainly not put my financial books in the cloud.

izak30 17y ago

freshbooks

tubaman 17y ago

I use a combination of a quick-n-dirty double-entry accounting django app, and web scraping scripts for my bank/credit bards online accounts so I don't have to enter stuff in manually.