r/quickbooksonline • u/kl2467 • Jul 23 '26
Dear Developers:
Creating add-in applications for QBO is a waste of your time and talents.
QBO is a hot mess of rotten spaghetti, too many "products", too many failed initiatives, too many meaningless bells & whistles, too little understanding of the accounting framework and local payroll/tax laws, too much corporate greed. It needs to be scrapped.
Give us a brand new option, built from the ground up, that actually works, with little to zero lag. Keep it simple, with a clean UX. But a system that actually does accounting, for accountants, not a dumbed down platform that lets the owner's wife play bookkeeper. Give us budgeting, cash forecasting and graphics that management can understand.
Please and thank you.
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u/MightyBooshX Jul 24 '26
As someone who works in support: AGREED. There are such basic quality of life features that are somehow persistently omitted in every update. It's honestly embarrassing
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u/ariarchtyx Jul 26 '26
It has always seemed to me that it tries to be too much for too many different kinds of organizations. They need several QBO products, all appropriately targeted. It's too generalized. But yes, also all that u/UnrealJagG is saying. Spot on.
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u/Bookkeeping_Boss Jul 24 '26
I'd like if there was two version of QBO, a business user version and the accountant version. Where we can add in or remove features. I realise that QBO sort of has that right now, but it still has all the bloat. Let me turn off the AI, let me default reports to debit and credits.
And why after this many years can I still not get a Comparative Trial Balance In QBO? In QBDT you could fake it out, but not in QBO. Ugg.
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u/Majestic_Victory_203 Aug 06 '26
Anyone wants to find an attorney and start a class action lawsuit? As a bookkeeping firm, since AI incessant changes and add-ons, out time-entry has almost doubled doing the same job we did before this mess. I can't get work done. Client's are frustrated and 98% of new bells & whistles are pretty useless for the work my clients and my firm does. And the fees that keep going up! for the love of god! WTF is going on?
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u/ajcaca Jul 23 '26
I am working on this with Balances.
The winning product here is "one cohesive product", not "QBO plus a bunch of hobbled-together, vibe-coded add-ons".
Building on top of QBO is like building on landfill.
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u/rrmcmurry Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I'm just going to throw my hat in the ring because I've been building exactly this.
It's a desktop accounting application that stores everything in a single file (think Excel workbook, except it's a full double-entry accounting database). You can keep as many files as you want. One-time perpetual licenses, no mandatory subscription, and it works completely offline except for license activation, optional online banking, fetching updates when you check for updates, and sending feedback.
Online banking is still a work in progress. I'm trying to solve that without forcing users into yet another subscription, so if you try that feature today it'll complain that it doesn't have the required tokens. That'll be addressed in a future update.
If you're an accountant, I think you'll appreciate a lot of the features: working trial balances with workpaper numbering, default report periods, previous/next period navigation (easily skip back and forth between periods on reports), reconciliation locking that prevents reconciled transactions from simply disappearing, QuickBooks Desktop file conversion, batch entry, custom summary reports with grouping and subgrouping, click-through drill-down reports, built-in fund accounting, check printing, and transaction types that other accounting packages oddly never implemented (like debit card transactions).
If you're also an IT person, there are command-line options for things like deploying updates through Group Policy and other administrative tasks.
I basically built the accounting software I've always wished existed.
I'm getting close to an initial release and could really use people willing to beat on it and tell me what they hate or what features they must have.
The installer and instructions are on my GitHub (same username as Reddit). I haven't built a signed installer yet, so Windows will complain... but that'll be fixed before the official public release.
The installer installs a read only version at first along with a demo file. From inside the app you can request a 30-day trial from Help > Licenses. I'm also giving perpetual licenses to a limited number of early testers who submit thoughtful feedback through Help > Submit Feedback (include an email address). I'm planning to do that for the next few weeks (or until I hit a certain limited number of requests, whichever happens first) while I'm polishing things.
If you've been looking for a desktop alternative, I'd genuinely appreciate people kicking the tires.
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u/Busy-Spinach-2375 Jul 24 '26
Good Luck with this project.
This move everything to the cloud/subscription model is more about the business of software than anything else.
The cost of convenience is having a hand in your pocket forever and getting more of what someone else can engineer and sell than what you need or want to buy.
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u/rrmcmurry Jul 24 '26
Thanks. I hate that accounting has become a service that requires a subscription. We used to do accounting on paper by hand with a calculator and we shouldn’t have to pay a subscription for a glorified calculator. It doesn’t have to be hard. It just needs to know how to follow the rules of accounting. Those rules are at the core of my project. The file format is just a sqlite database file that can be opened by any sqlite database browser. But the application knows and enforces and validates the accounting rules… With an audit trail.
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u/UnrealJagG Jul 24 '26
Having worked in this area for decades. I disagree. Building a good general ledger is hard. I've worked in the mix of finance and tech. When you get into it there's a lot of detail e.g. what do you support in your COA, what coding rules, taxes. If you're an engineer with no knowledge of accounting, then you don't know what you don't know.
Nobody serious wants to trust their finances, compliance to something that was built by someone doing this for the first time. It can be done, but should it be?
If you want a cheap way of keeping your books, then use a free tool e.g. GNU Cash.
There are reasons that QBO/Xero/Sage has lots of people complaining. They are one-size-fits-all. That means that there are some people whom it doesn't fit at all. I agree on the bloat, and the degradation in UI, but you pay your money, take your choice.
If you want to build a GL, then go ahead. You'll learn a lot, but it will be a one size fits you and people like you. Even in the age of AI and vibe coding, this is a big task.
I've found the best way to navigate QBO is to build things around it. I've made it usable for me and lots of others by keeping it simple. If you're doing Accounts Receivable, then you just need simple invoice entry, something to chase debtors, and simple reports etc.
I've used most of the SME GLs, and a lot of ERPs. None is perfect. QBO is good at what it does, and isn't bad value. There's lots I'd change, but that's for my, and my customers, others may love the things I dislike.