I am writing this in the hope that someone will tell me I am badly informed and ignorant.
Lately my thoughts have been on accounting systems. For Enspyre I would like to have a bi-lingual (English and Chinese) accounting system. I like the idea of it being accessible online so I can see the status of my company wherever I am in the world. Why can’t I find anything like this?
We do not need to handle tax reporting since I am happy having the CPA take care of that, but of course we need to manage costs, revenues and salaries with insurance and pension payments.
I have looked at QuickBooks online – http://www.quickbooks.com, WaveApps – http://www.waveapps.com, open-source GnuCash – http://www.gnucash.org and a few others. Most of the foreign online accounting systems are fast and easy to sign up for but is not available in Chinese (yet).
I have also looked into Taiwanese systems and feel I have nothing but more questions.
I have so far not seen any online systems. Why is that?
The systems I have seen so far seems to be targeting bigger companies. What about the hundreds of thousands of 1-5 employee companies in Taiwan, what do they use? Back pocket count? Excel?
One of the things impressing me a great deal with systems like Quickbooks and WaveApps is that with just a few clicks I can connect the accounting system with my online bank (if I used one of the 10,000 institutions they support) so I have overview of all cash. This last week I had a meeting with one of Taiwan’s largest providers of CRM and ERP systems. They told me they could offer no API connections to any Taiwanese bank. They could not even provide a connection with any payment provider so I can streamline the handling of all the small payments we receive every month. Wave even has API links to ChinaTrust Bank USA (http://www.chinatrustusa.com/), but not the Taiwan office.
Why on earth is this? Are Taiwanese banks technically inept? Are there regulatory differences between the US and Taiwan that makes these kinds of connections impossible? Have no Taiwanese company ever asked for smoother accounting procedures? Am I missing something?