Launch HN: Modernbanc (YC W20) – Modern and fast accounting software

Here's what I'd want from accounting software; a credible exit strategy that if you go bankrupt or decide that you need to tweak your pricing too much, I can take my data and run it on my own infrastructure. Have you thought about an open source business model? Even just offer the basic platform as open source (e.g. keep the AI stuff proprietary). Also, your pricing is too high; Xero offers a more generous starter plan for $20 / month.

Congratulations on launching!

I have some experience with accounting software and its use in various types of business (not just startups).

Xero (rather than Quickbooks) is dominant in the UK and it has a lot of problems. However, I think you are addressing a fundamentally different market. Quickbooks and Xero are both targeted at the long-tail of small businesses - think tradesmen, cafes, hairdressers, etc. The main thing they accomplish for those customers is basic book keeping and business functions (like invoicing, payroll, etc)

Your software seems much more aimed at small companies which want sophisticated tools to generate financial insight. This is not a criticism, just a comment that this is a different and potentially smaller market.

However, one way you could capture the "long tail" of small businesses is by winning over the high-street accountant. If you could let them prepare annual accounts with 10x less work - even if the customer book keeping is a mess - then every accountant will recommend your software to their clients.

Anyway - great to see something new in this space. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss further.

Looks nice. I am in finance and have developed reporting/querying tools for accounting teams. The most important thing is catering to Excel. That's just the way it is. What I mention below might already exist and if it does that's great, you're on the right track.

1. The ability to input a list of cost centers/accounts and export all journal entries to Excel is a requirement

2. An Excel add-in is a better selling point than the built-in spreadsheet feature.

> It even includes a built-in spreadsheet so you’re never limited in reporting.

That may be your next pivot, if you are not careful, or maybe if you are.

I did two semesters in college interning on an application like this which did not survive, and one of the things that kept coming up in comparables was that the biggest competition was not Quickbooks, the biggest competition for small/medium sized business accounting has always been Excel.

The product I worked on thought it could succeed with deep Excel integration, both imports and reporting, and possibly even being installed right next to Excel out of the same box. In the end, Excel won and the product was axed, because of course Excel won (even despite the product working to diversify its revenue to moat its budget in interesting ways).

Watching QuickBooks increase in price while decreasing in quality year by year, I keep wondering when the market will finally start to break. I hope this is your break, good luck! I think "QuickBooks, without the popup ads" is already a good enough pitch to me.

A number of years ago, the company I worked for got acquired by Intuit and I ended up in a lot of meetings with the people in charge of Quickbooks. And I can tell you that you’re not looking at Quickbooks the way they are.

One of the key takeaways that I had was that Intuit viewed accounting as a three-way market where the professional accountants were the most important factor when it came to the product design. Customers generally don’t care what software gets used and will pick whatever their accountant recommends. As such, only certain workflows prioritized ease of use and being intuitive. Business owners want to go in and see reports on how their business is doing, but when it comes to actually doing the books, they don’t care. And accountants see the unintuitive parts of Quickbooks as a moat. They’ve put so much time and effort into learning to use such a poor UI, that they see a lot of their value in skillfully navigating that “bad” UI. There’s a ton of hidden tricks that have evolved over the years and get passed from accountant to accountant and they’ll scream bloody murder if Intuit tries to change them. It was funny to hear how much effort was being put into replicating weird interaction patterns from Quickbooks Desktop when they were creating Quickbooks Online and trying to migrate customers over.

My advice to you is to try to find professional accountants who will let you observe them using Quickbooks or Xero. I can almost guarantee that they’re using those products very differently from the way you do. And don’t assume that just because Quickbooks UI sucks, making a better UI will make you successful. Having worked with them, the people in charge of Quickbooks Online are very talented and plenty capable of making a more intuitive UI. The choice not to is intentional and based on a lot of history and strong relationships with their professional accountant community. There will always be some small business owners who try to go it alone, and they really do need more intuitive accounting solutions. In general, I thought Wave was pretty good at targeting that segment the last time I looked at it. But the money there is tiny. And if you want to be hugely successful, you have to understand accountants and why they choose Quickbooks.

This is oddly relevant to me as someone who has HN bookmarked and is also pursuing a Master of Accounting so that I can sit for the CPA exam this year.

I'm mildly annoyed that I'm met with a "Book a Call" CTA when I click the Accountants tab, but I get it.

I think the feedback re: Excel preeminence/stickiness and outsourced workflows is pretty indicative. Similarly, I, too, am curious about the long-term commitment you're willing to make, considering the prior pivots.

That said, this looks clean, and I plan to check it out. I'm doing some work with a fractional CFO firm and I'll recommend they explore as well. Working within a built-in spreadsheet could very well provide the right level of flexibility -- especially if I can access them via the API for downstream manipulation (I haven't looked at the docs yet).

Just a heads up in case you were thinking of selling into the same demo as Linear:

I pay a small amount for outsourced accounting and never need to touch quickbooks. I think this is pretty standard for VC backed startups. The accountant sends us reports in Excel with everything I need to know.

Also, devs really appreciate the craft of Linear. Accountant / CFO is a lot less likely to care. They'd probably rather use something they already know then something that is 10x better on UX.

As somebody who has been using QuickBooks begrudgingly for the last year, this seems very interesting!

However, what is Linear? It's impossible to search for what it might be because it's a common word that I search for in other contexts extensively.

I really hope someone displaces quickbooks -- I was hoping someone would build one on top of Rocicorp Zero Sync!

This looks like a great start. More pricing transparency would be good. A lot of smb, mine included, might not fit in starter, but also can't/won't spend more than we're spending with qb.

Wow, nice start. Integrated spreadsheets are a killer feature. Do any other accounting systems offer that? I think MS Dynamics does.

Here's a cool writeup from PC Mag 1995 about accounting softwares: https://books.google.com/books?id=yurvRCerf_UC&pg=PA273#v=on...

Not much has changed!