AtLast.NZ is accounting software for one New Zealand company, in New Zealand dollars, built around a proper double-entry ledger. Bank reconciliation, invoicing, customer statements, the reports your accountant asks for, and a monthly GST return — and nothing else.
One person's evenings, no funding, no team, no investors.
Where it's up to
In the demo, all of it open to read — and the reconciler live in a throwaway copy of the books that is yours alone, deleted two hours after you open it. Anything not yet proved says what it would have posted instead.
What it covers
Everything below is a view over the same journal. An invoice is a journal, coding a bank line is a journal, your accountant's year-end adjustment is a journal — so the reports can never quietly disagree with the ledger they came from.
Bring yours across as it stands, codes and all. No re-typing, and no invented account structure you then have to live with.
Import your ANZ CSV export, and the lines that can be worked out already are. Money in gets matched to the invoice it settles; money out gets coded, by rules you make as you go. Other banks aren't read yet.
Raise one, or set the monthly ones up once — when the date comes round, one click raises everything that's fallen due, and it catches up after a quiet month. Macrons render properly in your customers' names.
Every invoice still owing, with the ageing spelled out. Print it or save it as a PDF from your browser — no font surprises in somebody's name.
Profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balance over any dates you like, with the ageing sitting alongside your customer statements. Each one is a query over the ledger, not a figure kept in a second place.
Each month's return worked out and laid out for keying into myIR. The box numbering hasn't been checked against a real filed return yet, and the screen says so until it has. Once a period is filed it is locked, and it stops moving.
Just as important
Most accounting software is big because it has to be everything to everybody. This one only has to be right for one company, so the list below was left out on purpose — and leaving it out is what keeps the rest simple enough to trust.
Where it runs, and what's still open
Fair questions to ask of anything that holds your books, including the ones still open.
A small web application over a single database file, built for one company. There is no tenancy inside it and no sign-up page — the first run makes the owner, then shuts that door for good. One copy holds one set of books and can't hold anybody else's. Whether that copy ends up on your machine, your server or mine hasn't been decided.
The intention is to publish it — anyone who trusts a ledger with their GST return should be able to read how it adds up.
Two things come first. The GST box numbering has to be checked against a return that was actually filed. And publishing it means settling what anyone else may then do with it — read it, run their own copy, change it, build something else out of it — which is a decision that can't be taken back once it's made.
Thanks — you're on the list. You'll hear when there's something to look at.