Lessons From My Accounting System's Sudden Crash

On a recent June afternoon, I attempted to pay a vendor who was helping me move from WordPress to Ghost. Paying a vendor isn't rocket surgery. It's a rudimentary transaction that I've successfully completed hundreds of times over the past five years in different accounting systems—most recently, in Wave.

Ho hum, right?

And then Wave presented me with this error message:

In this post, I'll briefly describe the nightmare that ensued and lessons you can learn from my ordeal.

Background

I'm set up as a single-person LLC and have been for years. Number of proper employees at Simon, Inc.: zero. Even I don't draw a salary. I eat what I kill.

This legal designation absolves me from needing to run payroll every week, month, or quarter. You needn't be an accountant to understand the distinction. (In point of fact, my decade as an enterprise systems consultant means that my knowledge of HR and payroll systems exceeds that of most people reading this post. Hell, I wrote a whole book about the subject, but I digress...)

At least I wasn't trying to pay my employees. Other Wave users weren't so lucky. Not surprisingly, many took to Reddit to express their dismay at their Wave-induced nightmares. Maybe that's why its former CEO recently left. Go down that rabbit hole if you like, but let's get back to the subject of this post.

Enough Outrage. Let's Analyze the Problem.