webrobert's avatar

Database for Financial Accounting?

I am building a web app to analyze businesses we are looking to purchase, and then for the subsequent management after we own the business.

  1. for purchases: I want to import historical financials, like income statement/P&L. Then use those historical to compare year to year, and also create pro-forma Income statements from those historical, and other financial reports with cute charts, etc.
  2. for ownership: I want to be able to run models against the current Income statements which I imagine I'll just import from the accountant/bookkeeper.

I haven't built anything financials related. I read an article about databases for financial accounting which is a full on Double entry accounting method based on the accounting equation: ASSETS = LIABILITIES + EQUITY + REVENUES - EXPENSES

I can't imagine ever wanting to store every transaction for a business.

  • Has anyone built something like this? Trying to avoid tripping on my feet.
  • Obviously this a bit different than summing a period from the ledger, or is it?
  • Any tips? Or point me in the right direction for how best to store the financial data to analyze?

I can't remember who at the moment, but doesn't one our Pillars runs/ran financials for their day job?

Thanks Devs.

$robert = 'foo'; // what, we have to captcha code now?

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4 replies
jlrdw's avatar

At the trucking company I worked at (semi retired now), every year was closed out. So data was archived. Check legalities where you live as to how long old transactions have to be available.

You setup a system that works for you as to the best way to carry forward receivables.

We just archived all paid and carried forward in a new year any not paid. Ditto for payables.

For accounting, see if there's a package that you can easily import certain data. We did our own custom accounting.

is a full on Double entry accounting

That should be seamless, handled in the background.

I have used Peachtree in the past (way way past). But see if Quickbooks has a trial, and play with it some and you will see how double entry is seamless.

There is also GNUcash. Only one I ever used is peachtree in the 1990's

Much of what you need can be done in a good accounting program.

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webrobert's avatar

@jlrdw,

I thought of you when I originally posted this.

So far, for item 2 I have the accounting software, we chose waveapp because they also handle the taxes, and bookkeeping. They are a good mid term solution for us. I have written an interface to upload the dailys from each store. Each store manager uploads them (in excel format) to a dropbox folder. This handles everything for that particular store as we own it. But it doesn't allow for any reporting against the historical data before we owned the store.

I'm not concerned about legality. We will follow the standards for generally bookkeeping and taxes, etc. That will be handled by waveapp.

For item 1, I do not yet have a solution. Presently when I analyze a new store I am just using an excel spreadsheet. That I duplicate then add all the data from whatever provided p&l we get from the seller. This is quite primitive. I want to run projections based on the income potential for certain services and against costs. essentially modeling where the opportunities are and how the store can improve.

The other thing my partner wants to maintain is ongoing comparison between our projection vs actual.

So some storage of data needs to happen. I just haven't wrapped my head around it... So if I get 5 years of income statements (p&l's) monthly. And then I make a monthly projection from those. I need to store this how? I'm sure its simple. I think I just need a slap in the face.

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jlrdw's avatar

@webrobert It should be no different from a simple income and expense report:

That's one month, but you can just compile how ever many months or years you need and do the same.

You can even chart the results, but we never needed charts, seeing the amounts tells the whole story. Of course some people like seeing the "pretty" charts, but not really necessary, I can see the difference between 100,000, and 55,000 (just example) without a chart.

Above image was for a non profit. Normally the income and expense are separate reports, but here they were done together for monthly, there wasn't too many lines.

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webrobert's avatar

That's one month, but you can just compile how ever many months or years you need and do the same.

@jlrdw I guess thats the crux. if we are getting the data month by month we aren't compiling it. So our daily's are daily and our reports/historical are monthly.

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