Ask HN: Resources for basic accounting for small SaaS type businesses

[This is my first post on HN; please excuse any faux pas]

I've been reading HN for a few months now and thoroughly enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit mixed with a zealous love for programming.

The "Launch an App Month" along with the articles from 21times.org are the most recent in a long list of resources I've been reading for answering a lot of questions I have had about having a go at starting my own software business.

I've read a slew of articles over marketing, presentations, investors, technologies, etc... but there is one area I've seen very little coverage of: basic accounting for startups and small SaaS business.

Given that HN is frequented by programmers, a number of whom run their own SaaS business, can anyone point me to a good resource for learning that might be written from the perspective of someone in our field?

Thanks!

(Yes, I realize I could use 'the Google' but my ignorance wouldn't provide a very good filter or measure of the value of what I found there)

1 comment

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zdw 15y ago ↗

If you're a CLI kind of person, and want serious control over everything involved in the accounting process, check this out:

https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki/

It's an open source CLI accounting program, which works on text files in a simple, easy to write/generate format. The original program is in C, but the file format is also supported with python (beancount) and haskell (hledger) implementations.

The documentation leads you through the basics of accounting, and is available here:

http://cloud.github.com/downloads/jwiegley/ledger/ledger.pdf