[Naga]

I'm also a CPA and develop software now (there are dozens of us!). I think part of this is that the perception among devs is that accounting is too complicated, and therefore can be radically simplified in software, which can be true, but largely doesn't meet real world scenarios. The problem is that accounting is generally complicated because business is complicated. I've seen software that throws away the ability to add more than 2 line items to a transaction. I've also seen software that goes too far the other way and automates every step of a process (okay great, how can we show the auditors now that this works?). It's a pretty classic misunderstanding of the domain, where most CPAs don't speak software, so there's a severe lack of communication (which probably makes CPAs who do understand software very valuable!).

The other factor is that while accounting software as a whole sucks, but at least for larger businesses, its probably better to tell the auditors that you use quickbooks, versus some custom in house software. From a risk management perspective, that's a much easier value proposition for the board/management.

[mason55]

> The problem is that accounting is generally complicated because business is complicated.

This is it. From a high level, accounting lends itself very well to software. You have accounts, money, and transactions, and it appears that the challenge is moving money between accounts and then adding everything up. Perfect domain for software, that's all stuff computers are very good at.

It's only once you start digging in with real companies that you realize the math is the easy part. The hard parts are the opposite of things that computers are good at - e.g. "given this change in rules that takes effect next year and is written in plain English, how do we account for this transaction?" Or "when an exception occurs, we need to define a process for how a human can handle it after month close."

The parts that are fun for a developer (look at the cool stuff the computer can do!) are not the parts that are valuable to a user; the valuable parts are super tedious and boring.

[pwpw]

That's great insight. When I was at big 4, I helped look over in house software and translate it for auditors to gain reasonable assurance that the software was correctly implementing accounting processes.

A buddy of mine is working on a YC-funded company (https://www.keeper.app/) that's designed around assisting the lives of bookkeepers using quickbooks. I think it's a great angle because I agree with you that quickbooks is the most logical option for an average company. Where software could really be improved in my eyes is SAP. Boy does their software make me want to hurl... But they have such a strong hold in the industry.

This is a bit tangential, but my biggest insight when conducting walkthroughs with the client's accountants was that there is so much valuable knowledge that is internalized in singular individuals. I'd have an accountant show me their month end close process with links between 5 Excel worksheets. Totally illogical flow and only that person understood how to follow the process from start to finish. There would be situations like randomly multiplying a line item by 32 because of some piece of paper on their desk that they had written down years ago. These people had been at the company for 20+ years. I have to think there's a better system for handling accounting processes like that. Weeding through a messy code base can be a nightmare, but going through someone else's accounting worksheets that are crucial for tying out the financial statements can be nearly impossible. I suppose eventually the audit team has to decide what's material, make a judgement call, and move on.

[NIL8]

Could some of these issues you mentioned be helped by having the ability to make notes in each accounting stage of a particular customer's file?