Incorporated contractors and consultants in Canada run real companies with real filing dates, yet most bookkeeping tools ask them to rent software by the month, hand their financial records to a vendor's cloud, and still give their accountant a pile of loose exports. We took our own consulting playbook and applied it to a product: Langbyrde, a local-first desktop application for macOS and Windows, built end to end by VYSHYNSKYI and currently in public beta, starting with Ontario.
Records scattered across vendors, subscriptions and spreadsheets.
A contractor's books usually live in a subscription cloud tool the vendor can reprice or retire, with receipts in email and statements in a downloads folder. Month-end means reconstructing the story for the accountant. Trust is the real obstacle: owners are right to be cautious about uploading banking data, and the tool must never pretend to be the accountant or to file anything on their behalf.
Technology operationalization
We set three product promises and engineered the architecture to make each one structurally true rather than a marketing line: one company file on the owner's own computer with documents in a folder they choose, a perpetual licence that never phones home, and an accountant-ready package generated from a proper double-entry ledger.
Addressing global business imperatives
- Local-First Data Ownership (no vendor server, no account, no telemetry)
- Double-Entry Ledger Derived Automatically
- Canadian Compliance Built In (HST, CRA and Ontario filing dates, GIFI)
- Statement, Receipt and Invoice Workflow
- Optional, Bring-Your-Own-Key AI
A product that keeps the books in the owner's hands
Langbyrde imports bank and card statements and receipts, records expenses, issues invoices, reconciles, and tracks payroll, remittances and filing dates. Everything is stored in a single company file the owner controls and can export in plain formats at any time. The accountant receives a CPA package built from the ledger the application derives, so the conversation starts from clean numbers instead of a shoebox of exports.
Addressing global business imperatives
The licence is bought once: after the 45-day trial the app becomes read-only, and reading, exporting, printing and backups always keep working. The product organises, reconciles and exports, but it never files anything and never gives tax, accounting or legal advice. The marketing site itself follows the same principle: a static site on Cloudflare with analytics that stays off until the visitor opts in.
Owner and Accountant Workflow Mapping
Mapping how an incorporated contractor and their CPA actually work through a year, from statements and receipts to remittances and year-end, to decide what the product must and must not do.
Local-First, Ledger-Backed Design
Architecture decisions recorded up front: a single owner-controlled company file, a double-entry ledger as the source of truth, and no vendor server or telemetry.
Beta on macOS and Windows
Ontario handled end to end today, with the rules for other provinces and territories carried in the tax data and wider coverage planned, and beta access granted by request while the product matures.