Roast my startup: Amatino, a double-entry accounting API

[nikki1809]

Splash site: https://amatino.io

Development blog: https://amatino.io/blog

Hi everyone! Amatino is a double entry accounting API. It stores, organises, and retrieves financial information. Developers can use Amatino to build financial functionality into their apps. Some quick examples of use cases, where Amatino would capably serve as the data-layer:

• A budding competitor to Xero, MYOB, Mint, or some other consumer accounting app
• A budding competitor to Oracle ERP, or some other enterprise financial reporting package
• Internal bookkeeping system for a company that wants to handle their numbers in a bespoke manner
• A cryptocurrency trading platform

By Analogy​

I'm a game-developer by day, and I'll bet many of you play games. Amatino can be understood as the 'Game Engine' layer of financial applications. For example, it is the Source engine to Half-Life 2, Unreal4 to Fortnite, or Unity to Subnautica.

By itself, it is as useful as tits on a bull. Applied by a developer, it becomes a powerful tool. Just as us game developers leverage the networking, rendering, physics, and UI capabilities of game engines, Amatino acts to make it easier to innovate in financial applications.

What makes it different?​

An obvious competitor is the Xero API, and I'll use Xero's API as a reference point. By comparison, Amatino is...

• White-label. Amatino is not in it for the glory: Developers can build applications with Amatino without their customers ever knowing Amatino exists. You might be able to build your startup around Xero, but their M.O. is their own offering, not acting as your infrastructure.
• Laser focused. Xero API offers a vast array of jurisdiction and domain-specific objects. Amatino offers only the most generic, capable, and versatile objects.
• Significantly cheaper. USD 3 / mo vs 10 / mo per user. Or, USD 3 / 10,000 requests.
• Orders of magnitude faster. Xero's endpoints are US based, Amatino will respond from a datacenter near you. Regardless of where you or your end-users are, Amatino responds so quickly that it is viable as a driver for real-time user interfaces with no intermediary data-layer.

Monetisation​

The M word! Amatino's business model is simple: Developers pay per request, much the same way as they do for services like Amazon Route 53. Prices are savagely low: About USD3 per 10,000 requests, depending on how complex they are.

There are no hidden tricks. Amatino doesn't mine data for resale to aggregators, there are no premium features.

Why!?​

I wanted to build the accounting application of my dreams. After I set out, I realised there was no generic, jurisdiction agnostic, richly-featured double-entry accounting API available anywhere. My dream was something as elegant and 'first-principles' as GnuCash* , but running on any device, with fine-grained multi-user permissions, and with more robust support for heterogenous currencies and arbitrary units of account.

*GnuCash is fantastic, and I strongly recommend you check it out if you are looking for accounting software.

Other links​

• Open source libraries
• Documentation
• Getting started guide

Enjoy and happy roasting

 

[amandal]

@nikki1809 This is an intriguing idea but it needs more examples. One little screenshot of an API call doesn't really tell me what it can do.

The documentation is unimpressive, too. A list of JSON object types may be necessary but it's not sufficient. I tried reading the sentences at the top but they seem to be written for accountants who proofread dictionaries in their spare time:

A Recursive Ledger is a list of Transactions from the perspective of a particular Account, and all the Transactions party to all child Accounts of that Account. Recursive Ledgers are ordered by Transaction time, and include a running Account Balance for every line.

I fell asleep twice just copying and pasting that. Is this really the most effective way to convey this information?