1. Feel free to back up your claim, otherwise I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion
2. It has a user interface … just not graphical
3. Well, I guess we just have different opinions on where forward is
4. I've been working with GnuCash, Ledger and Hledger and I've written several scripts to extend them (e.g. to support timestamps and not just dates, which shouldn't be asked too much for an accounting tool ), but it was always a nasty hack and so I wrote my own. Just like you said.
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I can only answer 1 from the perspective of a non-US, very junior, auditor with little experience, but I'll try.
I don't see how it handles complex transactions very well. A simple example would be VAT. Assume a 25% VAT (which is standard here). If you sell a product for $1000 cash in hand the relevant transaction would be:
C: Revenues $800
C: VAT payable $200
D: Cash $1000
An even better example would be payroll which can involve 5-15 different ledger accounts for a single employee.
The next bit can probably be solved through the notes part, but how would you attach invoices and documentation with Transity?
How do you do accounts payable or receivable with it? In addition to the balance sheet sum, the accounts pay/rec should also show the balance for each individual customer and supplier.
A single transaction can contain multiple "transfers", so this next should handle your example. (I don't know the name of any organizations that collect VAT, so I used "vat-authority".)
transfers:
- from: robert-q-customer
to: john:cash
amount: 1000 usd
- from: john:payable
to: vat-authority
amount: 200 usd> No more confusing debit / credit / asset / liability mumbo jumbo
How is separating what you have (assets/liabilities) from your revenues/expenses confusing? It's basic tools to get a view of the profitability vs the Balance sheet (what the company owns) vs the cash flow.
The idea of looking at it in terms of transaction is interesting, I recommend looking at https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-compu... for a good take on this idea.
Edit: typo
this just seems way more confusing to me than debits and credits.