6 ms·

Show HN: FrappeBooks – Free and Open Source, Modern Desktop Accounting for SMB

243 points by rushabh 6y ago

osrec 6y ago
This looks nice! Do you mind me asking what you used to build your desktop client?
- serkanh 6y ago
  If you look at the package.json, it looks like they used electron and vue.js. https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json
  - osrec 6y ago
    Ah great, thanks!
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  looks like its electron. https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books or do you mean 'build' in some other way (like a technique or other tool)?
asbasawaraj 6y ago
Much needed desktop app for accounting!
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Don’t get your hopes up, it’s Electron.
  - codegladiator 6y ago
    So what ?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-desktop-via-google-chrome-browser-6907c01eebe4 https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-desktop-... No need for Electron fat.
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    I've been using Manager.io. It's free and great, but not open source, and runs on Mono instead of Electron.
sylvain_kerkour 6y ago
Great job! Can it sync between devices (to avoid to lose data if my computer die)?
- rushabh 6y ago
  Thank you! It is single threaded. Since it is a file based system (sqlite), so you can put it on your favorite cloud backup.
ofrzeta 6y ago
From the same people who also made ERPNext, "the world's best 100% open source ERP" which was built in their own (open source) web framework called ... Frappe https://frappe.io/frappe https://frappe.io/frappe
- rushabh 6y ago
  We have been doing ERPNext for 10 years now and a lot of what we did with Frappe Books is based on that learning.
Nextgrid 6y ago
How does this relate to ERPNext? Is this just a packaged ERPNext installation? Is there any way to replicate this with standard, hosted ERPNext?
- NickBusey 6y ago
  It is a desktop app.
- rushabh 6y ago
  No this is a fresh implementation and completely in Javascript. ERPNext is a client-server application based on Python. There were a couple of itches we were trying to scratch. First we realized that a lot of people were looking for a good free accounting application and ERPNext was just too heavy. Also we realized that cloud is a bottleneck. Most SMB owners can't manage a cloud or write a simple Shell command. The only way to truly build decentralized solution was Desktop. Also we realized this was a big gap in FOSS offerings. This is just the first version, we do plan to add inventory and other capabilities overtime.
  - mathnmusic 6y ago
    Did you evaluate existing FOSS solutions like GNUCash or KMyMoney? Would be interesting to see what you found lacking.
    - rushabh 6y ago
      Yes, mostly a modern user experience. Also the web stack is much more accessible there are many developers who are already familiar with it.
keyrat 6y ago
This looks great. Is there any plan to add time tracking? It's the only reason I'm still with my current *books hosted solution, even though I'm not particularly happy with it.
- rushabh 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We don't have specific plans as of now, but do add your request on GitHub (https://github.com/frappe/books/issues https://github.com/frappe/books/issues) and be part of the community!
- ianmcgowan 6y ago
  This is the first thing I looked for - timetracking is critical for freelancers and contractors. I use freshbooks.com and generally like the product, and love the support. Wish they had a way to import time entries from CSV though.. It's probably like the old excel joke - everyone only uses 20% of the features, but every user uses a different 20% ;-)
sudosteph 6y ago
I'll admit I've been a little depressed about the state of open-source software lately - especially when it comes to GPL licensed projects. So to see a new project like this - one that isn't just developer tooling or bleeding edge new-tech experimentation for nerds - it's refreshing! There's nothing wrong with the other sorts of projects - but good GPL software that is actually useful out of the box to average people - that's the dream. At least that's the dream that drove me into this industry in the first place. Thanks for creating and sharing your work.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Yeah, from the looks of it, one or two decades more and some flavor of Linux will be the only surviving major GPL software. https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/top-open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/t...
xhkkffbf 6y ago
Can you import your old data from Quicken? Or Quickbooks? Or GnuCash?
xupybd 6y ago
How do they pay that many people giving away software? This is amazing I just don't understand how they do it?
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  https://erpnext.com/pricing https://erpnext.com/pricing They offer paid support and hosting.
dalerus 6y ago
This looks great, we've been a long time ERPNext customer, but we really only use the accounting and invoicing systems. This might be a better fit for us.
nodesocket 6y ago
I use Quickbooks Self Employed and would love to migrate, but absolutely require three of their features before I can: - Automatically pull transactions from credit cards and banks. - Allow me to manually and automatically tag transactions as business and personal and which tax deduction category it belongs to (rent, apps/software, computers, utilities, etc) - Estimates my quarterly federal tax payments based on income and transaction deductions. Any support for those features?
nh2 6y ago
Hey, this is cool, I'm looking to switch from a proprietary accounting app to something open-source. It being open-source is important mainly because accounting apps UX usually sucks for some specific types of data entry and I want to be able to fix that for my use cases to get the annoying job done faster and get back to programming. I immediately hit some dealbreakers with Frappe though (and filed them as issues, hopefully they are useful), most importantly that I cannot figure out how to delete General Ledger entries (if it is possible at all), see https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129 https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129. In terms of product feedback, I also recommend that you add a "spreadsheet mode" in which you can quickly and immediately edit most of the ledger data in one view, (without having to open popups and so on), with effective search-and-replace. That is a key accounting tool feature to get things done fast. For example, I currently use Banana (https://www.banana.ch/en/features https://www.banana.ch/en/features) which is spreadsheet-based and pretty effective for this task (but could still be a lot better).
jdeisenberg 6y ago
I absolutely adore the Hergé style art on the home page!
- rushabh 6y ago
  Made by the amazing team at Timeless https://timeless.co/ https://timeless.co/
anon102010 6y ago
Two notes. Fiscal year end start or end normally is sufficient to define the fiscal year. Why is both a start and end date needed for the fiscal year here? That's usually an immediate tell that system was designed by programmers not accountants. Why can't users type in a fiscal year - the date picker is broken, the size of the date picker jumps around for different months, lot's of repeating dates etc. The system allows datepicker to pick odd fiscal year ends (ie, leap years and mid month dates) are these fiscal years properly supported? ERPnext looks great though - I look forward to trying it and supporting it - I imagine it's more refined!!
kevindeasis 6y ago
out of curiosity how do you guys make money? looks like you guys have a big team and have been running for a decade now doing open source stuff
- takleizo 6y ago
  It looks like they also support ERPNext - I'm assuming that's their primary product offering
- rushabh 6y ago
  We are just under $1M annual revenue, so not really making a lot of money, but not to bad either. Since we are bootstrapped, so no really pressure to grow exponentially. From very early days we had paying customers (just enough to support a lean team). Our major growth has come in the last 2 years, where our team size grew from <15 to >40. So we are based in India so salaries tend not to inflate too much. We also pick raw talent and nurture them (and also pay above market), so it just about works! Having said that, I think the market for products like ERPNext (our flagship) is huge, in the tens of billions. Looking at our current traction, we really hope we can make the product good enough for enterprises to switch to this. I see a huge potential revenue in support, assurance, consulting when it comes to it. So its a waiting game.
aloukissas 6y ago
I just came here for the awesome name of the product :D
reilly3000 6y ago
I just opened a new entity and was looking for an accounting package that was not Quickbooks. It turns out the hardest integration for accounting software isn't some file format or API - its accountants. In the US at least, Quickbooks is the defacto standard, and I've had a terrible time trying to find somebody that is willing to deviate from it. That said I am open and eager to try something new. I really respect the Frappe and ERPNext team, and enjoyed this home page a lot so I downloaded it to my Linux box. I had some really odd UI glitches from the start, mostly just with electron window management (setup screen is not resizeable, then I accidentally resized the main window to 1 px wide). I found that the date picker was hilariously wrong - it would show 30 or 31 for all dates of the month except for the first row, then jump back to the prior month every time I selected a date. I could not remedy this with manually typing in a date entry. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3 https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3 Other little issues: - no app icon on Ubuntu (gnome) desktop - I wish the account names were 'frozen' to the left side of the P&L and Balance Sheet reports. I have to scroll left and right to read the reports. - I kind of need a description line on my invoice line items, or I'm going to need to make a ton of items, which will kind of mess up reporting. - Some of the UI and language isn't really customized for US norms. Its not a big issue but sometimes feels awkward. I hope this is helpful feedback. I'm going to talk with my accountant soon and see if they would be open to trying something new, but until then I'm stuck with Quickbooks. I just can't stand paying for a product that is chock full of ads for other products, and which walls off competitors by design. I do love the stack, and would like to be able to just keep the sqlite.db in Dropbox and share with my other machine and accountant. Best of luck. I could definitely see myself paying for this in the future, preferably one time or annually.
- rushabh 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Will take it and improve it. You can also file the bugs at https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books
- notenoughhorses 6y ago
  As an accountant (working on becoming a software developer), I've started to develop a reluctance to working with different tools because there are so many bad ones out there. Sometimes clients don't realize how bad they are, because they don't use it as much as accountants do, or they don't use the same parts of the software that accountants do (for example, bookkeeper uses data entry side, client uses report reading side) so they aren't bothered by the same issues that really slow you down when you're spending all day working with a tool. I'd be open to working with an open source tool, but it sounds like some of the little issues you already noticed imply there'd be a lot more issues with smooth usability. Odoo is also an open source accounting program, that's been around for awhile, aimed more at ERP side.
qikquestion 6y ago
Just want to say this is an awesome work and much needed product in the market. Hope you get good leads for ERPNext premium offerings through this. It's important for more open source projects to flourish in the market.
franga2000 6y ago
Is there an online version of this? I see one of the "features" is that it's not cloud-based, but it is a web app... so can I self-host it, or would I be stuck with Electron and sharing files on a thumb drive like a caveman?
jesterson 6y ago
Looks fantastic! Cheers for good work. Any plans to develop something like it for personal finance?

243 points by rushabh 6y ago

osrec 6y ago

This looks nice! Do you mind me asking what you used to build your desktop client?

serkanh 6y ago
If you look at the package.json, it looks like they used electron and vue.js. https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json
- osrec 6y ago
  Ah great, thanks!
mgkimsal 6y ago
looks like its electron. https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books or do you mean 'build' in some other way (like a technique or other tool)?

asbasawaraj 6y ago

Much needed desktop app for accounting!

Nextgrid 6y ago
Don’t get your hopes up, it’s Electron.
- codegladiator 6y ago
  So what ?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-desktop-via-google-chrome-browser-6907c01eebe4 https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-desktop-... No need for Electron fat.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  I've been using Manager.io. It's free and great, but not open source, and runs on Mono instead of Electron.

sylvain_kerkour 6y ago

Great job! Can it sync between devices (to avoid to lose data if my computer die)?

rushabh 6y ago
Thank you! It is single threaded. Since it is a file based system (sqlite), so you can put it on your favorite cloud backup.

ofrzeta 6y ago

From the same people who also made ERPNext, "the world's best 100% open source ERP" which was built in their own (open source) web framework called ... Frappe https://frappe.io/frappe https://frappe.io/frappe

rushabh 6y ago
We have been doing ERPNext for 10 years now and a lot of what we did with Frappe Books is based on that learning.

Nextgrid 6y ago

How does this relate to ERPNext? Is this just a packaged ERPNext installation? Is there any way to replicate this with standard, hosted ERPNext?

NickBusey 6y ago
It is a desktop app.
rushabh 6y ago
No this is a fresh implementation and completely in Javascript. ERPNext is a client-server application based on Python. There were a couple of itches we were trying to scratch. First we realized that a lot of people were looking for a good free accounting application and ERPNext was just too heavy. Also we realized that cloud is a bottleneck. Most SMB owners can't manage a cloud or write a simple Shell command. The only way to truly build decentralized solution was Desktop. Also we realized this was a big gap in FOSS offerings. This is just the first version, we do plan to add inventory and other capabilities overtime.
- mathnmusic 6y ago
  Did you evaluate existing FOSS solutions like GNUCash or KMyMoney? Would be interesting to see what you found lacking.
  - rushabh 6y ago
    Yes, mostly a modern user experience. Also the web stack is much more accessible there are many developers who are already familiar with it.

keyrat 6y ago

This looks great. Is there any plan to add time tracking? It's the only reason I'm still with my current *books hosted solution, even though I'm not particularly happy with it.

rushabh 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback. We don't have specific plans as of now, but do add your request on GitHub (https://github.com/frappe/books/issues https://github.com/frappe/books/issues) and be part of the community!
ianmcgowan 6y ago
This is the first thing I looked for - timetracking is critical for freelancers and contractors. I use freshbooks.com and generally like the product, and love the support. Wish they had a way to import time entries from CSV though.. It's probably like the old excel joke - everyone only uses 20% of the features, but every user uses a different 20% ;-)

sudosteph 6y ago

I'll admit I've been a little depressed about the state of open-source software lately - especially when it comes to GPL licensed projects. So to see a new project like this - one that isn't just developer tooling or bleeding edge new-tech experimentation for nerds - it's refreshing! There's nothing wrong with the other sorts of projects - but good GPL software that is actually useful out of the box to average people - that's the dream. At least that's the dream that drove me into this industry in the first place. Thanks for creating and sharing your work.

pjmlp 6y ago
Yeah, from the looks of it, one or two decades more and some flavor of Linux will be the only surviving major GPL software. https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/top-open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/t...

xhkkffbf 6y ago

Can you import your old data from Quicken? Or Quickbooks? Or GnuCash?

xupybd 6y ago

How do they pay that many people giving away software? This is amazing I just don't understand how they do it?

jpalomaki 6y ago
https://erpnext.com/pricing https://erpnext.com/pricing They offer paid support and hosting.

dalerus 6y ago

This looks great, we've been a long time ERPNext customer, but we really only use the accounting and invoicing systems. This might be a better fit for us.

nodesocket 6y ago

I use Quickbooks Self Employed and would love to migrate, but absolutely require three of their features before I can: - Automatically pull transactions from credit cards and banks. - Allow me to manually and automatically tag transactions as business and personal and which tax deduction category it belongs to (rent, apps/software, computers, utilities, etc) - Estimates my quarterly federal tax payments based on income and transaction deductions. Any support for those features?

nh2 6y ago

Hey, this is cool, I'm looking to switch from a proprietary accounting app to something open-source. It being open-source is important mainly because accounting apps UX usually sucks for some specific types of data entry and I want to be able to fix that for my use cases to get the annoying job done faster and get back to programming. I immediately hit some dealbreakers with Frappe though (and filed them as issues, hopefully they are useful), most importantly that I cannot figure out how to delete General Ledger entries (if it is possible at all), see https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129 https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129. In terms of product feedback, I also recommend that you add a "spreadsheet mode" in which you can quickly and immediately edit most of the ledger data in one view, (without having to open popups and so on), with effective search-and-replace. That is a key accounting tool feature to get things done fast. For example, I currently use Banana (https://www.banana.ch/en/features https://www.banana.ch/en/features) which is spreadsheet-based and pretty effective for this task (but could still be a lot better).

jdeisenberg 6y ago

I absolutely adore the Hergé style art on the home page!

rushabh 6y ago
Made by the amazing team at Timeless https://timeless.co/ https://timeless.co/

anon102010 6y ago

Two notes. Fiscal year end start or end normally is sufficient to define the fiscal year. Why is both a start and end date needed for the fiscal year here? That's usually an immediate tell that system was designed by programmers not accountants. Why can't users type in a fiscal year - the date picker is broken, the size of the date picker jumps around for different months, lot's of repeating dates etc. The system allows datepicker to pick odd fiscal year ends (ie, leap years and mid month dates) are these fiscal years properly supported? ERPnext looks great though - I look forward to trying it and supporting it - I imagine it's more refined!!

kevindeasis 6y ago

out of curiosity how do you guys make money? looks like you guys have a big team and have been running for a decade now doing open source stuff

takleizo 6y ago
It looks like they also support ERPNext - I'm assuming that's their primary product offering
rushabh 6y ago
We are just under $1M annual revenue, so not really making a lot of money, but not to bad either. Since we are bootstrapped, so no really pressure to grow exponentially. From very early days we had paying customers (just enough to support a lean team). Our major growth has come in the last 2 years, where our team size grew from <15 to >40. So we are based in India so salaries tend not to inflate too much. We also pick raw talent and nurture them (and also pay above market), so it just about works! Having said that, I think the market for products like ERPNext (our flagship) is huge, in the tens of billions. Looking at our current traction, we really hope we can make the product good enough for enterprises to switch to this. I see a huge potential revenue in support, assurance, consulting when it comes to it. So its a waiting game.

aloukissas 6y ago

I just came here for the awesome name of the product :D

reilly3000 6y ago

I just opened a new entity and was looking for an accounting package that was not Quickbooks. It turns out the hardest integration for accounting software isn't some file format or API - its accountants. In the US at least, Quickbooks is the defacto standard, and I've had a terrible time trying to find somebody that is willing to deviate from it. That said I am open and eager to try something new. I really respect the Frappe and ERPNext team, and enjoyed this home page a lot so I downloaded it to my Linux box. I had some really odd UI glitches from the start, mostly just with electron window management (setup screen is not resizeable, then I accidentally resized the main window to 1 px wide). I found that the date picker was hilariously wrong - it would show 30 or 31 for all dates of the month except for the first row, then jump back to the prior month every time I selected a date. I could not remedy this with manually typing in a date entry. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3 https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3 Other little issues: - no app icon on Ubuntu (gnome) desktop - I wish the account names were 'frozen' to the left side of the P&L and Balance Sheet reports. I have to scroll left and right to read the reports. - I kind of need a description line on my invoice line items, or I'm going to need to make a ton of items, which will kind of mess up reporting. - Some of the UI and language isn't really customized for US norms. Its not a big issue but sometimes feels awkward. I hope this is helpful feedback. I'm going to talk with my accountant soon and see if they would be open to trying something new, but until then I'm stuck with Quickbooks. I just can't stand paying for a product that is chock full of ads for other products, and which walls off competitors by design. I do love the stack, and would like to be able to just keep the sqlite.db in Dropbox and share with my other machine and accountant. Best of luck. I could definitely see myself paying for this in the future, preferably one time or annually.

rushabh 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Will take it and improve it. You can also file the bugs at https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books
notenoughhorses 6y ago
As an accountant (working on becoming a software developer), I've started to develop a reluctance to working with different tools because there are so many bad ones out there. Sometimes clients don't realize how bad they are, because they don't use it as much as accountants do, or they don't use the same parts of the software that accountants do (for example, bookkeeper uses data entry side, client uses report reading side) so they aren't bothered by the same issues that really slow you down when you're spending all day working with a tool. I'd be open to working with an open source tool, but it sounds like some of the little issues you already noticed imply there'd be a lot more issues with smooth usability. Odoo is also an open source accounting program, that's been around for awhile, aimed more at ERP side.

qikquestion 6y ago

Just want to say this is an awesome work and much needed product in the market. Hope you get good leads for ERPNext premium offerings through this. It's important for more open source projects to flourish in the market.

franga2000 6y ago

Is there an online version of this? I see one of the "features" is that it's not cloud-based, but it is a web app... so can I self-host it, or would I be stuck with Electron and sharing files on a thumb drive like a caveman?

jesterson 6y ago

Looks fantastic! Cheers for good work. Any plans to develop something like it for personal finance?