How do you do your accounting? - [💬discussion]
As one of my objectives this year, I am working on building and bootstrapping a startup🦄.
I like building software and weirdly enough, I enjoy accounting. So the idea of my startup is to build an accounting app for indie hackers that is simple enough for non-accounting people😏, adapted to the unique business needs of indie hackers, and is affordable and cost-friendly for new and bootstrapped businesses💲.
My goal is to build a solution that is 10x better than what you currently use so please sign up for my waiting list😉(https://forms.gle/KrByiDftqHs3cCXv9)
MORE IMPORTANTLY: In the comments💬 below, please tell me
- how do you currently do your accounting (your apps, processes etc)📄?
- what accounting tasks do you find yourself doing over and over again😪?
- what payment services do you use to process purchases/subscriptions💱?
- what features of your accounting system do you love😍?
- what quirks of your accounting system do you hate🤬?
- what key financial indicators about your business do you keep track of🚀?
- how much money do you spend on accounting monthly👀?
- how much time do you spend on accounting monthly🕒?
- what client do you use for accounting (web, mobile, desktop)💻📱?
Please feel free to add any other info.
Our accountant does our accounting HOWEVER we use Quickbooks + Fathomhq to analyze past data then create projections that determine week to week activities in Google Sheets
For me as the CEO cashflow projections for the CFO pay management for the accountant everything else
For payments we use Stripe (for easy stuff), Honeybook (for contracts), and Paypal (we have a unique use case here)
As a CEO I care more about features that project cashflow or analyze past month to month data. My CFO cares about employee/freelancer pay overview, tools/services cost overview, and misc costs itemized
We spent the second half of last year completing overhauling our financial processes so there's nothing I don't like except for maybe the different accounts I have to check in order to get the info I need
Financial KPIs/Features: Runway, 1-3 Month Cashflow, Cost Categories, Revenue Recognition, MRR, Gross Revenue Per Month/Week, Costs Per Month/Week, and I'm starting to care more about Profit Margin per Product
Accounting - $500 ($250-$500 is pretty standard for super early stage startup accounting services) | Financial Tools, Personnel, and Activities - $1,000 - $1,500 (this year we're doing revenue-led activities so we spend a lot of time looking at $ numbers)
I don't know how long the accountant spends, but internally we probably spend 5 hours on non-pay weeks and 10 hours on pay weeks (pay weeks are when we decide major activities for the next 2 weeks)
Our accountant uses Quickbooks to manage everything we use ADP to people and I use FathomHQ plus Google Sheets as a crystal ball XD
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much for taking the time. This will be very helpful!