I've given up on trying to work with GNUcash... too much hassle, no movement or responses about Peppol... so it's not going to work... hopeless case...
So I'm going to try a different approach!
Let me briefly outline my situation:
First of all: I'm not an accountant, but I am an IT/electronics specialist... I've been self-employed for 30 years, so I know a little bit about how things work in general... but I'm not a real accountant!
I have three non-profit organizations and one private limited company (BV/BV)...
Those non-profit organizations are very limited in their activities, barely a few invoices per month, and I currently still do these in Excel (LibreOffice Calc, actually) and keep the documents (incoming and outgoing invoices and bank statements) as PDFs in folders on my Synology NAS. I file the quarterly VAT returns and the annual filing myself, as these are all under the simplified system (only "in", "out", and "bank")... so it's really easy to do...
However, I file my BV/BA in Winauditor Classic (the "old," non-cloud version that runs in Wine on my Linux Mint PC) because my accountant recommended it. This costs me around 200 euros per year (upgrade subscription). The Winauditor data folder is continuously and bidirectionally synced to Dropbox, which my accountant has access to... the same goes for the folders containing all the PDF documents...
By "doing," I mean creating the outgoing invoices (and sending them to my clients in Belgium and the Netherlands) and entering the monthly bank statements, which also means reconciling these outgoing invoices... my accountant doesn't have to do any of this...
I put incoming invoices (on average about 25 per month) in one of the sync folders, and my accountant enters them monthly. These are then synced back to me via Dropbox, allowing me to reconcile them simultaneously when entering the monthly (manual) bank statements... it works well, except that I'm always a month behind, but that's not a big deal...
My accountant also files the quarterly VAT returns and the annual filing for my private limited company...
Everything goes smoothly, you'd think...
BUT, In anticipation of the upcoming Peppol mess (1/1/26), Winauditor recently announced that they would be discontinuing their offline "old" version... everything and everyone has to switch to their cloud version (whether they want to or not)... at €84 per month... So it would cost me over €1,000 per year to just keep doing what I'm doing now... phew!
A few months ago, Winauditor firmly assured me that their "old" version would DEFINITELY continue to exist, and that it would DEFINITELY be made Peppol compatible... and then suddenly, a few weeks ago... boom... fait accompli!
I feel very uncomfortable about this, not only because of the additional financial cost, but also, and especially, because from now on I would have to entrust all my data (because "the cloud is just someone else's computer") to a company that has already PROVEN to be unreliable and dishonest... sour taste!
That's why I thought about Odoo...
Wouldn't it be a good idea to install Odoo (docker) on my Synology and do everything there right away?
... and give my accountant access (create an account on the Synology-Odoo and only grant access to the BV file) so he can make the necessary edits to my accounting?
... and then also add my non-profit organizations, so everything is centralized... and no cloud... just everything under my own management!
I've decided to delve into it from now on, hence this post... the question is whether it's worth the effort in my situation, before I start investing a ton of time...
So, a few questions to start with:
Can I manage multiple files (3 non-profit organizations and 1 BV)?
Are there Belgian accounting systems (simplified for non-profit organizations and full ones for the BV) that can be imported?
Is it possible to import existing files and data?
How does Peppol work? For the different files? What are the costs?
Can I create clean invoice layouts?
Can I import KBC monthly overviews in CSV format for invoice reconciliation/posting?
Can I prepare VAT returns?
Provisional interim results (should I invest soon or not)?
...
... Are there any suggestions for tutorials or videos about the Belgian situation?
Regards,
