[skissane]

> We live in a world where Intuit has fought VERY hard to make damn sure no one can use anything but Quickbooks

It depends on geography. According to Codat's 2021 report [0] on SME accounting market share:

- In the US, QuickBooks is the clear market leader, with 75.7% combined market share across their three main offerings (QB Online, QB SE and QB Desktop). FreshBooks is in second place at 4.5%, and Wave and Xero equal third at 3.5% each

- In the UK, Sage is the market leader, with a combined market share of 28.8% across their three main UK products (Sage 50/50 Cloud, Sage Accounting, and Sage 200cloud); QuickBooks combined market share (Online+Desktop+SE) is closely behind, in second place at 26.2%; and Xero is in third place at 24%

- In Australia + New Zealand, Xero is in first place at 49.4% market share, MYOB in second place at 33.8%, QuickBooks comes third at 11.2%

- In Canada, QuickBooks is the clear market leader with a combined market share of 68.2%; FreshBooks is in second place at 6.9%; while Sage at 6.4% is in third place. Kashoo comes fourth at 4.3%, and Wave, Xero and Logiciel Actiff are equal fifth at 3.8% each.

So, it is really only in North America that "no one can use anything but Quickbooks" is remotely true – and even there, close to 25% of US SMEs and over 30% of Canadian SMEs are successfully using "something other than Quickbooks".

But I agree it is likely true, that for the vast majority of US small-to-medium businesses, GNUCash is not a realistic alternative to Quickbooks. But what about FreshBooks or Wave or Xero? Or the dozen other commercial accounting software vendors with some presence in the US market?

[0] https://www.codat.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Codat_Global...

[atemerev]

Come on, of course Hacker News is a local Bay Area forum, nothing happens beyond Bay Area ever. /s

And even this post only lists English-speaking countries, as the Babylonian barrier is impenetrable. Who knows what happens in these strange places where people communicate in unknowable sigils?

[Saigonautica]

Ah, I live in one of those impenetrable realms, and have made some progress deciphering their arcane glyphs. I can tell you that here in Viet Nam, accounting is almost entirely done in spreadsheets. I've mostly seen similar in nearby countries.

Also your accountant will universally have a bizarre custom font for Vietnamese characters, that they downloaded ten years ago from a now-defunct forum. It will never correctly transcribe into any other font, and they don't know how to change it. If I switch accountants, it's always a different cursed font. This is a great and enduring mystery.

So I keep a second set of books -- GnuCash is fantastic for this, but I've also used QuickBooks sometimes. Then I use that to make sure the accountant is producing something that at is at least adjacent to reality. I'm audited by law every year (at my own expense), and they only support spreadsheets.

Surely one day soon this will change (except the font thing I bet), but for now I thought you might get a laugh out of this little slice of my life :)

[fuzztester]

India had / has a bunch of indie vendors of small financial accounting packages (that's what it is called here), some years back and for quite a while before that. When a new Indian software product company starts up, this is often the field they enter first, partly because the domain knowledge is widely available via chartered accountants and is fairly standardized, I think. Not an expert in the field myself.

I don't know how many there are nowadays, but my guess is that they must be at least a few of them, still, if not many.

Tally was one of the more successful ones and is still around. I heard someone talk about it the other day.

I am talking about the small businesses sector.

Larger companies tend to use ERPs, either commercial or home-grown. There are even some indie vendors in this sector.

[unmole]

> When a new Indian software product company starts up, this is often the field they enter first

This doesn't ring true to me. It's almost impossible for a new accounting suite to find traction because Tally is the defacto standard. The only successful newcomer I can think of is Zoho.

[fuzztester]

Maybe I was thinking about the situation of some years ago.

I've heard Zoho is successful, though.