Comments on: OAccounts – Setting your accounts data free

By: Gary Kind

Gary Kind — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:43:53 +0000

I’m with Duane, this has been tried for years by BASDA and never really took off. The fact is the big players wont embrace it because
a) They dont need to
b) They want vendor tie-in
c) It will cost them money for which they get no return on

Sorry to be blunt!

By: The Small Business Web - The Rising Tide of Integration | CloudAve

The Small Business Web - The Rising Tide of Integration | CloudAve — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:40:16 +0000

[...] its inception. It also goes some way to addressing the concerns that led to Martin Kleppmann’s OAccounts initiaitve – that is a simple, easy and consistent way of integrating different small business [...]

By: Finding a Babel Fish for Data | CloudAve

Finding a Babel Fish for Data | CloudAve — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:18:26 +0000

[...] Kleppmann recently quoted CloudAve in his post conceptualising a standard data format for accounting applications that he’s called [...]

By: OAccounts - is it feasible? | AccMan

OAccounts - is it feasible? | AccMan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:09:08 +0000

[...] by chance I came across this thoughtful piece by Martin Kleppmann, proposing the idea of an open standard for the interchange of data between accoutning [...]

By: Mike O'Grady

Mike O'Grady — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:23:37 +0000

Martin – this is an excellent idea. Artemis is not a SaaS product but, the concept would work for any type of accounting system.

Whereas, I agree that there is a strong motivation for product developers to discourage the easy transfer of data to competitive products, there is a plus side also.

Many of our customers have their accounts “finalised” and audited by an external accountant. Most accountants use Sage or Relate and are reluctant to accept client data in third-party formats.

It would be great if we had a standard where our customers could provide their data to the accountant in a universally accepted format.

Obviously, Sage will not be in too much of a hurry to provide an OAccounts facility but, Relate are not in the end-user accounting market and might be interested in supporting the initiative.

By: Ed Molyneux

Ed Molyneux — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:43:39 +0000

Martin – fine work and exactly what the next generation of SaaS apps – including our own FreeAgent – needs to ensure we have a truly frictionless market.

Of course, it’s going to be up to third-parties to implement the Sage-to-OAccounts and Quickbooks-to-OAccounts piece, right? Can’t imagine those guys in too much of hurry to get on this particular bandwagon ;0>

By: Martin Kleppmann

Martin Kleppmann — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:44:22 +0000

Thanks for your comments — it’s encouraging to have positive responses from the top SaaS accounting start-ups!

I agree that Sage et al. are unlikely to move in an issue like this until they have absolutely no other chance. However, a lot can also be done without their active support; for example, I reckon that it wouldn’t be too hard to develop a Sage-OAccounts bridge using KashFlow’s importer tool.

Given the interest, I will start drafting a spec, develop a first reference implementation, and try it out on my company’s accounts. Then, once I have a clearer idea of how it should actually work, we should have another discussion.

By: Mark Davies

Mark Davies — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:20:29 +0000

e-conomic has always provided import facilities that can accommodate source data from any system. For instance, a list of historical invoices will have columns such as date, text, amount, expense code. We can accept the data in any order, as long as the source system can dump the data out into Excel that’s all you need to load your data into e-conomic.

It would be advantageous if there was a standard for the exchange/transfer of data from one package to another – it’s something that we would encourage because we survive on good service, not locking customers in (we already provide a standard data export facility for our customers). But would it suit an incumbent player with lots of customers?

Whereas XBRL is a reporting standard that many accounting software vendors are likely to adopt, would a company like Sage would adopt a standard for the movement of accounting data from one system to another? They may feel that this would expose them to too much commercial risk.

By: Rod Drury

Rod Drury — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:46:01 +0000

Agree with Duane. The SaaS industry loves standards. It’s not just for moving between systems but would allow others to do innovative extensions and would grow the SaaS ecosystem.

I think the lead will come from the SaaS vendors working together, but I think we all have a bit to do first. Probably a few years away when volumes will be significantly higher than they are today and a few of us have resources to put into this.

By: Duane Jackson

Duane Jackson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:48:44 +0000

When we developed our Data Importer for KashFlow, we looked around for common standards to use.

There is XBRL, but it’s for reporting, not ganular data.

For invoices there is eBis-XML developed by BASDA, but it’s woefully underdocumented.

If there was a standard, we’d embrace it.

Duane Jackson
KashFlow MD and Founder