5 ms·

Forget Skittles, WeAllHateQuickbooks Is Brilliant

23 points by iseff 18y ago

thinkcomp 18y ago
Does anyone use LessAccounting? I signed up for it but it doesn't do very much. Disclaimer: I'm technically a competitor.
- ryanwaggoner 18y ago
  I signed up for it but it doesn't do very much. I think that's what they're going for :)
  - joshuastreet 18y ago
    Yeah I signed up. Love it!! Switched from Quickbooks. Free from the bulk of options no one uses. I have enough to train people on. My assistant can actually use it without needing to attend a class! And to freshbooks employee...their marketing worked for me :)
    - pbrown 18y ago
      Considering you signed up to post this gushing post, you wouldn't happen to work for them would you?
      - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
        Judging by the fact that he's hanging out on HN + a quick search for his name reveals that he's probably this guy: http://joshuastreet.com/ http://joshuastreet.com/ http://twitter.com/JoshuaStreet http://twitter.com/JoshuaStreet Doesn't look like there's any connection to LessAccounting... I guess the moral is: don't let your first post on HN be laudatory towards a startup. Damn vultures :)
3pt14159 18y ago
FreshBooks employee here: I think this is a totally stupid idea. "We all hate Quickbooks?" really? Grow up. Quickbooks has made millions of small business owners' lives easier. With out them they would have to spend countless more hours figuring out which tax laws apply to them, how to account for inventory, etc... LessAccounting should focus on their strengths (and they have a ton, seriously) rather than attack Quickbooks. I could never dream of the company I work for ever coming out with a "We hate {insert competitor}" campaign. We have friends everywhere, even at Intuit/Quickbooks. We might compete with them, but that doesn't mean we hate them. We share many of the same goals and we are all just trying to give our customers the best solution to their needs. Hate is no way to grow a business.
- auston 18y ago
  In my opinion - it's marketing. The point is to get you to talk about them & remember their brand. I would never have known about Freshbooks had I not met Mike McDerment in Miami. I would never have known about zoho had I not read about their HS student recruiting tactics. Companies have different marketing tactics - this is one of them. Disclosure: I am friends w/ the less everything dudes.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    I'm not going to remember Lessbooks (or whatever), just that Quickbooks is the market leader.
    - auston 18y ago
      It's LessAccounting - there, now you should be able to remember it.
  - axod 18y ago
    >> "The point is to get you to talk about them & remember their brand." Right. I'm going to remember how unprofessional/stupid they were, and not use them.
- gnaritas 18y ago
wallflower 18y ago
QuickBooks is like the wizard behind the curtain at many small businesses and accountancy firms. Viral marketing isn't always for good.
- redinger 18y ago
  That's too bad. Nearly every freelancer/small business I deal with dislikes QuickBooks if not hates it. I am much happier with LessAccounting personally.
  - skorgu 18y ago
    At my former employer we did some work integrating QuickBooks with several existing systems. I wanted: Documentation; Intuit gave: Cut-and-paste C# examples. I wanted: an easily parse-able format; Intuit gave: almost-XML-but-not-quite (order of elements is important!) I wanted: a Linux server; Intuit gave: something that was almost but not entirely incapable of operating for six hours at a stretch without dying silently. I wanted: descriptive error messages; Intuit gave: "Yeah error $RANDOM? That means restart the server." To be fair the client-server API was reasonably sane, it was the interchange format itself that was bonkers. I'd love to calculate the number of developer hours it cost working around those misfeatures just to get a reasonable facsimile of RPC working. Anyway, I hate QuickBooks.
rbxbxdev 18y ago
re: Freshbooks employee -- If this is such a stupid idea why did it show up in my RSS Reader? Why are people blogging that it's brilliant? Obviously it must be working to some degree. ps: somewhat affiliated with Less, but that doesn't change my views... or the fact that I saw this thread.
rbritton 18y ago
Yeah, Quickbooks sucks, but a totally web-based option is not better. There is no substitute for locally-run software for many things and accounting software is one of them for me.
zhyder 18y ago
I'm reaallly interested in a solid Quickbooks alternative given all the negative feedback on it. But I'm having trouble trusting LessAccounting coz 3 favorable-to-them comments here so far have been made by brand new users (chrisyour, redinger, joshuastreet). Any others used them?

23 points by iseff 18y ago

Does anyone use LessAccounting? I signed up for it but it doesn't do very much. Disclaimer: I'm technically a competitor.

ryanwaggoner 18y ago
I signed up for it but it doesn't do very much. I think that's what they're going for :)
- joshuastreet 18y ago
  Yeah I signed up. Love it!! Switched from Quickbooks. Free from the bulk of options no one uses. I have enough to train people on. My assistant can actually use it without needing to attend a class! And to freshbooks employee...their marketing worked for me :)
  - pbrown 18y ago
    Considering you signed up to post this gushing post, you wouldn't happen to work for them would you?
    - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
      Judging by the fact that he's hanging out on HN + a quick search for his name reveals that he's probably this guy: http://joshuastreet.com/ http://joshuastreet.com/ http://twitter.com/JoshuaStreet http://twitter.com/JoshuaStreet Doesn't look like there's any connection to LessAccounting... I guess the moral is: don't let your first post on HN be laudatory towards a startup. Damn vultures :)

3pt14159 18y ago

FreshBooks employee here: I think this is a totally stupid idea. "We all hate Quickbooks?" really? Grow up. Quickbooks has made millions of small business owners' lives easier. With out them they would have to spend countless more hours figuring out which tax laws apply to them, how to account for inventory, etc... LessAccounting should focus on their strengths (and they have a ton, seriously) rather than attack Quickbooks. I could never dream of the company I work for ever coming out with a "We hate {insert competitor}" campaign. We have friends everywhere, even at Intuit/Quickbooks. We might compete with them, but that doesn't mean we hate them. We share many of the same goals and we are all just trying to give our customers the best solution to their needs. Hate is no way to grow a business.

auston 18y ago
In my opinion - it's marketing. The point is to get you to talk about them & remember their brand. I would never have known about Freshbooks had I not met Mike McDerment in Miami. I would never have known about zoho had I not read about their HS student recruiting tactics. Companies have different marketing tactics - this is one of them. Disclosure: I am friends w/ the less everything dudes.
- tptacek 18y ago
  I'm not going to remember Lessbooks (or whatever), just that Quickbooks is the market leader.
  - auston 18y ago
    It's LessAccounting - there, now you should be able to remember it.
- axod 18y ago
  >> "The point is to get you to talk about them & remember their brand." Right. I'm going to remember how unprofessional/stupid they were, and not use them.
gnaritas 18y ago

wallflower 18y ago

QuickBooks is like the wizard behind the curtain at many small businesses and accountancy firms. Viral marketing isn't always for good.

redinger 18y ago
That's too bad. Nearly every freelancer/small business I deal with dislikes QuickBooks if not hates it. I am much happier with LessAccounting personally.
- skorgu 18y ago
  At my former employer we did some work integrating QuickBooks with several existing systems. I wanted: Documentation; Intuit gave: Cut-and-paste C# examples. I wanted: an easily parse-able format; Intuit gave: almost-XML-but-not-quite (order of elements is important!) I wanted: a Linux server; Intuit gave: something that was almost but not entirely incapable of operating for six hours at a stretch without dying silently. I wanted: descriptive error messages; Intuit gave: "Yeah error $RANDOM? That means restart the server." To be fair the client-server API was reasonably sane, it was the interchange format itself that was bonkers. I'd love to calculate the number of developer hours it cost working around those misfeatures just to get a reasonable facsimile of RPC working. Anyway, I hate QuickBooks.

rbxbxdev 18y ago

re: Freshbooks employee -- If this is such a stupid idea why did it show up in my RSS Reader? Why are people blogging that it's brilliant? Obviously it must be working to some degree. ps: somewhat affiliated with Less, but that doesn't change my views... or the fact that I saw this thread.

rbritton 18y ago

Yeah, Quickbooks sucks, but a totally web-based option is not better. There is no substitute for locally-run software for many things and accounting software is one of them for me.

zhyder 18y ago

I'm reaallly interested in a solid Quickbooks alternative given all the negative feedback on it. But I'm having trouble trusting LessAccounting coz 3 favorable-to-them comments here so far have been made by brand new users (chrisyour, redinger, joshuastreet). Any others used them?