Things we think, mostly about money as text.
Long-form. For what shipped and when, the build log is the honest surface.
Getting a bank CSV into double-entry books
What actually happens between a bank export and a set of balanced books — column mapping, sign conventions, the running-balance trap, and why duplicates are the hard part.
Why your bookkeeping is behind, and what actually fixes it
You are not behind because bookkeeping is hard. You are behind because it is a queue of small decisions, and a queue of decisions is the one kind of work that cannot be done in a burst of willpower.
What double-entry actually means, in five minutes
Double-entry is not an accounting technique you have to learn. It is one rule — every transaction touches two places and the two cancel out — and everything else is names for the places.
Every change to your books is a commit you can read
Countbean stores your accounts as a plain-text Beancount ledger in a git repository, so every change an agent makes is a diff you can review and revert.
Bookkeeping when you bank in three countries
Multi-currency accounting is not one number converted at the end. It is a rate, on a date, from a source, recorded at the moment the money moved — which is why spreadsheets stop working first here.
QuickBooks alternatives that let you keep your own data
Everyone claims you own your data. The test is whether you can read it, take it, and keep working — without the vendor's cooperation, and after you have stopped paying them.
Reconciling a month without a spreadsheet
Reconciliation is one claim: on this date, this account held this much. In a plain-text ledger that claim is a single line, and it either passes or it fails loudly.
What to hand your accountant at year end
An accountant does not want your shoebox and does not want your login. They want four documents, a list of the things you were unsure about, and a way to ask you one question.
Nothing matches that.