> hard problems in personal finance is data capture and input validation
It's also true for business accounting. Getting data into your accounting/ERP software is always a clusterfuck, and I've yet to see a process that didn't require many hours/days of reconciliation and posting manual journal entries to close a reporting period.
The challenge is that no two businesses are really alike, so it's difficult to create a standard that can capture all the nuance of running a business. GAAP/IFRS-compliant accounting requires double-entry accounting, so many ERP systems share a lot of the same things (account, debit/credit, accruals, receipt of goods, month-end close) that are needed to spit out the three sheets and other artifacts for financial reporting.
A running joke in the industry is that you don't customize your ERP for your business, but customize your business for your ERP. You end up with a lot of "middleware" that essentially adapts your operational systems into the format needed by the ERP to do its job, and your staff will design workflow processes specifically centered around how the ERP works for things like closing the books or managing inventory.
This is for exchanging reporting data, not all the things that lead up to that.
It can't tell you how to structure sales to account for taxes across multiple countries, or how to accrue for gift cards/liabilities, or recognizing revenue from annual subscriptions, or deprecating assets, or amortizing expenses. Each ERP and business will do this in slightly different ways.
But what it can tell you is how to represent those results when everything else is said-and-done.
It might be partly a US vs. UK/EUR thing, where the latter are more comfortable with compelling industry to just do a thing. And the former is very uncomfortable with that.
In the US, open banking would probably look more like "the IRS requires a bank to have accounts readable using these formats, or otherwise be able to provide same manually, when requested" to prod industry to do it.
Never had a problem with any of this. Yes, it is time-consuming, but so is everything in business. Maybe if I have someone to open a business in my name, do all the work, and I just sit and drink margaritas at the beach all day, none of work would be time-consuming for me.
But back to reality, everything in life is time-consuming. But, that is why it is so important to have a healthy profit margin and enough revenue in to hire a bookkeeper - so it takes you zero time.
But, even still, the real issue is that most business people don't know sh-t about accounting, don't know about accounting controls, don't know about so much, that they can't really evaluate anything anyways. How many companies have I been with or known someone that works at them that have been ripped off by embezzlement, because the company didn't know about controls. Too many. Rita Crundwell who was the Comptroller and Treasurer of the town of Dixon, Illinois is an especially juicy case of embezzlement. Crundwell stole nearly $2.5 million per year from the city. Crundwell with embezzling $53 million over the prior 22 years. And I think it was more, because she worked for a longer period than that, but no records were available. There was a great analysis of it, and wow, was it great. Just so fascinating.
I have a lot of experience in accounting and bookkeeping, so I really enjoy it. I don't know, it doesn't really take me a long time, I do it every day, so it takes me less than 4 or 5 minutes per day. Sometimes a little longer, sometimes less.
It's also true for business accounting. Getting data into your accounting/ERP software is always a clusterfuck, and I've yet to see a process that didn't require many hours/days of reconciliation and posting manual journal entries to close a reporting period.