The DNA of BaleineCash

Nobody enjoys doing their accounts

Let us be honest: nobody enjoys doing their accounts. If you do enjoy it, see a doctor.

And no program will make you enjoy it. BaleineCash will not either. Our aim is not to make the thing pleasant, it is to meet a necessity.

Older than writing

Did you know? The oldest written texts we know of are neither poems nor laws: they are accounts. In Sumer, people kept records of herds and sacks of grain before they could write a story — writing was born of that need.

Not very romantic. One is entitled to find it unfair that hearts carved into tree trunks have survived the centuries less well than sheep counted in clay.

The fact remains that keeping accounts is as old as the world, and there is probably a good reason for that.

Money is tight

You are in the red, you are going over your budgets, the end of the month is hard. Does Oscar Wilde's line — “I can resist everything except temptation” — ring a bell? Or is it more Chaplin in *The Gold Rush*, eating his shoe? Income is not keeping up with costs, and it is time for sole soup?

Doing your accounts will not change your situation. Let us say so straight away; anything else would be dishonest.

But going through your accounts regularly, revisiting the financial decisions already taken and spotting the ones that are not helping — the small overspend that was nothing much on its own, then the next one, then all twelve of them in the year — that does change something. Having the whole picture: money in, money out, reserves, debts. Where do I stand?

Becoming aware, setting a budget, trying to hold to it, looking the gaps in the face: that helps you hold your course. It helps you say, faced with the next temptation: “this one I'll keep for next month, I have sinned enough already.” And it helps answer the question “how do I get out of this?”

A plank will not carry anyone across the Atlantic. But it is the beginning of something: enough to get past the next wave, and perhaps enough to surf rather than sink.

Things are going well again

Business is turning over. That is good — and it is the moment not to get carried away.

Has all the income actually come in? Is anything waiting to be chased? Work under way, quotes, invoices, payments due? What amounts are still outstanding? And the next tax return, how are we going to handle it?

You cannot afford SAP, but you would like to be better armed than with a pocket calculator on the eve of the deadline.

The family estate has struck

The family house has become jointly owned — with your brother, your sister, the cousins and uncle Arthur. Splitting the assets, the costs, the income, a shared bank account: none of that is simple to keep.

And you need to be able to produce a statement — for yourself, or for the others — that respects each person's share while including what is 100 % yours. Enough for a tax return, and enough to give the whole family a common basis to talk from.

You are a student

Your parents have had enough and insist that you run your own budget. A passion for bookkeeping is still nowhere on the horizon, but you can see the point of a first go at it before things get serious.

We promise not to stuff you with accounting concepts. But fairly quickly, without becoming an expert, you will know what you are talking about — and you will impress your bank manager. Believe us, that counts for something later on.

You live abroad

The bags are packed, hello new horizons. Living abroad does not mean being rich, but it does mean a more complicated situation: accounts in the country you came from, other things in the new one, and tax authorities on both sides, convinced that your foreign accounts are hiding millions you do not have.

How do you present an overall picture and a country-by-country one at the same time? If you are an accountant, you already have the tools. If not, you are probably not looking to become one.

You have a portfolio

It builds up little by little. But the risk — where is it? You want to be able to turn your data over, to bring out the analysis that lets you see a little further: the real spread, by sector, by region, by type.

We do not have a crystal ball. We have a tool that lets you do something other than take what comes.

It all starts with a bank statement

Let us be serious. At the root of it there is a bank account, and the wish to analyse it, sort it, and get out of it what you need when you need it.

BaleineCash will not do your tax return in Taiwan or Costa Rica. BaleineCash helps you handle the electronic statement your bank makes available for download.

Nothing gets typed in again: the entries are taken over. That means taking a file in the bank's format and putting it into ours. Whether you use Excel or SAP, nobody escapes this: the csv or the xlsx has to be opened and translated into something usable. And every bank produces its own. It would be too easy otherwise.

The first time is not the pleasantest

Let us be clear: reading a csv for the first time and giving it a standard format is not intuitive. That is the thankless part.

But once it is done, it is saved. The next time is much easier — and the one after that, easier still.

After that, it gets lighter

BaleineCash proposes a classification, you confirm it or correct it. You set keywords, amounts, rules. With each import there is less to go back over.

We did not put in the effort to build a tool that gets more and more complicated: we put in the effort so that it gets easier and easier.

That said, accounting is still debit and credit. It is still tables to prepare for a VAT return, an income tax return, a depreciation schedule, a portfolio review. It is still work, and it is still not funny.

We are only trying to make it easier.