Wave accounting?

[Remy]

Has anyone tried the Wave accounting service? I did a little searching on them that came back positive and am giving it a test run.
http://waveaccounting.com/ is their main page. If it works out it seems like a nice solution for a small/home business, or even personal accounting. I've got the usual concerns with privacy, security and whether they'll be around long term but my digging around gave me enough confidence to at least try it out. I'm not gonna toss my paper records anytime soon though.

 

[patriqq]

I checked it out... it seems OK, but with any program like this, the bottleneck is data entry. Also, waiting for each webpage to refresh is annoying if the wife is on Netflix or whatever. After checking out Wave, Quickbooks, and AccountEdge, I wrote my own software (some javascripts and vbascript tied into Excel). The data-entry is automated (all receipts are saved as pdfs with filenames that indicate transaction type, date, vendor/customer, amount, etc - the javascript pulls these elements out of the file names and populates an excel file).

Sage is supposed to be the best out there, especially if you're keeping track of Costs of Goods Sold and Inventory the way the IRS wants us to, but it is expensive. Keep in mind that the majority of people using and reviewing these programs are consultants, professionals, realtors, etc who don't have inventory or possibly any 'costs' the way we do. Thus, many of these programs are very adept at calculating the proper expenses incurred from attending a business lunch. They are even pretty good for retailers who buy Product X and re-sell Product X. The programs are not so good for our type, who might buy a bunch of steel here, have it waterjet cut there, grind it in our shop, and then get it heat-treated somewhere. Sage has a manufacturers package that is over $500 that can do that.

 

[Remy]

Good to know. I definitely noticed that issue with how to properly track inventory costs for materials. All it can really tell me is my total outgoing and incoming, or break it down into categories. It can't really help calculate how much knife X cost me to make. If I need to know that for any particular knife I have to calculate by hand and usually just round to the nearest $5-10.

For now it's enough though. I've got it a bit more configured for my needs now and it's helpful. I still keep a spreadsheet for materials inventory and it would be nice to combine things, but it's also nice to not be paying anything for it.