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by nadima 2309 days ago
Hey all,

Nadim here, I'm the founder of WeKeep.

In my previous startup I found that Xero and Quickbooks are not suited for our needs; that they are more geared toward small businesses that need to issue invoices to customers and for typically low volume transactions. You can use their APIs and build an integration, but I found that most startups are not willing to put their engineers' precious hours into this at the early stage – so they end up tracking their financials in a spreadsheet.

So I built an accounting software with a spreadsheets-first approach. WeKeep is a double-entry accounting software with in-browser spreadsheets (for the most part) to serve some common use cases, but also has all the advanced features an accountant needs for when you're ready to hand over.

A typical use case of early stage startups that we've used WeKeep with: They don't send out invoices (no accounts receivable), so instead we created simplified invoices - these are invoices paid in cash (typically through a payment gateway or a POS). So they can export data from their backend and paste into the simplified invoice sheet. Same for expenses – typically no accounts payable, just expenses paid for through a company card or a founder's personal card.

Right now the product isn't tailored for any geography, so you'll probably find several features lacking (e.g. Stripe integration, bank feeds). I'll surely get these going at some point if I see traction.

Would love to know whether this is something you would find useful, and if there are any hard requirements for your geography I would love to hear them too.

5 comments

I created a test account to have a play around. Looks like a solid start.

> I found that Xero and Quickbooks are not suited for our needs; that they are more geared toward small businesses that need to issue invoices to customers and for typically low volume transactions.

It sounds like you have identified a niche that you feel WeKeep is designed for. I think that your landing page should reflect that.

I would say that when people are choosing their account software, they really want to know you're trustworthy and are going to be around long term. Are those testimonials all legit? Because that really helps to make me feel comfortable.

Other things I have see similar software do is put on their front page "$1,000,245 in bills recorded", "X invoices tracked and paid". Knowing others are using your software to do their accounting successfully will help people trust you are the real deal.

One thing that I would want to see before I would really start using such software in earnest is the ability to get my data out quickly/easily if I need to switch to another account software provider. Import features would also be important as a "getting started" thing.

Last tiny bit of feedback: I found it a bit difficult to logout as the logout button is hidden in the settings.

Thanks for taking the time to test it out and write this feedback! Definitely one of the main hurdles to overcome is gaining trust from users. Right now the approach is to take it slow and gain users one by one, starting with the ones who are the most comfortable with cloud software.

Great point about making it easy to export your data. Would an "export to google sheets" work for you, or is there any specific format you have in mind?

I'm not in your target market, but csv/xlsx/ods would seem to be the natural export formats.
Got it. If I may ask, when you say not in target market, meaning you're not a startup, or prefer non cloud solutions, or something else?
Not a startup, but also a data sovereignty thing. I realize this doesn't play very well with SaaS though.
Hi Nadim,

One hard requirement for my geography is having i18n support for at least the client-facing parts. My local clients speak French, and sending them an English invoice is pretty rude, but I also have English-speaking clients, and sending them an invoice in French would be incomprehensible.

Does your software support that use-case? Most of them don't; I'm honestly thinking about building my own at this point.

Hi Emile(?),

I have the i18n feature but haven't included French (yet). Language switch is only visible in countries where I've enabled it and where there are more than one language. Besides sending out invoices to customers in French, which other elements are critical for you to be i18n'ed?

I can add support for French in a few days – if you sign up :)

Hi Nadim,

I haven't looked at how it's done in your app, but I'd encourage you to make that switch visible for everyone, because you could have e.g. a Spanish person working from the US.

Critical elements are everything that the customer will see: Mainly invoices, but also client area (if you have this), payment page, proposals, emails, etc.

And thanks for the offer, but I've already found something that suits me (Pancake), so I'm not really looking to switch at this time. Just reminding you of something that Anglo-centric devs often forget!

This is really interesting. I've had ideas about accounting as a specialized spreadsheet for a while, both because most people grok spreadsheets naturally and because accountants only want csv files.

In fact I wrote a small script to extract GnuCash transactions into a csv file that can be used as a spreadsheet as a starter point:

https://github.com/dorfsmay/gnucash_general_journal

(There are still issues with this, especially with the way GnuCash converts currencies)

I'll definitely take a look at WeKeep, it might solve some of my issues, and I might just stop my efforts if you got where I was hoping to get.

Couldn't catch the reason behind the "one column per account" layout – you mention it's to show splits, can you elaborate on this?

In WeKeep all general ledger transactions can be looked up under Reports > Account Transactions, laid out in as a spreadsheet https://www.wekeep.co/c/dashboard/account-transactions/ Here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/6eKNgKr

So that somebody who has access to the CSV file only has a per account view, they can look at all the transactions for a specific account, the same way they'd look at the account in GnuCash.

One column per account is what enables at looking at splits on a given line.

For liabilities account, it also allows to do a quick verification that the total is zero.

Hi Nadim. First of all, congratulations. The website looks fine, making a good first impression of your product. Its UI is very clean and appealing. I like it.

Suggestion to think about: add screenshots/animation of the Sales module, as it is where the whole business process begins and a major reference for users of this type of app.

Hey, thanks for the feedback! The homepage definitely needs work with more screenshots of the invoicing / recording payment process. I've added this to the pipeline.
Hi Nadim,

I have a system where I record payments in Excel and send out invoices via a Word template.

What reason would someone like me have to switch to your service? Besides a slight ease of use, how is your service better for a solo founder on a budget (one of your target markets, I assume)?

Hi – Our target market is small companies who need to move to a double-entry accounting software, typically because they need to start doing accrual accounting, or because they got investors on board, or e.g. they need to start filing VAT; so I'd like to see WeKeep as an alternative to Quickbooks and Xero.

As a solo founder you might not get extra value over Excel – but I hope that would change once we add integrations like Stripe.

Is there anything Excel doesn't do that you'd like to see in WeKeep?