Technical > Bookkeeping Module > Features, Benefits and Comparisons

What we are offering is a full Double Entry Bookkeeping solution which can be utilized easily as a single Entry Solution or just a budgeting tool. It also makes for an exceptional tool for numerous educational channels including personal finance, budgeting, spreadsheet education, java-script programming, database programming and more.

• We offer a Positive and Negative values version which teaches bookkeeping and accounting without debits and credits, which is a welcome relief to many
• We also offer a Debits and Credits version
• Having both makes it far easier for students to do a side by side comparison of the two systems. This helps them understand the pluses and minuses of using debits and credits.

It offers an unlimited Chart of Accounts, an unlimited number of asset and liability accounts, a functional general ledger, an Income Statement, a Balance Sheet and various other reporting tools and cross check utilities. 

• Ledgers for two asset and two liability accounts are pre-configured. More require  minor one time configurations.
• The basic income statement self configures, others require minor configuration.
• The Balance Sheet requires a one time configuration. 
• There is a very interesting cross checking tool for managing data to help ensure data integrity that precedes the balance sheet that we've not seen in any other solutions. 
• We use aggregated reconciliation which eliminates the old fashioned item by item reconciliation that caused so many headaches. 
• When configured and turned on, the Balance Sheet  updates in real time and that makes it very easy to step through one day at a time to find Trial Balance errors, especially when two monitors are in use.  No more dummy accounts for dumping adjusting entries because the math doesn't work. 

It is a stand alone Google Sheet Template, which is just a spreadsheet template, optimized for Google Sheets.

• It's built to operate far more like a database than a spreadsheet, and this education will be extremely valuable and/or interesting to all who use spreadsheets or databases  in general.  
• All functions in the template are just spreadsheet functions and fully transparent, so you can track all the math and you can customize or add on to any way you'd like. No javascript/google script is used for the core part of the accounting system.
• There are no ties back to us for updates. This is just a template, and as private as any of your data is in Google Drive.
• Your data will not be a part of a data store that can be mined as might be the case with Quickbooks or others

It requires a MANUAL IMPORT of transactions from CSV (Comma Separated Values) files which can be gotten from Banking institution websites. Or you can manually key in transactions. No automated system exists for auto imports and that makes for a good security feature, actually.

• Many of you all realize the problems when automated downloads hiccup, and many prefer manual entry over automated just for those reasons. This provides a perfect mix that is blazingly fast when all things are considered, and there is never anything that can break.
• There is a paid google sheet service out there that offers automated downloads of data. We have no intentions of integrating that with our service, but one could subscribe to their service for automatic downloads and then likely scrape the data from there if interested.  

Procedurally, it's just blazingly fast when looked at holistically.

• A seasoned user could download an new file copy, clear that of demo data, import data, categorize a years worth of data and produce income statements and balance sheets in 30-45 minutes. 
• If the seasoned user already had a file generally configured and ready for data, a years worth of data could be imported, reconciled, and categorized in 30 minutes.

What are the benefits of the Bookkeeping Module as compared to Quickbooks for bookkeeping use?

• Cost -- This is free for life. Unlimited copies for personal, business, budgeting and educational use. For those using cloud solutions, that represents a savings of $220 to $500 per company per year. For those that can take back their bookkeeping when they see how simple this is, this may represent an additional savings of $2000-$3000 per year for life. 
• Time -- Bookkeeping in this takes far less time, even with the manual download process
• Clarity -- Everyone can learn more about how a bookkeeping system operates because all math and data connections are exposed in this open source solution
• Confidence -- Controlling ones own books provides a sense of confidence and independance that can not be had otherwise. 
• Customization -- Custom reports or features can be built in
• Google Platform/Google Drive/Google Sheets Exposure -- All users will become more familiar with basic and advanced use of these Google Products and Services, which are in fact paradigm shifting in their current configuration. 
• Privacy -- When you store data in Quickbooks with auto downloads, you have exposed your password to a third party and your data is stored in data silos which may be used for modeling in ways that could be detrimental to all in your industry and beyond. 

​What are the benefits of the Bookkeeping Module as compared to Quicken, Freshbooks, YNAB or comparable?

• Cost -- This is free for life. Unlimited copies for personal, business, budgeting and educational use. For those using cloud solutions, that represents a savings of $35 to $99 per year per license. For those that can take back their bookkeeping that may be getting done in some of these solutions by service providers doing you an injustice, this may represent an additional savings of $2000-$3000 per year for life. 
• Time -- Bookkeeping in this takes far less time, even with the manual download process
• Clarity -- Everyone can learn more about how a financial categorization system and reporting system operates because all math and data connections are exposed in this open source solution
• Confidence -- Controlling ones own financial information cradle to grave provides a sense of confidence and independence that can not be had otherwise. 
• Customization -- Custom reports or features can be built in
• Google Platform/Google Drive/Google Sheets Exposure -- All users will become more familiar with basic and advanced use of these Google Products and Services, which are in fact paradigm shifting in their current configuration. 
• POSITIONING FOR GROWTH - By getting use to the ZAP ecosystem, if you ever wanted to morph just a little into the double entry bookkeeping realm, you'd only be a small step away. 
• Privacy -- When you store data in Quickbooks with auto downloads, you have exposed your password to a third party and your data is stored in data silos which may be used for modeling in ways that could be detrimental to all in your industry and beyond.

What are the drawbacks?

• It's less sexy -- We've done what we could to make it look good, but it still has that spreadsheet look making it far less "sexy" than a typical cloud based website interface.  Focus on Function over form and you will find fewer things not to like. 
  
  
• It lacks in "drill down linking abilities" -- While in fact you can create and use links in spreadsheets these days, that very natural feeling of clicking on something and drilling down either isn't here or it's not as good as you might like it to be. We've worked around that a lot, but it's still something we'd love to make a little better. We feel there may be ways to enhance in the future, but it would require more inherent features built into google sheets first, and no idea if that will be happening sooner or later if at all.