<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>skissane</author><text>&amp;gt; We live in a world where Intuit has fought VERY hard to make damn sure no one can use anything but Quickbooks&lt;p&gt;It depends on geography. According to Codat&amp;#x27;s 2021 report [0] on SME accounting market share:&lt;p&gt;- In the US, QuickBooks is the clear market leader, with 75.7% combined market share across their three main offerings (QB Online, QB SE and QB Desktop). FreshBooks is in second place at 4.5%, and Wave and Xero equal third at 3.5% each&lt;p&gt;- In the UK, Sage is the market leader, with a combined market share of 28.8% across their three main UK products (Sage 50&amp;#x2F;50 Cloud, Sage Accounting, and Sage 200cloud); QuickBooks combined market share (Online+Desktop+SE) is closely behind, in second place at 26.2%; and Xero is in third place at 24%&lt;p&gt;- In Australia + New Zealand, Xero is in first place at 49.4% market share, MYOB in second place at 33.8%, QuickBooks comes third at 11.2%&lt;p&gt;- In Canada, QuickBooks is the clear market leader with a combined market share of 68.2%; FreshBooks is in second place at 6.9%; while Sage at 6.4% is in third place. Kashoo comes fourth at 4.3%, and Wave, Xero and Logiciel Actiff are equal fifth at 3.8% each.&lt;p&gt;So, it is really only in North America that &amp;quot;no one can use anything but Quickbooks&amp;quot; is remotely true – and even there, close to 25% of US SMEs and over 30% of Canadian SMEs are successfully using &amp;quot;something other than Quickbooks&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But I agree it is likely true, that for the vast majority of US small-to-medium businesses, GNUCash is not a realistic alternative to Quickbooks. But what about FreshBooks or Wave or Xero? Or the dozen other commercial accounting software vendors with some presence in the US market?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.codat.io&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;Codat_Global_Accounting_Guide_2021.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.codat.io&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;Codat_Global...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>VonGuard</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone&amp;#x27;s time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non-profits and startups since the early 2000&amp;#x27;s. It&amp;#x27;s not a fight ANYONE should ever have. I USED TO BE THE &amp;quot;WE MUST USE GNUCASH&amp;quot; GUY!&lt;p&gt;Now, in a perfect world, yes, GNUCash and literally ANYTHING other than Quickbooks would be an option for small business accounting. But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world where Intuit has fought VERY hard to make damn sure no one can use anything but Quickbooks, and their iron fist is clad in very specific APIs and file formats.&lt;p&gt;If you do not use Quickbooks:&lt;p&gt;* Your bank will hate you.&lt;p&gt;* Your investors will hate you.&lt;p&gt;* Your payroll system won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Your tax systems won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Your accountant won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Grants are even off the table in some cases.&lt;p&gt;* Some places won&amp;#x27;t audit without Quickbooks.&lt;p&gt;I constantly run into well intentioned open source zealots who demand the use of GNUCash. This is terrible. Don&amp;#x27;t be that person.&lt;p&gt;The world has chosen QuickBooks. This choice was made under duress and with corrupt power brokering. But the decision has been made. Maybe there are some OK SaaS options, but they only exist as long as Intuit allows them to exist. Anything competing with Quickbooks is going to be bought and killed by Intuit, so you&amp;#x27;re going into a dead-end alley. I know that leaves GNUCash on the table, but...&lt;p&gt;Please, do not make the mistake my many non-profits and businesses have repeatedly made when I was not paying enough attention to scream bloody murder about it. I turn my back for one minute, and engineers are installing GNUCash on the accountant&amp;#x27;s Mac Laptop.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s 100% always come back to bite us in the ass, as we&amp;#x27;ve had to change platforms on-demand in order to meet a funding deadline, a bank requirement, a loan ask, or a grant application. And it&amp;#x27;s ALWAYS the accountant in the org that gets saddled with the 60+ hour work weeks it takes to redo everything. If I was an acocuntant, I&amp;#x27;d quit if told to use GNUCash, but most of them kinda don&amp;#x27;t know any better because, hey, why not try some thing the techies are all excited about!&lt;p&gt;GNUCash is a wonderful project. I wish we could all use it. But we cannot. Not for real business. And honestly, this is only for contrived, arbitrary reasons. But these reasons exist. The world is 100% built to prevent people from not using Quickbooks at every turn, and you only harm yourself by demanding open source software for accounting. As I said to the director of my most recent non-profit: &amp;quot;You would not tolerate the accountant coming in here and demanding you use NetBeans. Please, give them the same courtesy you&amp;#x27;d expect them to give you on tool choice.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>JaggerFoo</author><text>I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don&amp;#x27;t use QuickBooks as VC&amp;#x27;s recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don&amp;#x27;t need VC money or a CPA.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable?&lt;p&gt;I used to be a technical&amp;#x2F;functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so I dealt with very complex schemas that interlinked with each other especially in the sub-ledgers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve always toyed with the idea of adding Revenue Recognition functionality to GnuCash but am too busy to do so. Perhaps after seeing the schema in Sqlite I can take a shot at it.&lt;p&gt;Cheers</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>GnuCash 5.9</title><url>https://www.gnucash.org/news.phtml</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>elric</author><text>&amp;gt; Your bank will hate you&lt;p&gt;Why? Surely all US banks use open, standardized data formats to export financial statements and to execute transactions in bulk? Or are you thinking of another reason?&lt;p&gt;US banking is a shitshow which is decades European banking, addressing that would benefit everyone.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your investors will hate you&lt;p&gt;Why? Surely your investors are interested in accurate accounting? Can gnucash not generate some kind of report they need? If so, that should be a trivial fix.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Some places won&amp;#x27;t audit without Quickbook&lt;p&gt;That is an impressive shitshow of a situation.</text><parent_chain><item><author>VonGuard</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone&amp;#x27;s time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non-profits and startups since the early 2000&amp;#x27;s. It&amp;#x27;s not a fight ANYONE should ever have. I USED TO BE THE &amp;quot;WE MUST USE GNUCASH&amp;quot; GUY!&lt;p&gt;Now, in a perfect world, yes, GNUCash and literally ANYTHING other than Quickbooks would be an option for small business accounting. But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world where Intuit has fought VERY hard to make damn sure no one can use anything but Quickbooks, and their iron fist is clad in very specific APIs and file formats.&lt;p&gt;If you do not use Quickbooks:&lt;p&gt;* Your bank will hate you.&lt;p&gt;* Your investors will hate you.&lt;p&gt;* Your payroll system won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Your tax systems won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Your accountant won&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;* Grants are even off the table in some cases.&lt;p&gt;* Some places won&amp;#x27;t audit without Quickbooks.&lt;p&gt;I constantly run into well intentioned open source zealots who demand the use of GNUCash. This is terrible. Don&amp;#x27;t be that person.&lt;p&gt;The world has chosen QuickBooks. This choice was made under duress and with corrupt power brokering. But the decision has been made. Maybe there are some OK SaaS options, but they only exist as long as Intuit allows them to exist. Anything competing with Quickbooks is going to be bought and killed by Intuit, so you&amp;#x27;re going into a dead-end alley. I know that leaves GNUCash on the table, but...&lt;p&gt;Please, do not make the mistake my many non-profits and businesses have repeatedly made when I was not paying enough attention to scream bloody murder about it. I turn my back for one minute, and engineers are installing GNUCash on the accountant&amp;#x27;s Mac Laptop.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s 100% always come back to bite us in the ass, as we&amp;#x27;ve had to change platforms on-demand in order to meet a funding deadline, a bank requirement, a loan ask, or a grant application. And it&amp;#x27;s ALWAYS the accountant in the org that gets saddled with the 60+ hour work weeks it takes to redo everything. If I was an acocuntant, I&amp;#x27;d quit if told to use GNUCash, but most of them kinda don&amp;#x27;t know any better because, hey, why not try some thing the techies are all excited about!&lt;p&gt;GNUCash is a wonderful project. I wish we could all use it. But we cannot. Not for real business. And honestly, this is only for contrived, arbitrary reasons. But these reasons exist. The world is 100% built to prevent people from not using Quickbooks at every turn, and you only harm yourself by demanding open source software for accounting. As I said to the director of my most recent non-profit: &amp;quot;You would not tolerate the accountant coming in here and demanding you use NetBeans. Please, give them the same courtesy you&amp;#x27;d expect them to give you on tool choice.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>JaggerFoo</author><text>I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don&amp;#x27;t use QuickBooks as VC&amp;#x27;s recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don&amp;#x27;t need VC money or a CPA.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable?&lt;p&gt;I used to be a technical&amp;#x2F;functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so I dealt with very complex schemas that interlinked with each other especially in the sub-ledgers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve always toyed with the idea of adding Revenue Recognition functionality to GnuCash but am too busy to do so. Perhaps after seeing the schema in Sqlite I can take a shot at it.&lt;p&gt;Cheers</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>GnuCash 5.9</title><url>https://www.gnucash.org/news.phtml</url></story>