Launch HN: Modernbanc (YC W20) – Modern and fast accounting software
54 comments
·March 19, 2025internet101010
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.
danielvanacker
1 is supported 2 it's a fair point, I think something for us to keep in the back of our mind as we grow.
aurumque
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.
danielvanacker
Appreciate it! We love to hear this! I've been hearing a lot about QBO popup ads recently
epistasis
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.
WorldMaker
> 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).
danielvanacker
That's a great point and was actually what led to the pivot to accounting software. We originally tried to make this just a reporting tool (aggregate financial sources, think equals.com) but came to the same realisation that it was hard to get people to switch from Excel. In this product the sheet is not the product, just a feature
curun1r
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.
tntpreneur
Out of context: I like it when "Linear" references are used. When they become so well known?
gregorygev
about a year now I'd say - while their design kicks ass I think it's the speed and thoughtfulness of the product that makes it stand out.
ilikebits
Congratulations on the launch! I think you might have a typo in your screenshots, where "liabilites" should be spelled "liabilities".
gregorygev
good catch - will address that!
Beijinger
I looked into accounting software. This posting set my mind:
Shameless C&P:
If you do not use Quickbooks:
* Your bank will hate you.
* Your investors will hate you.
* Your payroll system won't work.
* Your tax systems won't work.
* Your accountant won't work.
* Grants are even off the table in some cases.
* Some places won't audit without Quickbooks.
noodlesUK
I don't think this is necessarily true in all countries. Here in the UK I see a lot of people using Xero & Sage, and micro businesses using Freeagent.
danielvanacker
Do you have a link for the source?
singhrac
Do you have a roadmap? I'm interested (love Linear, hate Quickbooks/Xero, looking for something better, finances are not that complicated) but I want to know what is planned and what is supported now.
danielvanacker
Great question, we don't have an official roadmap but over the next few months we'll likely ship: magic inbox (auto linking receipts/invoices/etc... to transactions, payroll/hr integrations, e-commerce integrations). We're also focusing heavily on the AI functionality (getting it to do much more than just bookkeeping and generating reports). The roadmap is heavily customer influenced, are there any critical features you're looking for?
ketamine
How do track errors with the AI? Is it up to me as a user to flag them or do you have a review process or have different models confirm the same outcome?
danielvanacker
Good question, what would be best for you?
Right now if you suspect an error in AI response you can flag it/submit as feedback. For anything that AI does without your input (bookkeeping) we associate a confidence with it and when below that threshold we get a human in the loop.
We know that trusting AI with financial info is hard which is partially why we have the sheet (so that the AI can backup it's claims).
sahaskatta
Hi folks. Congrats on this launch. As someone who's used Quickbooks for years, there's definitely an opportunity to build something that's a better experience. We're hearing about other new platforms like Rillet emerge in the market too. How do you folks think about their approach vs. yours?
gregorygev
hey, thank you - for sure! Rillet looks interesting, they appear to focus on SaaS vertical for mid-market companies (more like targeting Netsuite's customer segments). We on the other hand focus on a simpler setup where small business owners and startup founders manage most of their business finances themselves.
mushufasa
Cool!
I've looked into accounting software for our startup in the past. Xero, Quickbooks, and simply hiring an accounting firm.
We ended up hiring an accounting firm for full service so I can totally not focus on this at all, and we don't have to have an operations staff member dealing with bookkeeping.
That said, I feel like there should be a solution that is totally automated, that can just sync with our bank account and handle everything. The full service accountants aren't perfect, the interface is just phone calls and emails. The bookkeeping itself doesn't seem like too much human work for them; they mostly just load things into quickbooks anyways and send us a report. it's mostly the tax filings where they come in handy. That and on the off chance we need audited financials for diligence, we need an accredited third party firm.
Bookkeeping. It's something I'm perfectly capable of doing, but it would be a mistake for me to be spending my time and energy on this; myself and our staff should be focused on unique things that advance our core product and business.
On your pricing page you say 'growth: request a quote." Solutions like pilot are transparent about their pricing but it's actually no better than the more traditional accounting firm we chose. I realize it's early, but it would be important for me to be able to estimate the pricing before I invest any time or effort to try this out -- even for a free trial.
null
gregorygev
Hey - I agree with your bookkeeping + tax filing points! Regarding the "Request quote" button - I hear you! Right now the product isn't positioned to serve mid/larger businesses so we basically have to make a case to divert/invest our engineering time into making the product work well for those companies.
Hey HN! We're the team behind Modernbanc (https://modernbanc.com). Today we’re introducing our modern accounting software designed for startups and small businesses. Here’s a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLkJ-6liTNU
If you're familiar with the issue tracker Linear, think of it as Linear for accounting software. It is fast, works offline, and saves you time with automated bookkeeping, accounting and invoicing.
This is our third pivot. Previously, we built infrastructure like a ledger API and payments vault to help companies create fintech products.
For this idea, our motivation came from two completely opposite experiences: using Linear and using Quickbooks. The difference in quality between the two products was shocking, and despite there being dozens of accounting tools, none come even close to the quality of Linear, Notion, or Figma.
With Linear, I’ve heard stories of engineers threatening to quit if their company switches to another tool! With Quickbooks it takes me so long to get to the right page that sometimes I forget why I opened it.
This was baffling to us because accounting is the core system of every business—it tells you what you have, what you made, and whether you’ll still be around in 12 months.
To solve this, we took a Linear-like approach, focusing on speed and quality from day one. For example, we built our own in-house real-time sync engine to ensure it’s lightning fast, works offline, and keeps your business finances at your fingertips.
Modernbanc is still early and doesn’t have every feature yet, but we believe we’ve built a long-term foundation for the best accounting software in the world. It even includes a built-in spreadsheet so you’re never limited in reporting.
Although early, the software is already useful and helps founders: Automate bookkeeping effortlessly. Transaction rules and AI smart actions handle the work for you. Get answers to any question, including runway, burn, and custom budgets, all in one place; Create and manage invoices. Our AI will auto-match incoming payments to them; Be tax-ready with all the data available for seamless tax filing. And if you don’t have an accountant, we’ll find you one!
We’ll have more releases in the coming weeks including receipts matching, payroll integrations and AI-powered report generation.
We’ve just launched (mainly focusing on smaller US-based startups) and would love your feedback! Please give it a go at https://modernbanc.com (you’ll see a demo workspace once you sign-up).
We’d love your feedback! If you’ve ever been frustrated by accounting software, what has been the worst part? What features are missing? Have you ever had to rely on a spreadsheet because your accounting tool could not do what you needed? We are still early, so your input will help shape what we build next. If you have thoughts, frustrations, or ideas, we would love to hear them!