I thought bookkeeping software problems were accounting problems. I was wrong.

this pattern shows up everywhere imo. 18yrs running hosting and ppl never said 'I want better hosting' — they complained that migrations were always painful. the product was fine. the pain was the seams between dev, ops, billing. ur instinct sounds right but I'd push back on 'context organization' bcs that frames it as notion-for-accountants. more like 'shared memory across the ppl who touch the same client'. how many of the accountants u talked to currently solve this by just keeping it all in one persons head?

This is such an underrated insight. A lot of founders think they’re solving a “feature problem” when they’re actually solving a workflow, trust, or communication problem. Especially in B2B SaaS, users often care less about accounting logic itself and more about reducing anxiety and saving time. Great read.

This is the pattern that every successful customer discovery process has in common: the stated problem is a symptom, and the real problem is two layers deeper.

The fastest way to get to the real problem is to study what people ask about in public forums before they've found a solution. Reddit is particularly good for this - posts in r/smallbusiness, r/freelance, r/Accounting about specific frustrations reveal the actual decision context (what just failed, what they tried, why they're looking now) that a survey or interview rarely surfaces.

The framing that usually works: 'I'm building X and I'm stuck on whether [specific assumption]. Has anyone actually tried [what people intuitively try first]?' The replies tell you whether your assumption matches reality or whether, like bookkeeping → accounting, you've misidentified the layer.

This is the right reframe. The painful part is usually not classification, it is getting clean context before the accounting work starts.

For validation I’d ask firms to show the last 5 transactions they had to reopen. The pattern in those reopened items will tell you whether the wedge is receipts, client replies, approval trails, or decision memory.

This exact reframe applies to client payment problems in freelancing.

Most freelancers treat late invoices as a billing process problem. They add payment terms, change their contract, switch invoicing software. None of it moves the needle.

The actual problem: the invoice arrives at the wrong moment in the relationship, in a format the client did not expect, with language that feels transactional in a creative or consulting context.

Once I started treating invoice timing as a communication design problem - when to send, what to say before sending, how to frame the ask for a client who gives you creative work - the late payment rate dropped significantly.

The software was fine. The relationship script around it was broken.

Same thing seems true in accounting software: the tool is rarely the problem. The workflow and the framing of the workflow are usually where people go wrong.

What was the actual mismatch you found?

Yeah this matches what I’ve been thinking too.

I have some ERP experience and used to work at a Big Four firm, and now that I’m starting my own business, I keep looking for ways to automate bookkeeping because honestly I really don’t want to hire an accountant too early lol.

My feeling is the biggest pain is not just “can this tool categorize transactions better.” It’s more about everything around bookkeeping.

Upstream, the tool needs to pull together data/files/context from other workflows: receipts, reimbursements, invoices, bank transactions, etc. And for more complex businesses, maybe even supply chain or ERP data. By the time something hits the ledger, a lot of the context is already gone.

Downstream, I also think there’s a lot of value if the bookkeeping tool can make tax filing, reporting, and compliance prep easier, instead of just giving you cleaner books.

So yeah, I think the real opportunity is probably not just AI bookkeeping, but a better context layer across the whole finance workflow.

I’m also trying to find early testers through Reddit, but I noticed it’s easy to get filtered if the post sounds too much like promotion. I’m now trying to focus more on problem validation and commenting in relevant threads instead of posting links directly.

This is a sharper insight than “AI bookkeeping.” The real wedge seems to be context loss before the books are even touched: missing receipts, scattered client replies, old transaction decisions, and the back-and-forth that makes month-end messy.

I’d probably position ClarifyBooks less as bookkeeping software and more as an operational context layer for bookkeeping teams. That makes the product feel broader and more urgent, because firms are not only trying to categorize transactions faster, they are trying to stop the same missing-context problem from coming back every month.

One thing I’d watch is the name. ClarifyBooks explains the current category, but if the opportunity is really workflow/context management for financial operations, it may become narrow quickly. A more expandable SaaS-style name like Beryxa.com could give the product more room if it grows beyond bookkeeping into finance ops workflows.