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
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
Virus-free.www.avast.com
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
