A time of learning.
In this current time I have been out of work and looking for my next job. In the process of doing that I have spent a bit of time trying to figure out what I want to do next. In reality it is actually quite clear what that will be, but it's going to take some time to get it to work out. In an ideal world I would be building software, solving problems and supporting those around me with the tools that I build. Internally within a business this may look like building custom tools or this may look like me developing a product from the ground up and selling it.
So I thought about this for a bit...
What product has been getting quite a lot of flak from the market recently due to the issues with the people involved. Of course its Xero.
Now, given the nature of running a business it can be quite stressful and take quite a bit of time figuring out the numbers. Now if it was all automated this would be great right, in some peoples ideal world an accountant wouldn't need to be involved. But in reality it is better to get these accountants involved because legally speaking an AI agent or robot can not be held responsible for any action it takes upon them. So that leaves the question, what product needs to exist here Intergrated, modern, human focussed accounting built to work for the modern user
The Journey
- Back in the early 90s Dad was a big 4 accountant he worked at what was then Coopers(now PWC) where he was auditing Factories, Farmers, and many organisations around Waikato and the Auckland regions.
- He grinded through the years to become a chartered accountant and later on in his late 20s went on to do his Masters at Auckland University and got going from there
- In the early 1999 he started building a house, Then later on as it was progressing he decided to also jump on and build some software as well.
- He developed the software more and decided to go self employed with his brother who then in the early years had just achieved what was then known as a maths degree or an early version of what we would know now as Computer science.
early years of the software
- In the early days the software was running entirely locally on windows using the Harbour Compiler
- To this day it continues to use the same source code and still works just as well.
- It has a working Cashbook, Ledger, EInvoicing, Inventory management and more
- Compiled to C and ran Locally, Fast run time, Instant response, Storage Efficient
We built what we used exclusively, All of our clients used this toolset for 20 years running locally and it worked like magic in a lot of ways because of the possible customisation it was a lot better than the alternatives.
What I am building now is the core of the Original software The functionality is what is Important, modernising the tech stack and moving the system over to React and node.js, which run securely and efficiently. Using modern SQL database technology all integrated on a Postgres database.
The starting point
- Cashflow management
- Open Banking integrations
- Ledger
- First Release will be in Late January 2027