[GNC] Looking for setup and/or bookkeeping help

[Brad Morrison]

Hi Bob/all,

That is an interesting question and I'm disappointed that no one has yet 
offered a professional bookkeeper that uses GnuCash, even if just for 
certain, interested clients. While I don't know what state you and your 
business are located in, I work in the North Bay Area office of a tax & 
wealth management firm (on the tax side) and while I use Lacerte 
(Intuit's tax professional software - 
https://proconnect.intuit.com/lacerte/) every workday, I do not use 
Quickbooks (Intuit's bookkeeping program - 
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/), although many other people in our firm 
do. I am pretty new to the accounting field, so the vast majority of my 
work is on relatively simple individual/1040 US tax returns and a few 
relatively simple fiduciary/1041 tax returns. While I do work on the 
occasional out of state or multi state tax returns, the vast majority of 
my work are California tax returns. I rarely touch partnership (1065) 
tax returns and have yet to work on C/S corp tax returns (1120, 1120S), 
although I have worked on 1040 tax returns that had K1s from 
1065/partnerships & 1041/fiduciary tax returns. I say all of that 
because I am not the right person to help you out.

I did find this section on the GnuCash Wiki, but it seems very old, it 
only lists 2 professionals, and I'm not sure if they still offer those 
GnuCash bookkeeping services - 
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Is_there_a_CPA_.28Certified_Public_Accountant.29_who_uses_GnuCash_in_my_area.3F

As much as I dislike Intuit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit) for a 
seemingly never ending supply of reasons, since we are having this 
conversation on an open source software mailing list, I will point out 
that Intuit is the largest software company 
(https://www.google.com/finance/quote/INTU:NASDAQ?window=1Y) that I know 
of that does not contribute at all to open source projects, Intuit is 
not even listed among the 275 top contributors here - 
https://opensourceindex.io/

At the same time, there are no open source software options for tax 
professionals in the USA to prepare & file federal tax returns. While 
Open Tax Solver (https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/) exists for 
individuals, due to how the IRS authorizes electronic filing providers 
(https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/efile-for-tax-professionals) OTS 
does not allow for e-filing. One must print out the tax forms after 
using the OTS program and mail them in.

 From 
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/e-help-desk-for-tax-professionals - 
"e-file Requirement for Tax Return Preparers: The law requires tax 
return preparers and firms who reasonably expect to file 11 or more 
covered returns in calendar year 2013 and thereafter, to e-file the 
returns they prepare and file. For 2013, covered returns are Forms 1040, 
1040-A, 1040-EZ, and 1041. If this requirement will cause an undue 
hardship, apply for a waiver by completing Form 8944, Preparer e-file 
Hardship Waiver Request. For more information, go to IRS.gov, keyword 
‘e-file requirement’."

That's enough details to highlight my point of the 'competitive moat' 
that exists for commercial financial/accounting software firms and how 
there are significant barriers to competition from open source 
alternatives in the US. And while bookkeeping software is far less 
complicated and far more commonly used than the professional tax 
software specific to US federal and state tax rules, it is very 
difficult to find any professional bookkeepers that are even familiar 
with tools like GnuCash, much less use them exclusively. If there are 
any other accounting professionals that are interested in changing this, 
by all means consider me an ally. But for now, I work for the firm that 
I do because I have bills to pay.

If even just 1 bookkeeping firm in the entire USA could handle remote 
clients like Bob using GnuCash exclusively, that to me would be a game 
changer for this software and the open source accounting community. That 
firm would likely have to hire an IT contractor, that IT contractor 
would then be called on to solve issues for both the firm and the 
software that the firm uses, and that is when major improvements start 
to happen. When skilled people are able to get paid to spend significant 
amounts of time on open source software that has both 
personal/individual and professional/business applications/uses is when 
improvements snowball and adoption grows.

Apologies for the preaching - good luck Bob,

Brad

On 3/1/23 10:28, Bob Treumann wrote:
> Are there any accountants or bookkeepers who specialize in gnucash?
> Or other power users who would help me out?    I would expect to pay.
>
> I have my small business ( S-Corp ) gnucash account set up in a cloud
> database so the person could work remotely, either to get me started or to
> do the bookkeeping and taxes including payroll taxes.
>
> Bob Treumann
>
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