[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Modernbanc (YC W20) - Modern and fast acc...
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Launch HN: Modernbanc (YC W20) - Modern and fast accounting
software
Hey HN! We're the team behind Modernbanc (https://modernbanc.com).
Today we're introducing our modern accounting software designed for
startups and small businesses. Here's a demo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLkJ-6liTNU If you're familiar
with the issue tracker Linear, think of it as Linear for accounting
software. It is fast, works offline, and saves you time with
automated bookkeeping, accounting and invoicing. This is our third
pivot. Previously, we built infrastructure like a ledger API and
payments vault to help companies create fintech products. For this
idea, our motivation came from two completely opposite experiences:
using Linear and using Quickbooks. The difference in quality
between the two products was shocking, and despite there being
dozens of accounting tools, none come even close to the quality of
Linear, Notion, or Figma. With Linear, I've heard stories of
engineers threatening to quit if their company switches to another
tool! With Quickbooks it takes me so long to get to the right page
that sometimes I forget why I opened it. This was baffling to us
because accounting is the core system of every business--it tells
you what you have, what you made, and whether you'll still be
around in 12 months. To solve this, we took a Linear-like
approach, focusing on speed and quality from day one. For example,
we built our own in-house real-time sync engine to ensure it's
lightning fast, works offline, and keeps your business finances at
your fingertips. Modernbanc is still early and doesn't have every
feature yet, but we believe we've built a long-term foundation for
the best accounting software in the world. It even includes a
built-in spreadsheet so you're never limited in reporting.
Although early, the software is already useful and helps founders:
Automate bookkeeping effortlessly. Transaction rules and AI smart
actions handle the work for you. Get answers to any question,
including runway, burn, and custom budgets, all in one place;
Create and manage invoices. Our AI will auto-match incoming
payments to them; Be tax-ready with all the data available for
seamless tax filing. And if you don't have an accountant, we'll
find you one! We'll have more releases in the coming weeks
including receipts matching, payroll integrations and AI-powered
report generation. We've just launched (mainly focusing on smaller
US-based startups) and would love your feedback! Please give it a
go at https://modernbanc.com (you'll see a demo workspace once you
sign-up). We'd love your feedback! If you've ever been frustrated
by accounting software, what has been the worst part? What features
are missing? Have you ever had to rely on a spreadsheet because
your accounting tool could not do what you needed? We are still
early, so your input will help shape what we build next. If you
have thoughts, frustrations, or ideas, we would love to hear them!
Author : gregorygev
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-03-19 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
| dzonga wrote:
| this is pretty nice. probably just for US market for now given
| the real time integration with bank accounts - that's a killer
| feature.
| gregorygev wrote:
| thank you! Yes, to provide the kind of experience we want for
| now we have to focus on smaller and only US-based companies.
| Once we nail that we can go up company size and wider in
| geographies :)
| codegeek wrote:
| So are you a competitor to https://tryfondo.com , another YC
| company ?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Nope, we work with accounting firms like Fondo!
| aurumque wrote:
| Watching QuickBooks increase in price while decreasing in quality
| year by year, I keep wondering when the market will finally start
| to break. I hope this is your break, good luck! I think
| "QuickBooks, without the popup ads" is already a good enough
| pitch to me.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Appreciate it! We love to hear this! I've been hearing a lot
| about QBO popup ads recently
| dwiner wrote:
| This looks awesome. The craft in the product really shows --
| congrats on the launch!
| gregorygev wrote:
| thank you - not always easy to make a business case for craft,
| but I personally think it shows care about the product and sets
| customer's expectations for your future features.
| mushufasa wrote:
| Cool!
|
| I've looked into accounting software for our startup in the past.
| Xero, Quickbooks, and simply hiring an accounting firm.
|
| We ended up hiring an accounting firm for full service so I can
| totally not focus on this at all, and we don't have to have an
| operations staff member dealing with bookkeeping.
|
| That said, I feel like there should be a solution that is totally
| automated, that can just sync with our bank account and handle
| everything. The full service accountants aren't perfect, the
| interface is just phone calls and emails. The bookkeeping itself
| doesn't seem like too much human work for them; they mostly just
| load things into quickbooks anyways and send us a report. it's
| mostly the tax filings where they come in handy. That and on the
| off chance we need audited financials for diligence, we need an
| accredited third party firm.
|
| Bookkeeping. It's something I'm perfectly capable of doing, but
| it would be a mistake for me to be spending my time and energy on
| this; myself and our staff should be focused on unique things
| that advance our core product and business.
|
| On your pricing page you say 'growth: request a quote." Solutions
| like pilot are transparent about their pricing but it's actually
| no better than the more traditional accounting firm we chose. I
| realize it's early, but it would be important for me to be able
| to estimate the pricing before I invest any time or effort to try
| this out -- even for a free trial.
| gregorygev wrote:
| Hey - I agree with your bookkeeping + tax filing points!
| Regarding the "Request quote" button - I hear you! Right now
| the product isn't positioned to serve mid/larger businesses so
| we basically have to make a case to divert/invest our
| engineering time into making the product work well for those
| companies.
| sahaskatta wrote:
| Hi folks. Congrats on this launch. As someone who's used
| Quickbooks for years, there's definitely an opportunity to build
| something that's a better experience. We're hearing about other
| new platforms like Rillet emerge in the market too. How do you
| folks think about their approach vs. yours?
| gregorygev wrote:
| hey, thank you - for sure! Rillet looks interesting, they
| appear to focus on SaaS vertical for mid-market companies (more
| like targeting Netsuite's customer segments). We on the other
| hand focus on a simpler setup where small business owners and
| startup founders manage most of their business finances
| themselves.
| srameshc wrote:
| Congrats on the launch, something I want to try. On your website
| I see $50 per month for revenue less than $50,000. And there is
| start for free.
|
| Is there is a free plan or is it just a trial for certain number
| of days ?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| It's a trial for 14 days but if you need more time just send us
| a message and we'll figure something out
| conductr wrote:
| Trying to be constructive here but also This is just a common
| gripe of mine regarding insanely short trial periods for
| important/key software. What exactly do you expect a user to
| accomplish in 14 days that would leave them wanting to start
| paying you? An accounting period is typically a month,
| minimally. I stumbled on your post and wasn't seeking it out,
| so how I have to find time over next 2 weeks to see if I'm
| interested, etc. The first 14 days are just work for me, no
| value, just integrating data/configuring things/etc and I
| have not got any value out yet.
|
| Anyway, I know I don't have time and I know 14 days isn't
| really even enough time to test drive it anyways. So, it is a
| trial period that really just pushes me away from signing up.
| Had I signed up and had unlimited time to do all my
| setup/config/integration works, which I'm in no hurry so may
| take a few months (of mostly inactivity), then I may close my
| books in tandem with my current system a couple times and you
| should reach out to bill me once I've closed 2-3 acccounting
| periods. That would give you a great opportunity to get
| feedback from me on what I like or dislike having gone
| through a couple month end reps and sell me on making this my
| core accounting product. But, since you turned me off
| initially with the 14 day free trial thing neither of us will
| ever know.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| That's a good point! Happy to offer extended trial. Email
| me (daniel(at)modernbanc(dot)com) and we'll get something
| set up for you (if you're interested).
| niteshpant wrote:
| very curious - why did it take you 5 years to launch post YC? (It
| says W20 batch)
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Hey! We've pivoted a few times now and prior to this our
| product was enterprise focused so no reason to post on HN.
| gregorygev wrote:
| this is our 3rd pivot :) we've launched other products before
| such as Ledger API processing over $100m in txn volume a month
| and a PCI vault for fintechs with 1m+ users. However we took a
| hard decision to pivot again as we didn't feel like we'd
| achieve the impact we wanted in those markets.
| gytisgreitai wrote:
| Which ledger api is that and which PCI vault?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Both under the Modernbanc umbrella, vault is still publicly
| visible: https://modernbanc.com/vault
| aquir wrote:
| This is too basic...something like Business Central offers much-
| much more for a bit higher price
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Hey thanks for the feedback! What features are you looking for
| that Business Central offers?
| rexreed wrote:
| I migrated from Quickbooks to Manager.io and haven't looked back.
| It keeps getting better and stronger, and is desktop based (free)
| with a cloud-based version as well (paid) and well supported:
| https://www.manager.io/
| anteloper wrote:
| Honestly so excited to see this type of software move to the
| browser in general. I use Puzzle.io and love it
| singhrac wrote:
| Do you have a roadmap? I'm interested (love Linear, hate
| Quickbooks/Xero, looking for something better, finances are not
| that complicated) but I want to know what is planned and what is
| supported now.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Great question, we don't have an official roadmap but over the
| next few months we'll likely ship: magic inbox (auto linking
| receipts/invoices/etc... to transactions, payroll/hr
| integrations, e-commerce integrations). We're also focusing
| heavily on the AI functionality (getting it to do much more
| than just bookkeeping and generating reports). The roadmap is
| heavily customer influenced, are there any critical features
| you're looking for?
| chrisvalleybay wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! Just a question; what library are
| you using for the spreadsheet? Looks great!
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Thanks I'll pass that along to JT (engineer behind the
| spreadsheet)! We're using https://pixijs.com/
| s0rta wrote:
| Hey yeah (i'm JT) we built it from the ground up using Pixi. We
| went that route because so many of the existing libraries were
| limited in their extensibility, stuff like our model
| visualizations, inline ai, and customizing the formula lang to
| handle things like dot notation weren't possible. It's got a
| long way to go but I'm proud of how far the team has taken it.
| ketamine wrote:
| How do track errors with the AI? Is it up to me as a user to flag
| them or do you have a review process or have different models
| confirm the same outcome?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Good question, what would be best for you?
|
| Right now if you suspect an error in AI response you can flag
| it/submit as feedback. For anything that AI does without your
| input (bookkeeping) we associate a confidence with it and when
| below that threshold we get a human in the loop.
|
| We know that trusting AI with financial info is hard which is
| partially why we have the sheet (so that the AI can backup it's
| claims).
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > It even includes a built-in spreadsheet so you're never limited
| in reporting.
|
| That may be your next pivot, if you are not careful, or maybe if
| you are.
|
| I did two semesters in college interning on an application like
| this which did not survive, and one of the things that kept
| coming up in comparables was that the biggest competition was
| _not_ Quickbooks, the biggest competition for small /medium sized
| business accounting has always been Excel.
|
| The product I worked on thought it could succeed with deep Excel
| integration, both imports and reporting, and possibly even being
| installed right next to Excel out of the same box. In the end,
| Excel won and the product was axed, because of course Excel won
| (even despite the product working to diversify its revenue to
| moat its budget in interesting ways).
| danielvanacker wrote:
| That's a great point and was actually what led to the pivot to
| accounting software. We originally tried to make this just a
| reporting tool (aggregate financial sources, think equals.com)
| but came to the same realisation that it was hard to get people
| to switch from Excel. In this product the sheet is not the
| product, just a feature
| epistasis wrote:
| As somebody who has been using QuickBooks begrudgingly for the
| last year, this seems very interesting!
|
| However, what is Linear? It's impossible to search for what it
| might be because it's a common word that I search for in other
| contexts extensively.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| https://linear.app/
| meekaaku wrote:
| Cant trial without credit card details?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| There is a demo environment you can view once you've signed up,
| no credit card needed! To trial with your own bank details you
| need to input a card
| meekaaku wrote:
| sorry I couldnt find it. It takes me to stripe payment page.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| https://ui.modernbanc.com/modernbanc_demo
| curun1r wrote:
| A number of years ago, the company I worked for got acquired by
| Intuit and I ended up in a lot of meetings with the people in
| charge of Quickbooks. And I can tell you that you're not looking
| at Quickbooks the way they are.
|
| One of the key takeaways that I had was that Intuit viewed
| accounting as a three-way market where the professional
| accountants were the most important factor when it came to the
| product design. Customers generally don't care what software gets
| used and will pick whatever their accountant recommends. As such,
| only certain workflows prioritized ease of use and being
| intuitive. Business owners want to go in and see reports on how
| their business is doing, but when it comes to actually doing the
| books, they don't care. And accountants see the unintuitive parts
| of Quickbooks as a moat. They've put so much time and effort into
| learning to use such a poor UI, that they see a lot of their
| value in skillfully navigating that "bad" UI. There's a ton of
| hidden tricks that have evolved over the years and get passed
| from accountant to accountant and they'll scream bloody murder if
| Intuit tries to change them. It was funny to hear how much effort
| was being put into replicating weird interaction patterns from
| Quickbooks Desktop when they were creating Quickbooks Online and
| trying to migrate customers over.
|
| My advice to you is to try to find professional accountants who
| will let you observe them using Quickbooks or Xero. I can almost
| guarantee that they're using those products very differently from
| the way you do. And don't assume that just because Quickbooks UI
| sucks, making a better UI will make you successful. Having worked
| with them, the people in charge of Quickbooks Online are very
| talented and plenty capable of making a more intuitive UI. The
| choice not to is intentional and based on a lot of history and
| strong relationships with their professional accountant
| community. There will always be some small business owners who
| try to go it alone, and they really do need more intuitive
| accounting solutions. In general, I thought Wave was pretty good
| at targeting that segment the last time I looked at it. But the
| money there is tiny. And if you want to be hugely successful, you
| have to understand accountants and why they choose Quickbooks.
| ilikebits wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! I think you might have a typo in
| your screenshots, where "liabilites" should be spelled
| "liabilities".
| gregorygev wrote:
| good catch - will address that!
| vira28 wrote:
| How should I think about banc wrt digits?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| From an end-goal perspective (making accounting simple for
| small business owners/founders) pretty similar.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I looked into accounting software. This posting set my mind:
|
| Shameless C&P:
|
| If you do not use Quickbooks:
|
| * Your bank will hate you.
|
| * Your investors will hate you.
|
| * Your payroll system won't work.
|
| * Your tax systems won't work.
|
| * Your accountant won't work.
|
| * Grants are even off the table in some cases.
|
| * Some places won't audit without Quickbooks.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Do you have a link for the source?
| Beijinger wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41699730
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I don't think this is necessarily true in all countries. Here
| in the UK I see a lot of people using Xero & Sage, and micro
| businesses using Freeagent.
| Beijinger wrote:
| If you do not use [Major Accounting Software in your
| country]:
|
| * Your bank will hate you.
|
| * Your investors will hate you.
|
| * Your payroll system won't work.
|
| * Your tax systems won't work.
|
| * Your accountant won't work.
|
| * Grants are even off the table in some cases.
|
| * Some places won't audit without Quickbooks.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Wish this had a personal plan - looks like it could be
| interesting for myself.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Send me an email! daniel(at)modernbanc(dot)com
| LoganDark wrote:
| Sent!
| internet101010 wrote:
| Looks nice. I am in finance and have developed reporting/querying
| tools for accounting teams. The most important thing is catering
| to Excel. That's just the way it is. What I mention below might
| already exist and if it does that's great, you're on the right
| track.
|
| 1. The ability to input a list of cost centers/accounts and
| export all journal entries to Excel is a requirement
|
| 2. An Excel add-in is a better selling point than the built-in
| spreadsheet feature.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| 1 is supported 2 it's a fair point, I think something for us to
| keep in the back of our mind as we grow.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| 2 isn't a "fair point". It's... basically just correct. With
| respect, you just don't want to hear it.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Fair point, Excel is the standard, and we're not trying to
| replace it. But an embedded sheet lets us do things that an
| add-in just can't, like asking AI a question and having it
| generate a full sheet with supporting data instantly. The
| experience won't be the same if you have to open that sheet
| in excel instead of seeing it embedded in the app.
|
| We think that's a powerful complement to Excel, not a
| replacement. And of course, exporting to Excel/Google
| Sheets is always an option.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I think you can do that in an excel spreadsheet.
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| You can play Doom in an Excel spreadsheet.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| You can probably have an AI agent using a model running
| in excel playing doom in excel.
| tntpreneur wrote:
| Out of context: I like it when "Linear" references are used. When
| they become so well known?
| gregorygev wrote:
| about a year now I'd say - while their design kicks ass I think
| it's the speed and thoughtfulness of the product that makes it
| stand out.
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| Wow, nice start. Integrated spreadsheets are a killer feature. Do
| any other accounting systems offer that? I think MS Dynamics
| does.
| s0rta wrote:
| Appreciate it, yeah to our knowledge Dynamics is the only one,
| they've got the 'we're Microsoft' advantage in that regard, but
| we're proud of our sheet and hope to grow it into something
| that's more learnable/usable/helpful than excel itself
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| I believe client accounting firms, and probably companies
| themselves, would appreciate standardized accounting
| workpapers such as a loan amortization schedule, salary
| accrual schedule (to accrue salaries daily based on
| historical rates), depreciation schedule, and more. If you
| think of categorizing transactions as not only putting them
| in their final resting place (an account) but also as tagging
| them with special attributes (e.g. the attribute of needing
| to be accounted for in an aforementioned schedule), you'll
| have a killer innovation IMO. Many will tell you the dream of
| standardization is unrealistic but accounting methods are
| finite and a majority are well defined. You don't have to
| cover all use cases to win the hearts and minds of most who
| will see the value in prebuilt, integrated worksheets. Just
| an opinion from a client accounting manager who loves tools
| and applied theory.
| p2hari wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. As a startup in Europe would love to see
| this expanding. There are nice open banking api's.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Awesome . Congratulations on the launch. Would you say Modernbanc
| is more personal finance focused or geared toward small business?
| Does it support federal quarterly tax estimates for a business?
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Thanks! We're focused on small businesses/startups. Out of the
| box no it doesn't support automatically calculating federal
| quarterly tax estimates. You could have a live sheet with a
| formula for this that updates as your income changes though
| nodesocket wrote:
| Ok, thanks. Handling calculation and payment of quarterly
| federal taxes is a big deal and reason a lot of small
| businesses use Quick Books Self Employed. Perhaps look into
| it, I know I would consider switching.
| danielvanacker wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, I'll definitely look into this!
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Just a heads up in case you were thinking of selling into the
| same demo as Linear:
|
| I pay a small amount for outsourced accounting and never need to
| touch quickbooks. I think this is pretty standard for VC backed
| startups. The accountant sends us reports in Excel with
| everything I need to know.
|
| Also, devs really appreciate the craft of Linear. Accountant /
| CFO is a lot less likely to care. They'd probably rather use
| something they already know then something that is 10x better on
| UX.
| s0rta wrote:
| This is something we've been thinking about and in our
| conversations there are many SME/Founders that want to be more
| hands on in the day to day of their finances, being able to
| generate reports instantly instead of playing phone tag.
|
| I don't know if it's the case that Accountant's or CFOs
| wouldn't care about a 10x user experience improvement, our bet
| is that the majority of folks are looking for a better UX, devs
| just know that they could build it if they really wanted to.
| One thing we're focused on is the learnability of the tool,
| building a system that allows folks to reach a level of
| knowledge to feel comfortable quickly, and we're trying to pair
| that with flexibility, so people feel empowered to build the
| systems/flows that feel the more viable for them and their
| businesses/accounting practice.
| markhalonen wrote:
| Here's a cool writeup from PC Mag 1995 about accounting
| softwares:
| https://books.google.com/books?id=yurvRCerf_UC&pg=PA273#v=on...
|
| Not much has changed!
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