The Konseo story
It started
with a conversation.
Not with a market study, not with an idea from a seminar. With a friend who told me about her days, and what they cost her.
Where it began
A spreadsheet, and days that never ended.
She is a finance and administration manager. We were talking about something else, and she came round to her work: everything was held in a spreadsheet. Expenses, receipts, project tracking, consultants, expense claims. Everything. And all of it took time she did not have.
Because she carried both the organisation and fixed-term, donor-funded projects, she did every task twice. One entry for the organisation, another for the project. The same invoice, the same supplier, the same amount — twice. And in between, every document lived somewhere between a binder, a file server and a cupboard.
Losing your way between the stack of paper in front of you and the digital documents.
This was not an accounting software problem. She had accounting software. The problem was all around it: the work done before accounting begins, which nobody counts.
The first decision
Write down what the software would not do.
I started building for her. And the very first move, before the first screen, was to draw the boundary — the code repository still holds the record of it.
Set out Konseo: what it does, and above all what it will not do.
The document, end to end
- Take in the receipt: photo, PDF, scan, or a declaration that a paper original exists
- Qualify it once: date, counterparty, amount, nature, allocation
- Give it a unique reference and a place in the filing system
- Keep SYSCOHADA accounts on those same documents
And will not do
- Produce a VAT return
- Convert one currency into another: Konseo holds amounts, it does not do foreign exchange
- Issue bank transfers
- Replace what a chartered accountant does
Software that promises everything ends up doing every other thing badly. This one had to remove double entry and the hunt for documents. Not become a bank, or a tax firm.
The turning point
It was not her problem alone.
Discussing it between deliveries, something became obvious: what she was living through, others were living through identically.
The consulting firm that opens a file per client and re-enters the same entries. The NGO that has to report to its donor and rebuilds its report from five spreadsheets. The small business hunting for last year’s invoice in three places at once. This was not a particular situation: it was the ordinary one.
So we stopped building a bespoke tool and started refining a product. The same handful of gestures, but drawn for three trades instead of one.
Small business
One entity, one team
The core, and the options you choose. For the organisation that wants, first of all, to stop losing its paperwork.
Accounting firm
One file per client
No limit on the number, with SYSCOHADA accounting included. For those whose trade is keeping other people’s books.
Institutions
Several entities
Budgets per donor and the annual financial report. For externally funded projects.
What you learn by shipping
Five batches, and one that never sold.
The software was not designed in one piece. It was delivered in parts, to someone who used it between deliveries and said what did not work.
- 01
The core.
Multi-entity and multi-project, the receipts journal, the unified archive, accounts and permissions. Everything else hangs off it.
- 02
Counterparties and flows.
A client, a supplier, an employee: one record. Commitments, due dates, settlements, sales invoices, expense claims, bank reconciliation.
- 03
Time and reporting.
Timesheets, their approval, frozen reports, monthly closings, the dashboard.
- 04
Meetings.
Recording, transcription, minutes, decision tracking. Planned, documented, never sold. We do not push what nobody wanted.
- 05
Analytical codes.
The journal, the cash box and its counts, the result per code. This batch came from a second company, with its own cash spreadsheet to take over.
One installation per company
When the second company arrived, it was not a second version: it was a second installation, with its own database, its own address, its own files and its own licence. Two neighbouring houses, never a corridor between them. That is what makes it possible today to sell Konseo to an accounting firm, a small business and an institution without any of them having to trust the others.
The stance
Software that refuses.
Most tools warn you. This one refuses. That is the difference between a message you click away and a door that does not open.
Refused actions
Changing an approved entry, reopening a closed month, approving an unbalanced entry, matching the same line twice. These are not alerts: the database will not accept them.
One document, once
A document already filed is refused the next time. And a document is never deleted: it is discarded, where it stays visible.
Expired licence
Konseo switches to read-only. No more data entry, but you read and export everything. Ten years of archives must not depend on an unpaid invoice.
That stance is expensive to build, and it draws complaints for the first few weeks. It is also the only reason a chartered accountant agrees to look at what comes out of the software.
What is not finished
Saying what is missing, before it is discovered.
Still open
- The chart of accounts must be approved by a local chartered accountant before going live.
- Data residency is settled with each client, before going live.
- Bank statements are read in a common CSV format, pending each bank’s exact format.
- No VAT return, no currency conversion, no transfers. That was true on day one, and it is still true.
This list is published, not hidden. Management software is judged as much on what it refuses to promise as on what it can do.
Where Konseo stands
Installed in several organisations, and still a work in progress.
That is where we began distributing it. Organisations with nothing in common — which is exactly what we were asking of it. It exists in French, English and Portuguese, for CEMAC, UEMOA and beyond.
And we keep developing it. Every installation brings back a question we had not seen: a statement format, a way of filing, a report the donor wants differently. The software moves at the pace of the offices using it, not at the pace of a roadmap written in advance.
It remains what it was on day one: software that does not replace your accountant, does not pretend to know everything, and settles what nobody invoices — the work around the paperwork.
Software born in a real office keeps something of that office. That is what we ask of it.
Want to see what it looks like at your place?
Tell us how many entities and projects you manage, and who keeps your books today. A demonstration is arranged within the week.