[HN Gopher] Show HN: Bigcapital - A open-source alternative to Q...
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Show HN: Bigcapital - A open-source alternative to QuickBooks
Author : abouolia
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-09-25 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| RagnarD wrote:
| It may be in there somewhere but I don't see a mechanism for
| talking to banks using standard protocols to at least retrieve
| bank transactions. Without that, an accounting system is an
| unusable toy.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I tried to evaluate Bigcapital but it's kind of a mess to deploy
| via self hosting. The docker-compose setup is really hard to
| break apart, the stack is bizarre (mongo, multiple myql
| databases, and redis), and the way you do upgrades and migrations
| left me feeling very uneasy. Additionally, my accountant wouldn't
| use anything this thing exports from what I can tell. For now I'm
| sticking with GnuCash, but I have my eye on some open source ERP
| systems--they're extremely complex though, with every screen
| being customizable. All I want are HR and finance functions in
| one place without having a dozen Google Docs and Sheets floating
| around. I couldn't care less about the level of customization
| most ERPs provide.
| abouolia wrote:
| The deployment is really easy to do and well documented with
| some FAQs you may face, yes there were some issues in setup
| before couple of months ago but we fixed them even the database
| migration now is automated. that is acceptable especially when
| you use a new technology. you can join to our Discord and the
| team will help you to deploy it on your machine.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I would recommend trying to book 2 hours of an accountant's
| time (not a software dev) and seeing if they are able to
| install this during that time window. I suspect they would
| not be able to.
| _joel wrote:
| > that is acceptable especially when you use a new technology
|
| Not really when it's accounting software.
| xoa wrote:
| > _The deployment is really easy to do_
|
| I mean, fwiw here's what we do to deploy QuickBooks: double
| click on image or CD, drag/double click icon, follow any
| prompts, now it's done. Click on icon in dock to launch QB
| thereafter. There was no need to read any FAQS, join a
| Discord or even send an email. That would be my definition of
| "easy". I suppose "here is a VM image ready to go, download
| and click button/run command" wouldn't be terrible though
| still already a massive leap in needs over QuickBooks.
|
| > _that is acceptable especially when you use a new
| technology_
|
| QuickBooks had its first release 31 years ago. Like others
| say I'm sure there are reasons for the explosion in nested
| stacks upon stacks of complexity, but I'll admit I still find
| myself pretty befuddled about how we ended up here. I guess
| it looks like from the docs the goal is exclusively compete
| with the QB Cloud Service specifically so that takes a bigger
| stack, like you're building for B2B. But kind of feels like
| it's an odd choice of targeting here. QB was always aimed
| heavily at small, and eventually medium-small businesses.
| Huge places used other stuff. Small end of the scale are also
| the ones who face the most pain from the shift to
| subscription-only if you didn't snag a last physical copy.
| The docs say
|
| > _Bigcapital is built with a multi-tenancy architecture that
| allows multiple organizations to use the same software while
| keeping their data separate from each other_
|
| Is this actually something in demand here? Why wouldn't each
| one run their own, or if not just pay Intuit? Is the idea
| that various companies will offer Bigcapital services for
| sale? And it says "keeping data separate" but I don't see
| anything about E2EE in the docs or FAQ, though maybe it's
| buried somewhere. If the data is only separate based on user
| permissions what orgs are going to trust something as
| sensitive as business financial data to a multi-tenant
| situation for something unproven? I don't find it promising
| that the (incredibly sparse) docs have this to say about
| signups:
|
| > _The environment variable SIGNUP_DISABLED should be set to
| true to disable the signing up of new users. When set, the
| following facts hold:_
|
| So, does that imply that by default it's just open to the
| world and anyone can sign up? In 2023?
|
| I guess I'll watch the project if only because subscription-
| only for QB sucks and I'm sure will be a problem eventually,
| but... I dunno. This isn't what I would have immediately
| thought of for "An open-source alternative to QuickBooks" in
| terms of approach.
| bibstha wrote:
| I second this to how difficult it is to deploy the app.
|
| My feature request is to be able to deploy sth like this on
| heroku or other paas and to string all of the dependencies with
| env variables.
| badrequest wrote:
| Anecdotally, we've seen a number of larger "open-source
| alternative to X" projects posted on HN of late that are
| technically self-deployable, but require so much up-front
| knowledge that it's not actually accessible to those who might
| truly be liberated by such software.
|
| I mean no slander or disrespect to anyone involved, but there
| was a DataDog alternative posted sometime in the last few weeks
| that had a docker-compose with like 15 containers in it.
| Required running a few different Typescript servers, a
| Clickhouse instance, Redis, MySQL, the lot of it. I'm sure it
| was a fully-featured service that made adequate use of those
| resources, but it also reminded me of why people pay out the
| wazoo for DataDog: nobody wants to manage all that stuff!
|
| EDIT: the repo linked in the GP contains 3 instances of what
| you could call databases: MariaDB, Mongo, and Redis. There
| doesn't appear to be any explanation in the deployment docs for
| why all three are necessary.
| abouolia wrote:
| Totally agree, nobody can manage that amount of containers,
| it doesn't mean if it was self-hosted would excuse the
| deployment is not necessary to be easy, always the deployment
| of self-hosted should be easy with sample CLIs. and also
| providing pre-configured instances on the most popular cloud
| services like on DigitalOcean to deploy the app with sample
| clicks (instead of CLIs) that would great additional for non-
| techincal people and that's what we're seeking for, in terms
| of 3 instance actually we used Mongo for Agenda.js but we
| want to get rid of it ASAP.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > I mean no slander or disrespect to anyone involved, but
| there was a DataDog alternative posted sometime in the last
| few weeks that had a docker-compose with like 15 containers
| in it.
|
| Reminds me of Sentry: https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/
|
| This is their example docker-compose for self-hosting:
| https://github.com/getsentry/self-
| hosted/blob/master/docker-...
|
| It has: - exim4 (smtp) - memcached
| - Redis - PostgreSQL - Zookeeper - Kafka
| - Clickhouse - geoipupdate - 18 containers for
| something called snuba (integrates with Clickhouse?) -
| 2 symbolicator containers - web app - cron
| - 18 other utility containers - Nginx - relay
| - 2 vroom containers
|
| Meanwhile, as far as the other options in the APM space go,
| this is how Apache Skywalking looks like: -
| web app - back end API - database
| (Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, PostgreSQL, MariaDB/MySQL or
| something else)
|
| I'm glad that generally it's good enough for my needs,
| because I can't imagine actually having to self-host Sentry.
| Then again, something like Graylog does log shipping better
| and without a doubt Sentry has lots of nice features... as
| long as you don't have to run it yourself, because many
| people out there won't realistically be able to do so.
|
| > EDIT: the repo linked in the GP contains 3 instances of
| what you could call databases: MariaDB, Mongo, and Redis.
|
| That's not too bad, though, but seems like an interesting
| choice (both a regular RDBMS and a NoSQL one; Redis would
| probably be useful for caching etc. for either).
| aidos wrote:
| Sentry is definitely a bit heavyweight on the services.
| Though, it makes sense since you're effectively running
| everything they run for their saas business built for a
| whole other scale.
|
| The trade off is that it's far more complex than what
| anybody needs if they just want to run sentry locally. It
| used to be a lot simpler but now it's pretty much
| impossible to even understand how they store data without
| spending a long time studying it.
|
| To be fair to them though, their migrations and releases
| have generally been solid and reliable.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Anecdotally, we've seen a number of larger "open-source
| alternative to X" projects posted on HN of late that are
| technically self-deployable, but require so much up-front
| knowledge that it's not actually accessible to those who
| might truly be liberated by such software.
|
| Any self-hosted application really needs someone technical
| unless you're providing something like the DigitalOcean
| deploy button.
|
| Docker-compose requires technical knowledge to run locally.
| Sure running "docker compose" is easy but installing it often
| isn't. As someone quite technical I'm honestly not sure how
| that would work for deploying on to AWS or GCP even though I
| know it's possible. I would have to look into it.
|
| Ansible scripts require technical knowledge. Again running
| the command is easy but installing ansible isn't.
|
| How DigitalOcean's deploy button is really easy as is shown
| in my demo video -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbInyGtqLCs&t=1s. Note there
| is 10 minutes of my app demo inbetween starting the process
| and me using a deployed version. You can even try it out at
| https://github.com/BillaBear/billabear it's literally super
| easy. It's also silly easy to actually build. "DigitalOcean's
| app platform is so good it makes BillaBear looks good since
| the deployment is so easy" is literally what I've said to
| people.
| lovasoa wrote:
| When I come across this scenario, I often ponder whether it's
| part of the business strategy for those who offer open-source
| software for free alongside a paid hosted version. There seems
| to be a conflict of interest at play here: the more user-
| friendly the software becomes in terms of installation and
| operation, the less appealing the hosted version appears.
|
| I'm currently working on an open-source software project with a
| hosted version of my own (https://sql.ophir.dev). It's a
| website builder, and my aim is to turn the ease of deployment
| and operation into a competitive advantage, which is
| prominently highlighted on the homepage. However, I recognize
| that it might be overly idealistic to expect the same from
| others. My target audience mainly consists of individuals who
| will need to manage the software themselves. In contrast, in
| many other domains, the decision-makers selecting the software
| and the individuals responsible for its operation are not one
| and the same.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| What's the most important features in an accounting system in
| your opinion?
|
| Are they of a kind, or are there some killer features on
| expensive commercial tools that the free fare can't match?
| barryrandall wrote:
| The biggest barrier to adoption that all new entrants to this
| market must overcome is finding finance and accounting
| professionals willing to use their product. The second is
| finding banks, auditors, and investors willing to use
| statements from an accounting package they've never heard of.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Thanks. What do you mean by "finding banks, auditors, and
| investors willing to use statements from an accounting
| package they've never heard of." ?
|
| Is that a file compatibility issue. Are there not standard
| file formats for exchange of data in the financial
| industry?
|
| Don't people, as a last resort maybe, just send a csv, or
| print the ledgers out on paper?
| dboreham wrote:
| The standard file format is "Quick books backup".
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are a few different standards. The problem with the
| generic csv is that headers still need to be specified.
| Otherwise, the person doing the importing has to
| specify/confirm what each column means.
| dboreham wrote:
| Payroll.
| deepak_sozial wrote:
| We have been using wave apps for the last couple of years. Do you
| have a comparison page?
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Wave looks really nice, though it's a shame they only support
| US tax. For Australians the accounting package has to support
| "STP2" which is the governments API for reporting payroll and
| super, otherwise it's borderline illegal to use.
| hk__2 wrote:
| Previous threads (all created by the same OP):
|
| * May 29, 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36114095
|
| * May 29, 2023 (2): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118990
|
| * July 2, 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36566556
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(page generated 2023-09-25 23:00 UTC)