[GTALUG] Question

[Christopher Browne]

On 12 January 2017 at 16:26, William Park via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 04:00:50PM -0500, CLIFFORD ILKAY via talk wrote:
>> On 12/01/17 08:16 AM, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
>> > Greetings
>> >
>> > Am trying to find (for need in the not to distant future) some of what
>> > is normally called 'accounting' software (its really record keeping
>> > software but that's a different argument!).
>> >
>> > What are you using that is, or could be, multi-user and has room for
>> > some complexity?  (I am presently using 10 digit account numbers to
>> > get the granularity I want.)
>>
>> Wave <https://www.waveapps.com/> is another Toronto-based web accounting
>> software provider. I know the people behind it and they know what they're
>> doing. I would trust their security more than the security on the average
>> small business network. As for the "What happens to my data if they go out
>> of business?" question, I'd check with the vendor to find out how to export
>> data and do it on a regular basis.
>
> 2.9% fee!  That's $29 for every $1000.  This begs a question... are you
> using them?

Note that this represents a 2.9% charge _for credit card processing._
Wave seem to be charging exactly the same rate as stripe.com, which is
one of the widely used such vendors.

That underlines that there's more to this than meets the eye.

That 2.9% isn't a charge "for accounting", it's a charge for processing
credit card purchases.

Apparently Wave makes their money out of handling credit card
processing, which is sorta interesting.

>> One of the criterion to what you should be using is to find out if your
>> accountant is familiar with what you're using. If they are not, which is
>> more important to you, your accountant or the software you use?
>
> Yes, eventually, you'd need to "export" to his/her format.

Hum?

That's sensible if you handle accounting by paying a third party accountant to
generate your accounting records.

At one time, that used to be one of (AccPac, Bedford Accounting), back in the
MS-DOS days.

But if you're actually managing your own accounting records, the question
will be, what will your accountant charge for *reviewing* your records, and
how does that vary based on what flavour of accounting system you're using.

Wave claims that they make it easy to share appropriate records with your
accountant; I imagine that's true.  Whether or not that makes Wave a good
choice is a separate question.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"