Boston’s Bay State Banner, a venerable Black newspaper, has recently introduced the slick Boston Biz magazine. The March 2016 issue included an article called “Manage Your Money” by Martin Desmarais. It listed the following apps:

• Expensify: “streamlines the process of tracking and organizing employee expenses.”
• Indinero: “a platform that takes care of all accounting, payroll and tax needs” for small businesses.
• Wave: “a popular accounting, payroll and invoicing app with services that cover all of a small business’s finance needs.”
• FreshBooks: “allows small businesses to create online invoices, capture expenses, record times on a job and track cash flow and expenses.”
• Zoho Books: “the platform and its mobile app version cover all aspects of a business, from sales and marketing to email collaboration and even hiring.”

As a bookkeeper, I think granularly and in technical details, and I think about GAAP. Therefore, I am not crazy about working on these platforms. I had a bad experience with Wave which did not allow me to reconcile bank accounts the way I wanted to and in general proved to be the wrong path for me and my client. These new finance apps were not created for bookkeepers. If you want me to keep your books, I will encourage you to create a QuickBooks Online account and add me as an “accountant.” If you really want me to work in one of the above apps I will try, but I probably won’t be happy.