Clams: Accounting Software for BitcoinersClams: Accounting Software for Bitcoiners
Clams is an accounting software for Bitcoiners.
Bring all your wallet balances to your local device, visualize your bitcoin flows and generate reports.
How does Clams work?
Accounting can be a headache if you're a Bitcoin power user.
Multiple wallets, exchanges, on-chain, off-chain, Lightning, micropayments..
In most jurisdictions selling or spending bitcoin is a taxable event.
If you earn bitcoin as income, calculating the cost basis of it might also leave you scratching your head.
These problems also greatly hinder the advancement of Bitcoin circular economies.
It's possible to write custom scripts for more mainstream accounting softwares like Quickbooks, but this is not efficient or private.
Better money needs better tooling!
A dedicated software for businesses and individuals operating on a Bitcoin standard helps making better business decisions, and keeps your accounting more organized!
Clams lets you bring your read-only data from all your Bitcoin wallets locally to your device, which act as a central accounting hub for your wallets.
It's still early for Clams, and currently only Core Lightning and LND nodes are supported.
Once imported, the data will be converted into journals using double-entry bookkeeping methods, so you can see credits, debits, income, expenses etc.
The data is visualized and customizable, which can help in data-driven decision-making!
You can also tag transactions.
Clams lets you generate reports for profit/loss calculations, tax accounting and for cost basis analysis.
Reports, multi-user access and cross-device sync are intended to be paid features, planned to go live in Q3/Q4 2024.
No sign-up is required to use Clams, and no personal information is collected.
Currently, Clams is downloadable only for Mac, but Windows, Linux and Ubuntu are coming later.
Clams seems like a great additional tool for businesses who want to accept bitcoin.
Together with the Bitcoin invoicing platform Zaprite @zaprite it could be a great combo!
You can learn more about Zaprite here: #507558
What do you think about Clams?
Is it the accounting software we need? Would you use it?
Additional ResourcesAdditional Resources
Presentation by Clams Co-Founder John Gribbin
https://m.stacker.news/32801
Haha. We are planning for Clams to be useful for much more than just CGT reports.
You could think of it like a personal finance app for Bitcoin. You can see your balance across all your wallets, categorise and track your spending over time etc.
If you are running a business then these tools become even more critical.
Thanks!
I've been searching for something like this for so many days. Now as I found out, I'm gonna give it a try. Though it looks interesting.
Very cool. Bitcoiners, especially bitcoin businesses need more tools to help make spending and receiving Bitcoin easier.
I look forward to learning more from the resources you provided.
is this self hostable on my own machine?
Yup. Its a desktop app. All data remains on your device.
gonna integrate with start9? 🤙
An accounting system for satoshi's is underrated.
Been looking for a ynab4 replacement, this may be it
Shocked this didn’t win the Pleblab top builder
This is cool! I've actually been looking for something like this for a couple years now basically having to resort to those apps that allow you to keep track of all your 'cryptos' instead. Can't wait to try it out!
Yeah this was one of the big reasons as to why we decided to build this app. All of the other apps don't support lightning properly and are primarily focused on altcoins. They also store your data on their servers and monetise it by sharing it with other companies.
We built this so we can't have access to any of your transaction data and it remains on your device at all times.
Down the line we will be doing multi device sync and you will have the ability to selectively share access to your data (with your accountant for example), but we want to do it in a way where our server is just shuffling encrypted packets between devices so that even when you choose to share your data, it remains completely private.
Nice one. Let us know if you have any feedback or feature requests!
How can Clams and Zaprite integrate?
Would be cool if you could just import everything you have on Zaprite with just one click to Clams.
Yes! We have briefly discussed with the Zaprite team on how an integration could work, so we are definitely planning on making that happen in the future.
Hmm i'm having issues with connecting my NWC and LND
a totally useful tool thanks for sharing it
When do you need it?
Maybe when someone wants to calculate taxes or return filing! I'm mot ghs one so will discard it without much attention.
how do you account for fees and unspendable UTXOs?
From their FAQ:
“How are transaction fees treated?
Technically, those are considered a spend. So cap gains or losses must be calculated and reported.”
I'm not an accountant, but I bet that those fees can be used to reduce your cost-basis. I know a similar thing works with mutual funds that have redemption/buy-in fees.