Recent College Grad Looking For Feedback on QuickBooks App

coleman123 · Jan 28, 2023

Hey guys! My name's Cole, I'm a recent college grad, and I just built a QuickBooks app designed to help those in the construction industry save hours each week in managing their expenses by:

Automatically uploading and itemizing email receipts from any retailer (with precision accuracy) into your QuickBooks accounts
- No longer waste time hunting down receipts from your subs
Automatically remembering item costs for previously purchased items
- Enabling incredibly accurate project estimates
Automatically grouping receipts into projects, jobs, customers, etc.
Automatically linking the original receipt to the transaction in QuickBooks

As people in the construction industry, it would mean the world to me if you could let me know if you identify with the pain point and think these features could be useful to someone like yourself? If you guys don't think this could be helpful, then I truthfully don't want to waste time by continuing to work on this business.

Birken Vogt · Jan 28, 2023

I'm getting a bit tired of QB. They are trying to extract money from us every which way. I wonder if the time is right for a switch to a new ecosystem. Are any CPA firms accepting files from any other apps that you know of?

crane operator · Jan 28, 2023

Wife said quickbooks has really raised their prices and its now almost like a subscription, you can't just buy it and be done for a couple years. The problem is that everything is in quickbooks, and its so easy to look back to someone's job from years ago, and to reinput all of it would be a lot of work.

I have no idea if your 'add on' app would be any use to us, but it really doesn't sound like something we would use.

terex herder · Jan 28, 2023

Quikbooks is going to the cloud this spring, nothing on your home 'puter. Those of us with undependable internet will have to find something else.

suladas · Jan 28, 2023

I've recently considered moving to jobber, I only use QB for estimates/invoicing now, it's ok but nothing great, jobber has so many more features. It would be incredibly helpful to have a program that you only have to scan/take photo of receipts and they are totaled and itemized automatically though. It's such a pain every year to manually do all receipts.

CM1995 · Jan 28, 2023

Welcome to the Forums Cole.

We currently use QB and like the others my wife doesn't like it but it's what we have at the moment.

I can see your app being very helpful for small residential contractors doing more T&M type work. For our operation the app wouldn't help us much as our commercial jobs are 95% lump sum contracts with estimates and quantities on all materials before the contract is signed. If something changes it's handled with a change order detailing everything.

We don't buy large dollar amounts of materials outside of our vendor network and for what little we do purchase it's on an Amex card that gives us enough of a detailed breakdown to work for our needs.

Interesting concept. Best of luck!

Steve Frazier · Jan 28, 2023

I used Quickbooks when I was running my landscape business. Once I did the initial data input it pretty much ran itself. It wasn't long though before I got caught in their trap, after a couple years they would stop supporting the versio0n I had and when I ran into a glitch I'd have to buy a new version. That almost always required buying a new computer that could operate it.

I pretty much folded the business when the economy tanked but did keep a few profitable accounts close to home and continued to use Quickbooks. Then my hard drive went in my computer and I had to get a new one. I tried to upload the Quickbooks I had to it but it wouldn't work on the new computer, my version was 10 years old. Found out they had gone to cloud service with an annual fee and it just didn't pay for me to continue using it with so few accounts left. I'd love to find an alternative that's as convenient.

coleman123 · Jan 28, 2023

Wow this community is so helpful, thanks so much everyone for your valuable feedback and insight!

coleman123 · Jan 28, 2023

suladas said:
I've recently considered moving to jobber, I only use QB for estimates/invoicing now, it's ok but nothing great, jobber has so many more features. It would be incredibly helpful to have a program that you only have to scan/take photo of receipts and they are totaled and itemized automatically though. It's such a pain every year to manually do all receipts.

This is great to hear that you identify with this hassle. Better yet, with this app, you don't even have to take pictures of the receipt, they just instantly go into your quickbooks as soon as the transaction takes place. You can watch this 1 minute demo video to get a better idea of the app. If you're still interested, it would mean the world if you scheduled a short 15 minutes with me here where I could show you how to use it.

Thanks again for the insight!

Birken Vogt · Jan 29, 2023

Your video shows QB desktop. Others on here have said it is going away. Is this true?

coleman123 · Jan 29, 2023

Birken Vogt said:
Your video shows QB desktop. Others on here have said it is going away. Is this true?

They’ll be putting QuickBooks Desktop in maintenance mode in May of this year, however, you will still be able to stay on QuickBooks Desktop even after May with some specific Desktop plans. That said, the app I built is also compatible with QuickBooks Online.

If you’re interested in the app Birken, I would GREATLY appreciate it if you put a quick 15 minute meeting on the calendar to show you how to use the app. You can use this link: https://calendly.com/cole-stark9/15min

crane operator · Jan 29, 2023

Birken Vogt said:
Your video shows QB desktop. Others on here have said it is going away. Is this true?

We use quickbooks for our payroll, and if you don't go to the cloud version, you won't get all the updates for doing payroll. If you just use it for your billing, I think you could just run off the old version. At least that's what the big boss has told me.

I honestly know just enough about quickbooks to really screw things up and I can barely find out how much money we have/ or conversely how broke we are.

John C. · Jan 29, 2023

I'm small potatoes with a one man business using an old Mac computer with a QB version that is at least fifteen years old. I upgraded my field equipment, the phone and lap top, five years ago and found out then that QB no longer supported Mac and would have to do my books using their server. Not moving my customer information onto any outside server for any reason. The old stuff still works fine and when it stops working, I'll find something that will. I can run what I do off a data base I built in 1998 if I have to.

Instead of piggy backing on someone else's software, why not build something better on your own. You obviously know the concepts of business, computers and bookkeeping.

CM1995 · Jan 29, 2023

crane operator said:
We use quickbooks for our payroll, and if you don't go to the cloud version, you won't get all the updates for doing payroll. If you just use it for your billing, I think you could just run off the old version. At least that's what the big boss has told me.

I honestly know just enough about quickbooks to really screw things up and I can barely find out how much money we have/ or conversely how broke we are.

Crane op my big boss farmed out our payroll to our accountant several years ago and it's one of the best things we've done. Send hours in on Wed (work week is Wed thru Tue) and the guys have their money deposited in their accounts Friday morning. All taxes, health insurance, IRA contributions etc are automatically deducted and monies routed where they need to be. IIRC the accountant charges $60 a month for the service for 5 employees.

crane operator · Jan 29, 2023

A guy I talked to local here, farmed out his payroll and some other parts of his accounting, and his number per month had a zero on the end of your $60 figure.

I've also had guys working for me, that don't have a bank account, and they go cash their check every week. Makes direct deposit a no go.

But at $60/ month, it would save a lot of hassle on your side.

Birken Vogt · Jan 29, 2023

As soon as I had payroll I had someone doing it for me, never done it myself. We still do paper checks, they just send in the checks how they need to be printed and upload the info to QB. Whatever it costs it is worth it.

AzIron · Jan 29, 2023

Our accountant has a payroll service all we do is input the hours they take care of everything else including direct deposit I am fairly sure it's under a hundred a month

coleman123 · Jan 30, 2023

This community is so helpful, thanks again everyone for your feedback! Here is the link to my 1 minute demo video if any of you guys were curious to learn more about the app.

Legdoc · Jan 30, 2023

I have been using QB in my primary business over 25 years and 4 years at my liquor store. QB used to be a good reasonably priced accounting program. They continue to raise prices, try to get you to pay for support, lock you out... I have nothing to say about Intuit or QB. We are currently looking for a replacement.

Zewnten · Feb 1, 2023

I'm in the process of lining out my business and with the recent (few years really) changes QB has made they'd be my last choice. i know where I work now uses SAP for very similar purposes.

Recent College Grad Looking For Feedback on QuickBooks App

Would this be helpful?

Yes

No

Member

Charter Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Administrator

Founder

Member

Member

Charter Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Administrator

Senior Member

Charter Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member