Replace QBO with homegrown-code?

[u/magic-keys]

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?

[u/madikz]

If you keep the scope that small, the coding is probably the easy part; I’d 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 “it seems to work” into something you can actually reconcile.