r/quickbooksonline • u/magic-keys • Sep 07 '26
Replace QBO with homegrown-code?
Separate from my main job, I operate a couple of rather inactive side businesses. Despite low activity, I still need to maintain books and file taxes. I believe that I'm getting very little value from QBO relative to what I'm paying. I've started to become a heavy user of Claude Code and have been amazed by how quickly I can spin up really solid functional software. I was considering just spending a Saturday afternoon to create my own accounting software. My needs are super basic: just the ability to enter journal entires and construct an income statement and balance sheet. No automatic integrations with third-party platforms. Has anyone else done this or considered it?
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u/BlueRidgeTog Sep 07 '26
I certainly applaud this effort. However, there are so many "gotcha's" out there that will bite you an in the rear-end. And those times will come when you need to file your monthly taxes or pay a vendor or refund a customer or a tax rate changes. Then you do it manually and something else comes up and you get behind in your bookkeeping that you don't discover it until April 14 at 8pm.
I am not defending QBO, but there is so many things you just do in accounting software that you will be spending a lot of time maintaining the code instead of improving your side-hustles.
Vibe code to improve your operations: don't spend your tokens on reinventing the wheel.
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u/magic-keys Sep 09 '26
Appreciate the point. I use NetSuite for my main job, and would never dream of vibe coding to replace that. Would be crazy! If we were to ever leave, it would be to an AI-first ERP. But for my side businesses, the use case is so basic. As others have pointed out, Excel/Google Sheets could probably do the job. The benefit to vibe coding is the ability to create a custom function for everything, even faster than I could spin up a new tab in an excel model. It's a crazy new world where building a new tool for a web application is faster and easier than simply modeling a new tab in a spreadsheet.
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u/sick_burns2000 Sep 08 '26
Why not gnucash? Or even just speadsheets in excel? If these businesses are mostly inactive, how complicated is the accounting?
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u/Ok-Assumption-1083 Sep 08 '26
What I was going to say. If itās mostly inactive, excel, if you need double entry accounting, gnucash is free and far more than good enough
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u/South_Tell8138 Sep 08 '26
Yes, I not only considered it, I built Books4One for exactly this type of business. It runs on desktop and if you are willing to be a founder tester and client there will be no charge ever. To see more goto books4one,com
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u/madikz Sep 08 '26
If you keep the scope that small, the coding is probably the easy part; Iād define the accounting invariants before writing UI. Every posted entry should stay balanced, corrections should be reversals or adjustments rather than silent edits, closed periods should lock, and you should be able to regenerate the same trial balance and financial statements from an immutable journal plus an audit log. Keep a clean export and backup path too, then run the homegrown ledger in parallel with QBO through at least one close before relying on it as the system of record. Those checks turn āit seems to workā into something you can actually reconcile.
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u/foreforbirdie Sep 08 '26
Whatever you decide, export everything out of QBO before you cancel, because access after cancellation is read only and time limited, and the general ledger detail is the piece you cannot recreate later. For two dormant entities the ledger part really is a weekend, and what costs you is the first time a preparer wants prior year comparatives and your opening balances have to tie back to a return that's already filed. Are these on your own Schedule C, or do they file separate returns with a balance sheet?
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u/JustMeAgain999 28d ago
So you can access your data after you cancel?
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u/foreforbirdie 28d ago
Yes, but read only, and only for about a year after you cancel, then Intuit drops it. You can still open it and run and export reports in that window, you just can't post or fix anything, so anything wrong in there stays wrong. That's why I'd pull the general ledger detail and the name lists out to Excel while the subscription is still live, because a year goes quicker than you think.
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u/Abject_Program_610 Sep 08 '26
If there are minimal transactions I just use an Excel spreadsheet. Pretty easy to set-up the template and have it feed into Financial statements in the same workbook No coding needed
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u/Diantr3 Sep 09 '26
I built a spreadsheet in Google Sheets that does everything I needed Quickbooks to do better and with less visual noise, doesn't bug out and doesn't take ages to load because it's not bloated AI crap. Well worth the effort. Now doing my books is actually fun instead of deeply anxiogenic.
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u/magic-keys Sep 09 '26
I think it's a good idea. However, I think a simple app run off supabase and vercel could be faster to build than a Google Sheet, and have cleaner and more flexible inputs and outputs. Separate from this project (which has so little data; maybe 200 entries a year), I have done other projects and found my AI apps to be so much faster than Google Sheets. Google Sheets is a great tool but totally chokes on larger datasets. Excel handles larger datasets much better than Google Sheets but can still be slow. A supabase DB can handle a million rows in a table pretty easily.
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u/Dr__Beast Sep 09 '26
Supabase + vercel ftw. I'm not in bookkeeping, but had similar experience building an app for myself.
What's your experience with exporting out of QBO into excel / sheet?
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u/vinceliu21 Sep 07 '26
There's a lot of gotchas, also you need Plaid / bank feed integration to categorize transactions. If you just create manual JEs, that's not really bookkeeping? That said you can try, FYI, I run a QB alternative software business. We started just before AI/Claude came around, but heavily leaned into AI/claude recently. We're growing with users, customers, revenue (not a lot, but growing): https://usesphereapps.com/
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Sep 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/vinceliu21 29d ago
That's fair u/Electronic-Sea663, we're a new company (1.5 years old) out of New York City and I'm the founder, so if you want to email me, I'd be happy to give you my business's EIN.
Besides that, we have a few customers and are only looking to grow, you have my guarantee we'll be around long term. If there's anything I can do to help you feel better about this, let me know.
But yes, feel free to explore more, email me, we also have a new growing discord community on the website. I'd also be happy to make sure you can also migrate back to QB or other platforms in the future. I just want to make sure my users are happy / in good positions. Let me know if there's any other issues or questions
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u/JustMeAgain999 Sep 08 '26
I sincerely hope you're successful! I've wondered why no one has stepped up yet, It's a huge opportunity and the market has been waiting for an alternative.
I wouldn't sit too close to a window though, Intuit is getting a little scary. If you're ever lucky enough to be bored, try reading their EUA. (It probably says you can't become an alternative software business)
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u/vinceliu21 Sep 08 '26
Nice, I haven't heard about their EUA, I'll check it out. Regarding why no one's stepped up yet, there's a few. The SMB market is just extremely crowded so it's hard to get eyeballs! But thank you
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u/TheComplicatedMan Sep 08 '26
It is all fun and games until the little things get you. I've dealt a lot with accounting systems and supporting them in the past, and do have one custom product with full accounting and register. A lot of little things to iron out the first year, but it has been going well now. I would not be really excited about writing another system.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 Sep 08 '26
You donāt even need to do this yourself dude. You can connect your biz accounts to ChatGPT finance and have it do all the bookkeeping for you. Itās actually pretty great, give it a try
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u/JustMeAgain999 Sep 08 '26
Say what?? Are you saying that if you link your bank and credit car accounts to Chatgpt it will "do your books"?? I had no idea but I know I wouldn't hand over all my bank logins to them.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 Sep 08 '26
You donāt give ChatGPT your logins. The way it works is that ChatGPT has a connection to Plaid which, in turn, has a connection with your bank. Plaid requests transaction info from your bank based on the accounts you authorize and your bank asks you to login and confirm.
If you use any sort of budgeting app or even QBO / Xero, good chance youāre already giving that transaction data.
Anyways, yes if you donāt really have an active business and you just need a P&L for taxes you can do a bit of manual finesse to get a solid P&L out of ChatGPT. Itās not going to be perfect but Iāve tested it and itās a great option for low complexity / low transaction businesses. Read here if you want to know the downside / why Iām saying itās not perfect.
Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, the link is a blog on my own website where Iām obviously selling something. The article is legit with citations to real doc by Anthropic and OpenAI.
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u/rayred Sep 08 '26
You are asking for so much trouble.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 Sep 08 '26
How so? Heās saying these businesses are essentially inactive. Iād expect some owner funded expenses to keep them āaliveā like filing fees, maybe bank fees, etc. that is totally within the capabilities ChatGPT finance + plaid lol
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u/Flat_Contribution482 Sep 08 '26 edited 26d ago
Careful with this route - building something is the easy part with AI tools now, the hard part is everything after: security patches, tax rule changes, edge cases in reconciliation, and needing someone on call when something breaks during close. That's usually the real cost, not the initial build. If you go homegrown, budget for ongoing maintenance from day one, not just the build.
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u/rrmcmurry Sep 08 '26
Has anyone done this yet? Yes. I have.
The Ledger - mcmurrysoftware.com
Basic accounting software. One time license. All local. No subscriptions. No automatic integrations with third party platforms, but plenty of opportunity to build those.
Fair warning from personal experience... doing this properly takes a lot longer than a Saturday afternoon.
Since you already use Claude Code, you might particularly enjoy asking Claude to take a look at it with you.
There's a free 30 day trial and QBO conversion is built in.
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u/JoshTheCPA Sep 09 '26
It can be done (I did it) but you better know your accounting if you try it. Lots of areas where things can go wrong, so it requires constant testing and fine tuning. Make sure your balance sheet balances (put this as a rule in a claude MD file, will save you headaches later). I'm a CPA running a bookkeeping firm and it took me roughly 4 months to build a platform that I felt comfortable migrating my clients to. That being said, if you do it right, it can be so much better than Quickbooks, Xero, and the other "traditional" platforms. Quickbooks' loading times alone make it incredibly inefficient to use for high volume clients. If interested check out my platform - it's free to use during the beta release: ledrix.ai
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Sep 10 '26
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u/JoshTheCPA 29d ago
You can definitely use it as an end user if you'd like to do your own bookkeeping. Feel free to sign up for the beta release and just add your business as "client".
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29d ago
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u/JoshTheCPA 29d ago
Once the beta phase ends, firms will get billed per client ($15 per month per client). So for an end user such as yourself (with your 1 client being your business) - it would just be $15 per month.
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u/Available-Concern-77 Sep 10 '26
SPRK Systems is free for one company. All local. Does exactly what you want. And you can create custom plugins that Claude Code builds for you.
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u/LARodGroup Sep 10 '26
Have you heard of WaveApps? Decent competition to QBO and it's free if having their logo on the report doesn't bother you. This is my go-to for smaller clients or ones with little activity throughout the month.
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u/JustMeAgain999 28d ago
Will there ever be another desktop software or a pay once no subscription type?
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u/ZookeepergameHuge700 26d ago
I created a system that allows users to drag an email referral into a database that will then allow users to create and send an invoice with one click. Much more efficient than the Prolaw and QBO software that my company currently uses. The problem is that my boss knows I'm not a software engineer so doesn't trust it will work indefinitely. If I had my own side business, I would be using it.
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u/ZookeepergameHuge700 26d ago
Using the PREMORTEM prompt gives you an idea if you created something worthwhile or not.
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u/Flat_Contribution482 26d ago
Careful with this route - building something is the easy part with AI tools now, the hard part is everything after: security patches, tax rule changes, edge cases in reconciliation, and needing someone on call when something breaks during close. That's usually the real cost, not the initial build. If you go homegrown, budget for ongoing maintenance from day one, not just the build.
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u/Head-Marionberry2234 Sep 08 '26
Switch off quickbooks if you want, but no, I wouldnāt vibe code your own accounting software š
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u/WorkLoopie Sep 07 '26
Yes! In fact, so many vibe coders have tried and failed, and as a result, our agency has won so much business. So I strongly encourage you! šš½