14 ms·

An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

524 points by abouolia 3y ago

bratao 3y ago
I can't help but feel compelled to pause my current tasks and contribute wholeheartedly to this. My frustration with Intuit has reached its tipping point, especially after they acquired a Brazilian financial management software called Zeropaper, which my company heavily relied upon. Intuit then proceeded to discontinue the product and withdraw from the Brazilian market without offering any viable alternatives, leaving us scrambling to migrate promptly. The experience was an eye-opener, teaching me a valuable lesson: regardless of any reassurances given after a product acquisition, it's best to start preparing an exit strategy as soon as possible.
- nulbyte 3y ago
  > I can't help but feel compelled to pause my current tasks and contribute wholeheartedly to this. That is interesting to me, because I had the complete opposite take after less than a minute on the website. I actively avoid QuickBooks because I despise Intuit. But there is no way I would take a project like this seriously when the 'support' link is a link to Discord. Competing with QuickBooks means competing for business clients, yet I can't imagine a business forgoing real documentation for Discord.
  - hedora 3y ago
    The last time I looked for quickbooks documentation, I just found some YouTube videos. Support has been useless too. As much as I don’t use discord at all, having a 50% chance of getting someone that understands internet banking to help troubleshoot internet banking would be compelling.
    - millzlane 3y ago
      I support QuickBooks for smaller companies by calling tech support for them, YMMV.
      - brianjking 3y ago
        Wait, you simply are a middleman? What percentage of the support can you provide without having to call Intuit yourself? Is this lucrative?
        bombcar 3y ago
        It can be a decent side business for an IT support contractor. Quickly you learn the biggest issues, and only really need to spend time on special scenarios.
        olyjohn 3y ago
        This is like 90% of Enterprise IT work. Install some box, follow their directions, make sure the port is open on your firewall... call the vendor when it breaks. IT is so often just being the middle man.
        BrandoElFollito 3y ago
        Yet this is the middle man that brings in the business aspects, the context etc. Installing a product in a bank and at a soft ware vendor's can be dramatically different.
        drumhead 3y ago
        That's pretty standard for a lot of companies. IT log the calls with the supplier.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        I think just having someone who acts as a gatherer of info, so Intuit aren't being sent junk tickets, means service is resumed much quicker. And that's worth paying for.
    - balaselvam 3y ago
      If the company is serious enough about competing with Quickbooks and solving a real customer problem, Discord is not going to cut it.
      - guax 3y ago
        I'm curious. Is this a criticism of their support. Real time chat in general or just specifically discord?
        callmeal 3y ago
        Real time chat in general and discord in particular. Discord cannot be self-hosted, so any support message history will be completely reliant on the goodwill of discord. Another problem with using a chat channel for support (slack has the same problem) is searching for things you know are there but are impossible to find again.
        icemelt8 3y ago
        so you want them to roll-out a discord like platform themselves?
        rco8786 3y ago
        And an ISP to host it on. As we know, if you don't self-host your ISP then you're beholden to the goodwill of a large corporation who could shut you down at any time.
        icemelt8 3y ago
        what about the deep sea cables that run the internet, those can still be blocked by governments right?
        callmeal 3y ago
        No, I want knowledge-base style documentation and faqs. Something slightly better than this single question: https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq
  - Spivak 3y ago
    For better or worse OSS communities organize on Discord now, having an active server where the core contributors participate is the sign of a healthy project. Honestly looks better than a public Slack imho and it's where they'll get the most engagement from devs. Discord is a serious thing now, I've seen enterprise products add support for Discord before Slack.
    - heyoni 3y ago
      Free Slack tiers don’t allow searching beyond 10,000 messages so no one’s going to pick that over a free Discord server without such limitations.
      - Jedd 3y ago
        Even this is no longer true - current free tier of Slack (as of a couple of months ago IIRC) is 90 days of retention, which for low-volume groups of users is even worse.
        andreasha 3y ago
        I think they retain it but you can't access it. One Slack I'm in activated the trial and everything was there and searchable.
        ghostpepper 3y ago
        There used to be a workaround where you can still access the full archive as an exported JSON document
        andreasha 3y ago
        Seems to be still available for "Workspace Owners/Admins and Org Owners/Admins" https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-workspace-data https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-worksp...
    - 3y ago
  - moneywoes 3y ago
    What would support be instead, a phone hotline?
    - stbl219z8y 3y ago
      I think if you’re targeting developers, then Discord is fine. If you’re targeting businesses, then you’d want a contact-us form at the bare minimum.
      - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
        I'm a developer, and I find Discord to be a disorganized mess. I prefer a traditional support forum to Discord, and that's a pretty weak option.
        toastal 3y ago
        And if you want to preach the virtues of FOSS of your product, you’d offer FOSS real-time communications as at least an option. Slap in IRC, an XMPP MUC, Matrix Space. You could bridge to (not from) Discord as a second-class option if it was deemed valuable, but shouldn’t be the primary host.
    - akvadrako 3y ago
      A phone is worse, but almost anything else is better: email, forms, old-school forums, discourse, github issues or discussions, etc...
    - RobotToaster 3y ago
      Anything that isn't a walled garden. A forum, hell even a subreddit would be better, at least it wouldn't require an account to view and is indexable.
  - donutshop 3y ago
    Interesting. I didn't realize they're behind the Argo project. Having second thoughts now.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > But there is no way I would take a project like this seriously when the 'support' link is a link to Discord I always felt that projects used discord-only as a way to signal that they don't want to deal with users.
    - orangepanda 3y ago
      Having interacted with Stripe's chat and email support, I have a similar feeling - their goal is to get me to go away instead of actually helping with my problem. My first and only choice is their discord support, when that doesnt help I rather work around the problem than get stuck in their email limbo.
  - TobyTheDog123 3y ago
    Your take doesn't make sense at all to me. It's an open source project - their customers are going to be small businesses with small teams of technical people to maintain it. I don't think they're competing with QuickBooks at all. Why is Discord not a viable method of communication for these users?
    - icemelt8 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - quadrangle 3y ago
        I'm sure there's some subreddit or something where people appreciate knee-jerk defensive reactions to the entire idea of free/libre/open anything. There are people out there who actually hate public libraries… Supposedly HN is for reasonable discussions of things.
  - that_guy_iain 3y ago
    It seems to be a one man show project, which I don't think is their fulltime gig since the contact me is discord. Someone could fork the project and build on top of it to build a commercial project though. For me, this is actually a common problem with lots of open source projects. They're hobby projects with no commercial support behind them. It's a super good hobby project tho. If they invested in docs I think it would be onto a winner.
  - homero 3y ago
    You'd rather talk to a salesman than chat with the developers? Stripe at the beginning had a chatroom for support
    - nulbyte 3y ago
      No, I'd rather read the documentation than wait for a response to a question that should be addressed in the nonexistent documentation.
  - rco8786 3y ago
    > 'support' link is a link to Discord For a FOSS project targeting people who are comfortable using FOSS this seems entirely fine...desirable even. "We don't have money for phone staff who would put you on hold and only be reading off scripted responses anyway, but you can come chat directly with the leaders and maintainers of the software by chat".
    - jkepler 3y ago
      Why don't they use IRC with public logs? Or a stack exchange style support wiki, so that it becomes documentation over time.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      Discord (and other non-indexable chats like Slack) is where conversations go to die and be hidden forever. FOSS and other "open" projects should be using something like Zulip, or even anything else, that can actually be indexed by Google and other search engines. I'm a part of a few Discords, and questions are repeated over and over again, forever. People who answer the questions, get tired of answering the same thing and eventually stops helping people. In contrast, using Stack Overflow or anything else, people can search Google for answers and actually find it.
      - cpach 3y ago
        Personally I like Discourse. Similar to an old-school forum like phpbb, but with a neat and modern UI.
        metadaemon 3y ago
        I know some of the guys that work there too, really cool people.
        capableweb 3y ago
        ~~~Well, besides the whole thing about my previous comment that everything you write in Discord stays in Discord and is basically not findable unless you're already a part of the Discord. While phpbb (or any public forum really) is by default readable by anyone, so searching for questions let you find answers without having to sign in and join the forum.~~~ Edit: Misheard parent...
  - hluska 3y ago
    This sort of armchair quarterbacking is why many people won’t open source things. Instead of shitting on someone’s work, get involved and make changes. It’s easier and keeps people involved.
    - garbagecoder 3y ago
      Maybe people don't because getting involved means dealing with a bunch of thin-skinned people who can't take a legit criticism, like "accounting software can't have support on Discord." Do you want people to use it or to like you?
  - bcrl 3y ago
    I did some integration work with QuickBooks online, and oh the horror! Simple things like reconciling transactions against a bank account couldn't be done via the supported API. There was basically no way to automate clicking on every single customer payment aside from scraping the website. Bonus: the website screws up when you have thousands of transactions that need to be reconciled. I couldn't come up with a good test case as it seems to be some weird internal race condition. In other words: I wholeheartedly welcome an open source project my business can build on.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Wow, there's so much hate toward Intuit here. Makes me glad I stopped upgrading at QB2010. Still using it regularly. No subscriptions, no cloud, no nasty surprises to contend with. I have custom code that automatically pulls exchange rates from public sources and injects into the appropriate UI fields. My accountant's still able to ingest the file for year-end. Will probably be on it for another decade.
  - atoav 3y ago
    This is the issue with subscriptions that could be regular old software: When the other side of the equation changes you can be in deep troubles. With regular old software you are in control when to make updates, how to vet them and how to move on when no updates are coming.
    - eschneider 3y ago
      Ah...but things like payroll/tax integrations usually require periodic changes, so folks get stuck on the upgrade treadmill even if they're happy. I somehow ended up supporting half the quickbooks users in my town and I can assure folks that most of the quickbook hate out there has been earned. :/ This project looks interesting, especially as a non-cloud offering. As for support...well that's certainly something folks can provide if there's a need.
  - sshanky 3y ago
    Can I downgrade to 2010 from the current version?
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  So your alternative a use a different web program? Knowing that these things happen is why I use gnucash.
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  They did THE EXACT same thing with TradeGecko, an amazing piece of software. RIP
coolestguy 3y ago
It never seems like any of these opensource accounting solutions have bank feeds? Why would anyone manually import bank info when an automatic feed exists.
- api 3y ago
  Back in the day bank feeds were horrific to develop but these days I think there are aggregate feed services. Seems like you could just implement support for one of those?
  - upon_drumhead 3y ago
    Are there any feed services that would sell an individual (person or business) license? It seems like they all strive to be a backend for a SAAS.
    - api 3y ago
      They probably don’t want to deal with individual subscribers but if enough open source users wanted feeds you’d create a niche for a SaaS that does nothing but provide bank feeds for a few bucks a month. That’s the kind of micro SaaS one person could run. There are some things that are “natural SaaS” and interoperability with ugly services run by huge banks that are probably moving targets and probably have administrative overhead to use is one example.
      - ajdude 3y ago
        This seems to be exactly what the creator of SimpleFIN is doing with their "SimpleFIN bridge". Pay a small price and you can use the simplefin API to access any banks that they've supported so far.
    - citelao 3y ago
      I haven't used it, but the team (person?) that makes Buckets (https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com) makes SimpleFIN (https://www.simplefin.org https://www.simplefin.org), which seems like it exposes exactly what you want: simple transaction data from arbitrary banks. Plaid offers transactions APIs (https://plaid.com/products/transactions/ https://plaid.com/products/transactions/), but I guess to your point these APIs are geared towards fintech companies, not personal use. EDIT: I don't know how well it works in general, though. You'd have to test it yourself.
paddw 3y ago
For people who use QuickBooks, what's the main barrier to a viable open-source competitor? Does QuickBooks offer a ton of necessary integrations or something?
- djbusby 3y ago
  Your accountant knows it. When you're on other software, it's a challenge for them - and that costs you extra money.
  - stanislavb 3y ago
    I think this is the major reason. Accountants would usually label themselves as "Quickbooks/Xero certified partner" as a selling point.
    - fma 3y ago
      I had Wave...it was free. Accountant was OK w/ it then asked me to change to Quickbooks after 2 years. I understand Quickbooks has a lot of functionality that's great for CPAs, but none that I need. I'm the one who spends hours a week in it. The only reason why I said yes is because of the many CPAs I've interviewed they were the best (they probably aren't the best, just a lot of them are terrible).
  - mNovak 3y ago
    How hard would it be to export a Quickbooks file to hand over to the accountant (assuming read-only case)? Sort of like Google docs exporting to docx.
    - jermaustin1 3y ago
      My accountant and bookkeepers go in and edit entries and accounts. So there is no read-only case where my CPA is concerned.
    - d_e_solomon 3y ago
      QuickBooks desktop isn't really a supported platform anymore. Most people have migrated to QuickBooks Online and their accountant has a login to their account.
neilv 3y ago
As a non-accountant, I used GnuCash for a small consultig business (including hours tracking, invoicing, and AP), and now mostly really like it for personal finance. https://gnucash.org/ https://gnucash.org/ One thing GnuCash doesn't currently do, but this Bigcapital apparently does, is inventory management.
- mNovak 3y ago
  I use GnuCash for business too. My only complaint is that reports are still hard to customize. Instinctively that feels like something a web platform could do very well.
- softgrow 3y ago
  The other thing GnuCash doesn't do is be a multiuser web app. It's an executable, remember them? There is https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web 0.1.0 but that is just an access to the register you might (or might not) set up on a server to access your database.
  - paulnpace 3y ago
    > The other thing GnuCash doesn't do is be a multiuser web app. Businesses large enough to hire one full time accountant will struggle to use GnuCash, and management (i.e., the owner) isn't going to re-organize all business systems around using an executable. They are going to migrate to Quickbooks. (Note, however, it doesn't require a "web app" as it could just be a locally hosted database, but GnuCash does not support this feature.) I have always found this frustrating because Quickbooks ~2005 has pretty much every feature a business actually uses, so it is at least theoretical that a "feature complete" open source small business accounting software could be realized. Most of the discussions I see in forums here and elsewhere seem to revolve around web-based or technology-based businesses, but the bulk of the Quickbooks small business customers aren't any of these, and I would consider them as the target customer. (GunCash is great for independent contractors and personal finance, so I'm not knocking it.)
el_snark 3y ago
I was slightly interested by this. Moved from MYOB to Gnucash about 20 years ago, and am sometimes thinking there might be a better alternative. However a look at their FAQ (page not found), their documentation, and their discord channel, which is full of people complaining that the installer doesn't work, I don't think this is it, at least not yet. And in fact, for it to be an option for me, there would have to be some sort of migration process, which doesn't seem to exist. Will put it on my "one to watch" list.
burglekutt 3y ago
Has anyone tried https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii? It seems to be under active development but it always makes me nervous when the vast majority of updates come from one person. (What happens to the project when that person isn’t working on it anymore?)
- mrtweetyhack 3y ago
  [dead]
xvilka 3y ago
There's also Plain Text Accounting[1]. The biggest problem of all open source solutions, accountants' experience aside, is the lack of banking and taxes integration, especially outside of US, e.g. for Asian, South American, or African businesses. The most promising FOSS solution for SME I was able to find is Akaunting[2][3]. [1] https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ [2] https://akaunting.com/ https://akaunting.com/ [3] https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting
- theK 3y ago
  Just a word of caution on akaunting, the FOSS product is very much the SaaS product, so lots of buttons will lead to nowhere and you will get CTAs to enable plugins which you later find out only work on the hosted service. I’m my case I even need to patch their css to get invoices to render to PDF „somewhat“ correctly. I’m still sticking around to see if this is just a momentary lapse but it’s been more than a year now…
  - xvilka 3y ago
    Thanks for the information, this doesn't sound good.
    - theK 3y ago
      To balance out the almost entirely negative comment let me say that akaunting does do some things quite well though. Using it with multiple users to collaborate on the accounts works without a hitch and stuff like the dashboards you can click together, the automated invoice mails for due next and overdue, the fact you can export pretty much everything you see to excel and account reconciliations are really great features to have, especially if you don't have inhouse accounting. Akaunting is a great product, I just wish I could actually pay to self host it so that they have income from that and actually keep selfhosted in mind in the long run.
  - ezekg 3y ago
    Have you tried filing an issue, or opening a PR? It's open source after all.
robomartin 3y ago
Good luck. Many layers of the financial system for small and medium businesses are used to working with QB. It's a means of communication. You can hire people who know it. It integrates with every bank and every, well, everything you might need. You accountant --internal or external-- knows it and has a process to work with it. Etc. While FOSS is great, it isn't always better. I think FOSS works well when you have a deeply committed, enthusiastic and dedicated community around a pain point or a need. There are great examples of this, GIMP, KiCAD, Krita and various 3D printer tools being examples of this. Accounting software? I'll believe it when, one day, I walk into my CPA's office and he enthusiastically tells me how he is asking the firm's hundreds of customers to switch to a FOSS solution. In case it was missed, that was sarcasm. I cannot possibly imagine an accounting firm with hundreds of clients both engaging in turning their entire practice upside-down and having their clients endure untold pain just to save a few hundred bucks on software that just happens to work just fine today and has for decades.
- themerone 3y ago
  I know a small business running bespoke accounting software with a lineage predating the PC era. They have some very specialized, industry specific, reporting and invoicing needs that can't be met with a general purpose purpose software. An application provides a great way to modernize their software without a full rewrite.
  - robomartin 3y ago
    Of course, there are lots of businesses who fit this description. This is nothing new. That does not mean that millions don't benefit from and are happy using Quickbooks. Before the mob interprets what I am saying through their reality distortion field, I should note I am NOT hating on FOSS and defending closed-source software as general categories. There is such a thing as useful industry-standard software on both sides of that divide. And it is perfectly OK to point this out. This doesn't have to be a war. This shouldn't be twisted into hatred or attacks on FOSS or even non-FOSS software. Nobody has the moral high ground. There is no such thing. These are tools. Some are free and open, some are not. And that's perfectly OK. Sometimes a little critical thinking and reason is a good thing.
balderdash 3y ago
Why would one use this over GNU Cash?
- kisamoto 3y ago
  GNUCash (which I also use btw) is a local install without multi-user web management. If you're a single person working on the taxes then GNUCash may tick all boxes (although another comment mentioned the need for inventory management which GNUCash doesn't support). It looks like this offers more of a web approach without the need for a local install so it can be a bit more collaborative. Also - and this is personal preference - the GNUCash UI feels quite dated.
  - balderdash 3y ago
    Thanks I was missing yhe multi-web user element
jasonriddle 3y ago
This is very interesting and couldn't have come at a better time for me as I am recently self-employed and I'm having to figure out bookkeeping for myself. Quickbooks blows my mind in how poorly designed and overly complex it feels. I would only use it if my CPA requires it and even then it would still feel like pulling teeth. The main thing for me is as a real estate investor, quickbooks doesn't seem designed for me. It feels designed for a large enterprise with accounts receivable and with multiple products. I don't have any of that. I just have some basic revenue and expenses that I need to track, track my mortgage remaining, and understand cash flow as well as profit and loss. I don't know if BigCapital handles this, but I'm just glad to see a new open-source alternative to quickbooks.
- justinko 3y ago
  Hmmm this smells like a biz opportunity
dang 3y ago
Recent and related: Plain Text Accounting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022005 - May 2023 (43 comments) The end of the accounting search - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36021197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36021197 - May 2023 (203 comments)
offlinehacker 3y ago
Someone send this to SBF, maybe this time he will not f*up accounting
smcleod 3y ago
Under https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq it has "Can I install SigNoz without Docker?" - maybe this was forked from SigNoz?
- c0brac0bra 3y ago
  Maybe the docs site was.
- FateOfNations 3y ago
  It looks like SigNoz is an open-source APM platform, so I doubt that it formed the basis of this. As someone else said, it might be just the docs...
smcleod 3y ago
Looks like it's for USA only - https://github.com/bigcapitalhq/bigcapital/issues/123 https://github.com/bigcapitalhq/bigcapital/issues/123
- FateOfNations 3y ago
  It looks rather generic... rather than being customized to fit any specific country's regulatory system. From what I can tell, the author is not from the United States.
revskill 3y ago
One question, why separate into different tables for each journal (expense, sales,...) . You could also have one journal table instead ?
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  It depends on how they classify them but in many systems sales is separate from the rest because you generate quotes and invoices and mark them as sold but reconcile that against the actual line items in your bank account separately. I.E. sales isn’t ( ecessairly) a subset of all transactions but entirely apart. In addition to sharing few fields and having more columns all to itself, it can just be semantically completely orthogonal to the journals. But I say all this not having looked at this product and I don’t know if sales here works that way or not.
  - revskill 3y ago
    By looking at the db models, i guess they're using Sales Transactions in place of a Sales Journal.
- jsmith99 3y ago
  As an accountant I think of the single source of truth being a single table of double entry transactions (the ledger) but most ERPs actually have a maze of tables to support a sophisticated UI that's easier to use, and when you actually want a ledger then it's generated as a report.
basilgohar 3y ago
I am really happy to see something like this. This is not a criticism of the project. Rather, I lament that more-and-more web-based projects document only a Docker-centered install process for self-hosting as opposed to the process of installing from source. This goes strongly against the spirit of self-hosting where you know what you're running and you see the steps and all the integrations that are needed, including any reliance on third-party services that may come back to bite you. I feel like Docker-based installs are closer to binary, closed-source installs than they are to open-source, compile-or-build-from-source ones in how much they hide how the program works and limits where and how you can run the application. I'd love to hear points for against this, because I think this may also just be me yelling at a cloud like an old man now a days. Edited for clarity.
- user61129028 3y ago
  > This goes strongly against the spirit of self-hosting where you know what you're running and you see the steps and all the integrations that are needed, including any reliance on third-party services that may come back to bite you. No it doesn't. Just read the Dockerfile, it's self documenting and contains all the build steps.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - diordiderot 3y ago
    Or to put it nicely. If you don't want to run docker you can read the Dockerfile as it will contain all of the build step. Then you can enter everything yourself manually.
    - evilduck 3y ago
      Most of the time a Dockerfile is a very useful living installation reference documentation, but it's not guaranteed. It's entirely possible to encounter a Dockerfile that's just copying in binaries built outside of Docker or was a published image capture of hand installed stuff that is just being referenced in downstream images.
Element_ 3y ago
I use freshbooks for my small business (timekeeping, expenses, invoicing) and I just received notice my annual subscription fee will be increased from $270/yr to $324/yr. Not only have they not added any new features to justify this fee increase, but they have actually removed a few features that I depended on like multi-currency reports. I am actively looking for an alternative.
- kyle_martin1 3y ago
  [dead]
- thestepafter 3y ago
  I’m in the same position as you. They keep removing features and raising the prices. Been with them for 6 years. Biggest concern is moving all of my monthly recurring revenue elsewhere since I’m auto billing stored CC information (stored with CC processor only).
  - digisign 3y ago
    Not a big fan of price increases either, however keep in mind there has been 30%+ inflation the last few years.
- drunkan 3y ago
  Same here - mostly just need something for invoicing etc. and its just outrageously expensive. I have been eyeing up https://www.waveapps.com/ https://www.waveapps.com/ as a free alternative (not open source though) but I have not seen it mentioned much in this thread so either its just less known or not very good.
  - Element_ 3y ago
    We started migrating our data to Wave a couple years ago, then it was purchased by H&R Block so we cancelled, I haven't seen it mentioned much since the acquisition.
porl 3y ago
I'm in the early stages of starting a small home business and came across ERPNext which has what appears to be a pretty solid accounting section. Anyone else here used that?
anon-3988 3y ago
Can I use this for personal finance?
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
Wave Financial seems perfectly fine. Clockify for timekeeping. PandaDoc for electronic signatures.
- theK 3y ago
  Seems like none of these are open source.
  - andrewmcwatters 3y ago
    No, what a lot of people do want however, are small business affordable solutions.
kolli_kumar 3y ago
Check out this : https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books - free desktop accounting software. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext - free if you host yourself or $10+ if they host it on their server. ERP Software Both are free. And they are pretty decent.
- M_bara 3y ago
  Yep, trying out a self hosted erpnext. It’s quite smooth and reliable especially when you compare it with Odoo. The cost for their cloud options is also way more economic to Odoo. Want to try out their integration with woo commerce.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get self-hosted ERPNext up and running? I had a beast of a time getting Frappe Bench up and receiving requests, but then it refused to serve a page. There doesn’t seem to be any documentation either.
    - icemelt8 3y ago
      you are right, its impossible to set up frappe, the documents are a mess.
    - twarge 3y ago
      The official instructions worked perfectly for me: https://frappeframework.com/docs/v14/user/en/installation https://frappeframework.com/docs/v14/user/en/installation
chris_wot 3y ago
I strongly advise people learning bookkeeping. The best online site I've seen for this is here: https://www.accountingcoach.com/ https://www.accountingcoach.com/ Quite incredible, and well explained.
- degrees57 3y ago
  Agreed about learning bookkeeping. I was a programmer on a minicomputer decades ago, and when the bookkeeper spoke debits and credits at me, I stared back like a deer in the headlights (I had an engineering education). When I asked the bookkeeper if that was like positive and negative integers, she stared back at me like a deer in the headlights. I went to night school and learned bookkeeping. Turned out to be a very useful skill, both in my professional career and personally.
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
there is gnukhata https://gnukhata.org/ https://gnukhata.org/ that aims to be a free and open source alternative to accounting softwares. it works self hosted and on desktop. Currently only for indian tax markets but work is slowly underway for bringing internationalization. Feel free to check the demo on https://gnukhata.gitlab.io/gkapp https://gnukhata.gitlab.io/gkapp and if interested, help on https://gitlab.com/gnukhata/gkapp https://gitlab.com/gnukhata/gkapp
kyle_martin1 3y ago
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sandGorgon 3y ago
If there are BigCapital devs here, could you please maintain compatibility with https://github.com/ledger/ledger https://github.com/ledger/ledger also i dont see mention of an API. Being able to provide an API to one's own accounting system is a super-power (and probably very incremental to the work you're doing anyway)
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  I don't see how this is actually a use-case. How many people that need accounting software do it from the terminal? And on what earth is that a worthwhile business decision to spend time and money on this?
  - sandGorgon 3y ago
    being able to maintain local backup/copies of your entire general ledger, even if u are using a cloud tool is generally the #1 blocker for any accounting team. Instead of building a whole new format (with implications on testing, etc) - it would be incremental effort to build support for ledger-cli format . And completely mitigate 90% of the objections by accounting teams. not asking for them to build cli functionality. this is the file format - https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Example-Journal-File https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Example-Journal-File
    - RamblingCTO 3y ago
      I understand. But this is not a proper journal file imho. We're actually building something in this space as well and there are way better but probably local standards like the Datev format (essentially CSV). Accountants need double book formatted journal entries. This is just a collection of amounts it seems. But I really appreciate all the different solutions in this space! I build our own when we started.
      - sandGorgon 3y ago
        as far as the ledger-cli google groups [1] go, they seem to think it is a proper journal file. It has been fairly tested with OFX imports (https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/OFX-Import https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/OFX-Import) as well bank autosync (https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync). In fact, someone also wrote a book on this - https://leanpub.com/personal-accounting-in-ledger/ https://leanpub.com/personal-accounting-in-ledger/ I will defer if you are indeed building your own competing tool in this space which is better, but holding to the original point of my request - maybe it will be incremental to support your format if ledger-cli format is supported today. versus not supporting any disk format (or inventing a new one). [1] https://groups.google.com/g/ledger-cli/search?q=double%20entry%20 https://groups.google.com/g/ledger-cli/search?q=double%20ent...
deleted 3y ago
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v3ss0n 3y ago
If you are going to self host , why not just selfhost a fullblown alternative such as ERPNext or Odoo , they all are much capable than quickbook. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://odoo.com https://odoo.com I prefer erpnext/FBook over odoo due to much better performance ,not gimped by freemium/opencoure model (ERPNext promise no freemium )
- revskill 3y ago
  What you need is accounting, not a full-blown ERP.
  - v3ss0n 3y ago
    ERPNEXT have accounting module package as standalone books https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books
jesprenj 3y ago
Given that it's AGPL, are there contributor licence agreements that give bigcapitalhq any exclusive rights over your contributions? If that's the case (if bigcapitalhq gets full IP ownership rights to your contributions), bigcapitalhq can dual licence the software other contributors made and profit of them.
- f_devd 3y ago
  I don't see any indication of a CLA from the pull requests
marcopicentini 3y ago
I would have a software that automatically categorize expenses from my bank account. It’s time consuming to add every new expensive every time. Specially with so many small SaaS subscriptions.
0393134149 3y ago
[flagged]
gamedna 3y ago
Payroll Payroll Payroll, please - Quickbooks has a hold on so many companies b/c of the payroll subscription.
- TrueSlacker0 3y ago
  give gusto a try, you will never go back.
watchdogtimer 3y ago
Another option is Front Accounting (https://frontaccounting.com/ https://frontaccounting.com/). I found it much easier to install than ERPNext.
- octobus2021 3y ago
  Yep it's basically some PHP code and MySql backend, nothing fancy (save maybe for PDF generation).
octobus2021 3y ago
Some constructive critique for the authors. Would definitely help to have more information about the functionality other than 9 paragraphs on the front page. GL, chart of accounts, AR, AP, inventory, invoices, purchase orders, financial reporting (income statement/balance sheet/cash flow), etc etc. Preferably with screenshots and links to some walk-troughs. Would definitely help to add comparison to other solutions (including OSS) out there. I used frontaccouting back in 2010s and was mostly satisfied with it (it is not free or open source but does have "community edition" which is). There's gnucash, plain text accounting, ERPNext, and probably dozens of others... How are you different/better? People already mentioned discord support. I know people hate BBs these days and consider them old-fashioned, but they do provide one central point to see the latest announcements, questions sorted by area (installation vs accounting vs upgrade etc), links to articles and any other useful resources. Discord lacks all of this, and requires de-anonymization and can restrict your access to the platform on a whim. Non-starter for a lot of people. Just my 2c.
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
I wonder if this is a good opportunity to incorporate some form of LLM built in? Could be a killer feature.
the_arun 3y ago
Title seems like click bait. Is this an Open Source software?
dboreham 3y ago
Ok well this makes some sense -- the Gitea business model, where a pretty complex piece of s/w is developed open source primarily funded by one or more business deploying said s/w as a commercial SaaS. But...while QB is a dumpster fire, it has incredibly deep and finicky functionality. Accountants know how to make magic "integrity override" journal entries in its data. It understands how to electronically file a W-2 report in all 50 states. And on and on. I'd be surprised if any OSS solution ever has this richness of functionality, with the level of trust in its correctness required for money and taxes. The SaaS vendor might be able to produce such a thing but it'll end up being the "enterprise upgrade" that isn't available OSS.
- TrueSlacker0 3y ago
  "It understands how to electronically file a W-2 report in all 50 states." Filing a w-2 is payroll related not accounting related. While lots of accounting software does payroll it is not a requirement for accounting software to do so.
enos_feedler 3y ago
Every time I check my finances on Mint I cringe at the $15 charge for Quickbooks. I'll pay the $2/mo to drop ads on Mint. I absolutely hate paying $15/mo for an app that allows me to swipe left/right to sort my credit card charges into business vs. personal. It's disgusting.

524 points by abouolia 3y ago

I can't help but feel compelled to pause my current tasks and contribute wholeheartedly to this. My frustration with Intuit has reached its tipping point, especially after they acquired a Brazilian financial management software called Zeropaper, which my company heavily relied upon. Intuit then proceeded to discontinue the product and withdraw from the Brazilian market without offering any viable alternatives, leaving us scrambling to migrate promptly. The experience was an eye-opener, teaching me a valuable lesson: regardless of any reassurances given after a product acquisition, it's best to start preparing an exit strategy as soon as possible.

nulbyte 3y ago
> I can't help but feel compelled to pause my current tasks and contribute wholeheartedly to this. That is interesting to me, because I had the complete opposite take after less than a minute on the website. I actively avoid QuickBooks because I despise Intuit. But there is no way I would take a project like this seriously when the 'support' link is a link to Discord. Competing with QuickBooks means competing for business clients, yet I can't imagine a business forgoing real documentation for Discord.
- hedora 3y ago
  The last time I looked for quickbooks documentation, I just found some YouTube videos. Support has been useless too. As much as I don’t use discord at all, having a 50% chance of getting someone that understands internet banking to help troubleshoot internet banking would be compelling.
  - millzlane 3y ago
    I support QuickBooks for smaller companies by calling tech support for them, YMMV.
    - brianjking 3y ago
      Wait, you simply are a middleman? What percentage of the support can you provide without having to call Intuit yourself? Is this lucrative?
      - bombcar 3y ago
        It can be a decent side business for an IT support contractor. Quickly you learn the biggest issues, and only really need to spend time on special scenarios.
      - olyjohn 3y ago
        This is like 90% of Enterprise IT work. Install some box, follow their directions, make sure the port is open on your firewall... call the vendor when it breaks. IT is so often just being the middle man.
        BrandoElFollito 3y ago
        Yet this is the middle man that brings in the business aspects, the context etc. Installing a product in a bank and at a soft ware vendor's can be dramatically different.
      - drumhead 3y ago
        That's pretty standard for a lot of companies. IT log the calls with the supplier.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I think just having someone who acts as a gatherer of info, so Intuit aren't being sent junk tickets, means service is resumed much quicker. And that's worth paying for.
  - balaselvam 3y ago
    If the company is serious enough about competing with Quickbooks and solving a real customer problem, Discord is not going to cut it.
    - guax 3y ago
      I'm curious. Is this a criticism of their support. Real time chat in general or just specifically discord?
      - callmeal 3y ago
        Real time chat in general and discord in particular. Discord cannot be self-hosted, so any support message history will be completely reliant on the goodwill of discord. Another problem with using a chat channel for support (slack has the same problem) is searching for things you know are there but are impossible to find again.
        icemelt8 3y ago
        so you want them to roll-out a discord like platform themselves?
        rco8786 3y ago
        And an ISP to host it on. As we know, if you don't self-host your ISP then you're beholden to the goodwill of a large corporation who could shut you down at any time.
        icemelt8 3y ago
        what about the deep sea cables that run the internet, those can still be blocked by governments right?
        callmeal 3y ago
        No, I want knowledge-base style documentation and faqs. Something slightly better than this single question: https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq
- Spivak 3y ago
  For better or worse OSS communities organize on Discord now, having an active server where the core contributors participate is the sign of a healthy project. Honestly looks better than a public Slack imho and it's where they'll get the most engagement from devs. Discord is a serious thing now, I've seen enterprise products add support for Discord before Slack.
  - heyoni 3y ago
    Free Slack tiers don’t allow searching beyond 10,000 messages so no one’s going to pick that over a free Discord server without such limitations.
    - Jedd 3y ago
      Even this is no longer true - current free tier of Slack (as of a couple of months ago IIRC) is 90 days of retention, which for low-volume groups of users is even worse.
      - andreasha 3y ago
        I think they retain it but you can't access it. One Slack I'm in activated the trial and everything was there and searchable.
        ghostpepper 3y ago
        There used to be a workaround where you can still access the full archive as an exported JSON document
        andreasha 3y ago
        Seems to be still available for "Workspace Owners/Admins and Org Owners/Admins" https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-workspace-data https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-worksp...
  - 3y ago
- moneywoes 3y ago
  What would support be instead, a phone hotline?
  - stbl219z8y 3y ago
    I think if you’re targeting developers, then Discord is fine. If you’re targeting businesses, then you’d want a contact-us form at the bare minimum.
    - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      I'm a developer, and I find Discord to be a disorganized mess. I prefer a traditional support forum to Discord, and that's a pretty weak option.
      - toastal 3y ago
        And if you want to preach the virtues of FOSS of your product, you’d offer FOSS real-time communications as at least an option. Slap in IRC, an XMPP MUC, Matrix Space. You could bridge to (not from) Discord as a second-class option if it was deemed valuable, but shouldn’t be the primary host.
  - akvadrako 3y ago
    A phone is worse, but almost anything else is better: email, forms, old-school forums, discourse, github issues or discussions, etc...
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    Anything that isn't a walled garden. A forum, hell even a subreddit would be better, at least it wouldn't require an account to view and is indexable.
- donutshop 3y ago
  Interesting. I didn't realize they're behind the Argo project. Having second thoughts now.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > But there is no way I would take a project like this seriously when the 'support' link is a link to Discord I always felt that projects used discord-only as a way to signal that they don't want to deal with users.
  - orangepanda 3y ago
    Having interacted with Stripe's chat and email support, I have a similar feeling - their goal is to get me to go away instead of actually helping with my problem. My first and only choice is their discord support, when that doesnt help I rather work around the problem than get stuck in their email limbo.
- TobyTheDog123 3y ago
  Your take doesn't make sense at all to me. It's an open source project - their customers are going to be small businesses with small teams of technical people to maintain it. I don't think they're competing with QuickBooks at all. Why is Discord not a viable method of communication for these users?
  - icemelt8 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - quadrangle 3y ago
      I'm sure there's some subreddit or something where people appreciate knee-jerk defensive reactions to the entire idea of free/libre/open anything. There are people out there who actually hate public libraries… Supposedly HN is for reasonable discussions of things.
- that_guy_iain 3y ago
  It seems to be a one man show project, which I don't think is their fulltime gig since the contact me is discord. Someone could fork the project and build on top of it to build a commercial project though. For me, this is actually a common problem with lots of open source projects. They're hobby projects with no commercial support behind them. It's a super good hobby project tho. If they invested in docs I think it would be onto a winner.
- homero 3y ago
  You'd rather talk to a salesman than chat with the developers? Stripe at the beginning had a chatroom for support
  - nulbyte 3y ago
    No, I'd rather read the documentation than wait for a response to a question that should be addressed in the nonexistent documentation.
- rco8786 3y ago
  > 'support' link is a link to Discord For a FOSS project targeting people who are comfortable using FOSS this seems entirely fine...desirable even. "We don't have money for phone staff who would put you on hold and only be reading off scripted responses anyway, but you can come chat directly with the leaders and maintainers of the software by chat".
  - jkepler 3y ago
    Why don't they use IRC with public logs? Or a stack exchange style support wiki, so that it becomes documentation over time.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Discord (and other non-indexable chats like Slack) is where conversations go to die and be hidden forever. FOSS and other "open" projects should be using something like Zulip, or even anything else, that can actually be indexed by Google and other search engines. I'm a part of a few Discords, and questions are repeated over and over again, forever. People who answer the questions, get tired of answering the same thing and eventually stops helping people. In contrast, using Stack Overflow or anything else, people can search Google for answers and actually find it.
    - cpach 3y ago
      Personally I like Discourse. Similar to an old-school forum like phpbb, but with a neat and modern UI.
      - metadaemon 3y ago
        I know some of the guys that work there too, really cool people.
      - capableweb 3y ago
        ~~~Well, besides the whole thing about my previous comment that everything you write in Discord stays in Discord and is basically not findable unless you're already a part of the Discord. While phpbb (or any public forum really) is by default readable by anyone, so searching for questions let you find answers without having to sign in and join the forum.~~~ Edit: Misheard parent...
- hluska 3y ago
  This sort of armchair quarterbacking is why many people won’t open source things. Instead of shitting on someone’s work, get involved and make changes. It’s easier and keeps people involved.
  - garbagecoder 3y ago
    Maybe people don't because getting involved means dealing with a bunch of thin-skinned people who can't take a legit criticism, like "accounting software can't have support on Discord." Do you want people to use it or to like you?
- bcrl 3y ago
  I did some integration work with QuickBooks online, and oh the horror! Simple things like reconciling transactions against a bank account couldn't be done via the supported API. There was basically no way to automate clicking on every single customer payment aside from scraping the website. Bonus: the website screws up when you have thousands of transactions that need to be reconciled. I couldn't come up with a good test case as it seems to be some weird internal race condition. In other words: I wholeheartedly welcome an open source project my business can build on.
rkagerer 3y ago
Wow, there's so much hate toward Intuit here. Makes me glad I stopped upgrading at QB2010. Still using it regularly. No subscriptions, no cloud, no nasty surprises to contend with. I have custom code that automatically pulls exchange rates from public sources and injects into the appropriate UI fields. My accountant's still able to ingest the file for year-end. Will probably be on it for another decade.
- atoav 3y ago
  This is the issue with subscriptions that could be regular old software: When the other side of the equation changes you can be in deep troubles. With regular old software you are in control when to make updates, how to vet them and how to move on when no updates are coming.
  - eschneider 3y ago
    Ah...but things like payroll/tax integrations usually require periodic changes, so folks get stuck on the upgrade treadmill even if they're happy. I somehow ended up supporting half the quickbooks users in my town and I can assure folks that most of the quickbook hate out there has been earned. :/ This project looks interesting, especially as a non-cloud offering. As for support...well that's certainly something folks can provide if there's a need.
- sshanky 3y ago
  Can I downgrade to 2010 from the current version?
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
So your alternative a use a different web program? Knowing that these things happen is why I use gnucash.
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
They did THE EXACT same thing with TradeGecko, an amazing piece of software. RIP

coolestguy 3y ago

It never seems like any of these opensource accounting solutions have bank feeds? Why would anyone manually import bank info when an automatic feed exists.

api 3y ago
Back in the day bank feeds were horrific to develop but these days I think there are aggregate feed services. Seems like you could just implement support for one of those?
- upon_drumhead 3y ago
  Are there any feed services that would sell an individual (person or business) license? It seems like they all strive to be a backend for a SAAS.
  - api 3y ago
    They probably don’t want to deal with individual subscribers but if enough open source users wanted feeds you’d create a niche for a SaaS that does nothing but provide bank feeds for a few bucks a month. That’s the kind of micro SaaS one person could run. There are some things that are “natural SaaS” and interoperability with ugly services run by huge banks that are probably moving targets and probably have administrative overhead to use is one example.
    - ajdude 3y ago
      This seems to be exactly what the creator of SimpleFIN is doing with their "SimpleFIN bridge". Pay a small price and you can use the simplefin API to access any banks that they've supported so far.
  - citelao 3y ago
    I haven't used it, but the team (person?) that makes Buckets (https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com) makes SimpleFIN (https://www.simplefin.org https://www.simplefin.org), which seems like it exposes exactly what you want: simple transaction data from arbitrary banks. Plaid offers transactions APIs (https://plaid.com/products/transactions/ https://plaid.com/products/transactions/), but I guess to your point these APIs are geared towards fintech companies, not personal use. EDIT: I don't know how well it works in general, though. You'd have to test it yourself.

paddw 3y ago

For people who use QuickBooks, what's the main barrier to a viable open-source competitor? Does QuickBooks offer a ton of necessary integrations or something?

djbusby 3y ago
Your accountant knows it. When you're on other software, it's a challenge for them - and that costs you extra money.
- stanislavb 3y ago
  I think this is the major reason. Accountants would usually label themselves as "Quickbooks/Xero certified partner" as a selling point.
  - fma 3y ago
    I had Wave...it was free. Accountant was OK w/ it then asked me to change to Quickbooks after 2 years. I understand Quickbooks has a lot of functionality that's great for CPAs, but none that I need. I'm the one who spends hours a week in it. The only reason why I said yes is because of the many CPAs I've interviewed they were the best (they probably aren't the best, just a lot of them are terrible).
- mNovak 3y ago
  How hard would it be to export a Quickbooks file to hand over to the accountant (assuming read-only case)? Sort of like Google docs exporting to docx.
  - jermaustin1 3y ago
    My accountant and bookkeepers go in and edit entries and accounts. So there is no read-only case where my CPA is concerned.
  - d_e_solomon 3y ago
    QuickBooks desktop isn't really a supported platform anymore. Most people have migrated to QuickBooks Online and their accountant has a login to their account.

neilv 3y ago

As a non-accountant, I used GnuCash for a small consultig business (including hours tracking, invoicing, and AP), and now mostly really like it for personal finance. https://gnucash.org/ https://gnucash.org/ One thing GnuCash doesn't currently do, but this Bigcapital apparently does, is inventory management.

mNovak 3y ago
I use GnuCash for business too. My only complaint is that reports are still hard to customize. Instinctively that feels like something a web platform could do very well.
softgrow 3y ago
The other thing GnuCash doesn't do is be a multiuser web app. It's an executable, remember them? There is https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web 0.1.0 but that is just an access to the register you might (or might not) set up on a server to access your database.
- paulnpace 3y ago
  > The other thing GnuCash doesn't do is be a multiuser web app. Businesses large enough to hire one full time accountant will struggle to use GnuCash, and management (i.e., the owner) isn't going to re-organize all business systems around using an executable. They are going to migrate to Quickbooks. (Note, however, it doesn't require a "web app" as it could just be a locally hosted database, but GnuCash does not support this feature.) I have always found this frustrating because Quickbooks ~2005 has pretty much every feature a business actually uses, so it is at least theoretical that a "feature complete" open source small business accounting software could be realized. Most of the discussions I see in forums here and elsewhere seem to revolve around web-based or technology-based businesses, but the bulk of the Quickbooks small business customers aren't any of these, and I would consider them as the target customer. (GunCash is great for independent contractors and personal finance, so I'm not knocking it.)

el_snark 3y ago

I was slightly interested by this. Moved from MYOB to Gnucash about 20 years ago, and am sometimes thinking there might be a better alternative. However a look at their FAQ (page not found), their documentation, and their discord channel, which is full of people complaining that the installer doesn't work, I don't think this is it, at least not yet. And in fact, for it to be an option for me, there would have to be some sort of migration process, which doesn't seem to exist. Will put it on my "one to watch" list.

burglekutt 3y ago

Has anyone tried https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii? It seems to be under active development but it always makes me nervous when the vast majority of updates come from one person. (What happens to the project when that person isn’t working on it anymore?)

mrtweetyhack 3y ago
[dead]

xvilka 3y ago

There's also Plain Text Accounting[1]. The biggest problem of all open source solutions, accountants' experience aside, is the lack of banking and taxes integration, especially outside of US, e.g. for Asian, South American, or African businesses. The most promising FOSS solution for SME I was able to find is Akaunting[2][3]. [1] https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ [2] https://akaunting.com/ https://akaunting.com/ [3] https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting

theK 3y ago
Just a word of caution on akaunting, the FOSS product is very much the SaaS product, so lots of buttons will lead to nowhere and you will get CTAs to enable plugins which you later find out only work on the hosted service. I’m my case I even need to patch their css to get invoices to render to PDF „somewhat“ correctly. I’m still sticking around to see if this is just a momentary lapse but it’s been more than a year now…
- xvilka 3y ago
  Thanks for the information, this doesn't sound good.
  - theK 3y ago
    To balance out the almost entirely negative comment let me say that akaunting does do some things quite well though. Using it with multiple users to collaborate on the accounts works without a hitch and stuff like the dashboards you can click together, the automated invoice mails for due next and overdue, the fact you can export pretty much everything you see to excel and account reconciliations are really great features to have, especially if you don't have inhouse accounting. Akaunting is a great product, I just wish I could actually pay to self host it so that they have income from that and actually keep selfhosted in mind in the long run.
- ezekg 3y ago
  Have you tried filing an issue, or opening a PR? It's open source after all.

robomartin 3y ago

Good luck. Many layers of the financial system for small and medium businesses are used to working with QB. It's a means of communication. You can hire people who know it. It integrates with every bank and every, well, everything you might need. You accountant --internal or external-- knows it and has a process to work with it. Etc. While FOSS is great, it isn't always better. I think FOSS works well when you have a deeply committed, enthusiastic and dedicated community around a pain point or a need. There are great examples of this, GIMP, KiCAD, Krita and various 3D printer tools being examples of this. Accounting software? I'll believe it when, one day, I walk into my CPA's office and he enthusiastically tells me how he is asking the firm's hundreds of customers to switch to a FOSS solution. In case it was missed, that was sarcasm. I cannot possibly imagine an accounting firm with hundreds of clients both engaging in turning their entire practice upside-down and having their clients endure untold pain just to save a few hundred bucks on software that just happens to work just fine today and has for decades.

themerone 3y ago
I know a small business running bespoke accounting software with a lineage predating the PC era. They have some very specialized, industry specific, reporting and invoicing needs that can't be met with a general purpose purpose software. An application provides a great way to modernize their software without a full rewrite.
- robomartin 3y ago
  Of course, there are lots of businesses who fit this description. This is nothing new. That does not mean that millions don't benefit from and are happy using Quickbooks. Before the mob interprets what I am saying through their reality distortion field, I should note I am NOT hating on FOSS and defending closed-source software as general categories. There is such a thing as useful industry-standard software on both sides of that divide. And it is perfectly OK to point this out. This doesn't have to be a war. This shouldn't be twisted into hatred or attacks on FOSS or even non-FOSS software. Nobody has the moral high ground. There is no such thing. These are tools. Some are free and open, some are not. And that's perfectly OK. Sometimes a little critical thinking and reason is a good thing.

balderdash 3y ago

Why would one use this over GNU Cash?

kisamoto 3y ago
GNUCash (which I also use btw) is a local install without multi-user web management. If you're a single person working on the taxes then GNUCash may tick all boxes (although another comment mentioned the need for inventory management which GNUCash doesn't support). It looks like this offers more of a web approach without the need for a local install so it can be a bit more collaborative. Also - and this is personal preference - the GNUCash UI feels quite dated.
- balderdash 3y ago
  Thanks I was missing yhe multi-web user element

jasonriddle 3y ago

This is very interesting and couldn't have come at a better time for me as I am recently self-employed and I'm having to figure out bookkeeping for myself. Quickbooks blows my mind in how poorly designed and overly complex it feels. I would only use it if my CPA requires it and even then it would still feel like pulling teeth. The main thing for me is as a real estate investor, quickbooks doesn't seem designed for me. It feels designed for a large enterprise with accounts receivable and with multiple products. I don't have any of that. I just have some basic revenue and expenses that I need to track, track my mortgage remaining, and understand cash flow as well as profit and loss. I don't know if BigCapital handles this, but I'm just glad to see a new open-source alternative to quickbooks.

justinko 3y ago
Hmmm this smells like a biz opportunity

dang 3y ago

Recent and related: Plain Text Accounting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022005 - May 2023 (43 comments) The end of the accounting search - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36021197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36021197 - May 2023 (203 comments)

offlinehacker 3y ago

Someone send this to SBF, maybe this time he will not f*up accounting

smcleod 3y ago

Under https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq https://docs.bigcapital.ly/docs/faq it has "Can I install SigNoz without Docker?" - maybe this was forked from SigNoz?

c0brac0bra 3y ago
Maybe the docs site was.
FateOfNations 3y ago
It looks like SigNoz is an open-source APM platform, so I doubt that it formed the basis of this. As someone else said, it might be just the docs...

smcleod 3y ago

Looks like it's for USA only - https://github.com/bigcapitalhq/bigcapital/issues/123 https://github.com/bigcapitalhq/bigcapital/issues/123

FateOfNations 3y ago
It looks rather generic... rather than being customized to fit any specific country's regulatory system. From what I can tell, the author is not from the United States.

revskill 3y ago

One question, why separate into different tables for each journal (expense, sales,...) . You could also have one journal table instead ?

ComputerGuru 3y ago
It depends on how they classify them but in many systems sales is separate from the rest because you generate quotes and invoices and mark them as sold but reconcile that against the actual line items in your bank account separately. I.E. sales isn’t ( ecessairly) a subset of all transactions but entirely apart. In addition to sharing few fields and having more columns all to itself, it can just be semantically completely orthogonal to the journals. But I say all this not having looked at this product and I don’t know if sales here works that way or not.
- revskill 3y ago
  By looking at the db models, i guess they're using Sales Transactions in place of a Sales Journal.
jsmith99 3y ago
As an accountant I think of the single source of truth being a single table of double entry transactions (the ledger) but most ERPs actually have a maze of tables to support a sophisticated UI that's easier to use, and when you actually want a ledger then it's generated as a report.

basilgohar 3y ago

I am really happy to see something like this. This is not a criticism of the project. Rather, I lament that more-and-more web-based projects document only a Docker-centered install process for self-hosting as opposed to the process of installing from source. This goes strongly against the spirit of self-hosting where you know what you're running and you see the steps and all the integrations that are needed, including any reliance on third-party services that may come back to bite you. I feel like Docker-based installs are closer to binary, closed-source installs than they are to open-source, compile-or-build-from-source ones in how much they hide how the program works and limits where and how you can run the application. I'd love to hear points for against this, because I think this may also just be me yelling at a cloud like an old man now a days. Edited for clarity.

user61129028 3y ago
> This goes strongly against the spirit of self-hosting where you know what you're running and you see the steps and all the integrations that are needed, including any reliance on third-party services that may come back to bite you. No it doesn't. Just read the Dockerfile, it's self documenting and contains all the build steps.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- diordiderot 3y ago
  Or to put it nicely. If you don't want to run docker you can read the Dockerfile as it will contain all of the build step. Then you can enter everything yourself manually.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    Most of the time a Dockerfile is a very useful living installation reference documentation, but it's not guaranteed. It's entirely possible to encounter a Dockerfile that's just copying in binaries built outside of Docker or was a published image capture of hand installed stuff that is just being referenced in downstream images.

Element_ 3y ago

I use freshbooks for my small business (timekeeping, expenses, invoicing) and I just received notice my annual subscription fee will be increased from $270/yr to $324/yr. Not only have they not added any new features to justify this fee increase, but they have actually removed a few features that I depended on like multi-currency reports. I am actively looking for an alternative.

kyle_martin1 3y ago
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thestepafter 3y ago
I’m in the same position as you. They keep removing features and raising the prices. Been with them for 6 years. Biggest concern is moving all of my monthly recurring revenue elsewhere since I’m auto billing stored CC information (stored with CC processor only).
- digisign 3y ago
  Not a big fan of price increases either, however keep in mind there has been 30%+ inflation the last few years.
drunkan 3y ago
Same here - mostly just need something for invoicing etc. and its just outrageously expensive. I have been eyeing up https://www.waveapps.com/ https://www.waveapps.com/ as a free alternative (not open source though) but I have not seen it mentioned much in this thread so either its just less known or not very good.
- Element_ 3y ago
  We started migrating our data to Wave a couple years ago, then it was purchased by H&R Block so we cancelled, I haven't seen it mentioned much since the acquisition.

porl 3y ago

I'm in the early stages of starting a small home business and came across ERPNext which has what appears to be a pretty solid accounting section. Anyone else here used that?

anon-3988 3y ago

Can I use this for personal finance?

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

Wave Financial seems perfectly fine. Clockify for timekeeping. PandaDoc for electronic signatures.

theK 3y ago
Seems like none of these are open source.
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  No, what a lot of people do want however, are small business affordable solutions.

kolli_kumar 3y ago

Check out this : https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books - free desktop accounting software. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext - free if you host yourself or $10+ if they host it on their server. ERP Software Both are free. And they are pretty decent.

M_bara 3y ago
Yep, trying out a self hosted erpnext. It’s quite smooth and reliable especially when you compare it with Odoo. The cost for their cloud options is also way more economic to Odoo. Want to try out their integration with woo commerce.
- FredPret 3y ago
  If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get self-hosted ERPNext up and running? I had a beast of a time getting Frappe Bench up and receiving requests, but then it refused to serve a page. There doesn’t seem to be any documentation either.
  - icemelt8 3y ago
    you are right, its impossible to set up frappe, the documents are a mess.
  - twarge 3y ago
    The official instructions worked perfectly for me: https://frappeframework.com/docs/v14/user/en/installation https://frappeframework.com/docs/v14/user/en/installation

chris_wot 3y ago

I strongly advise people learning bookkeeping. The best online site I've seen for this is here: https://www.accountingcoach.com/ https://www.accountingcoach.com/ Quite incredible, and well explained.

degrees57 3y ago
Agreed about learning bookkeeping. I was a programmer on a minicomputer decades ago, and when the bookkeeper spoke debits and credits at me, I stared back like a deer in the headlights (I had an engineering education). When I asked the bookkeeper if that was like positive and negative integers, she stared back at me like a deer in the headlights. I went to night school and learned bookkeeping. Turned out to be a very useful skill, both in my professional career and personally.

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

there is gnukhata https://gnukhata.org/ https://gnukhata.org/ that aims to be a free and open source alternative to accounting softwares. it works self hosted and on desktop. Currently only for indian tax markets but work is slowly underway for bringing internationalization. Feel free to check the demo on https://gnukhata.gitlab.io/gkapp https://gnukhata.gitlab.io/gkapp and if interested, help on https://gitlab.com/gnukhata/gkapp https://gitlab.com/gnukhata/gkapp

kyle_martin1 3y ago

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sandGorgon 3y ago

If there are BigCapital devs here, could you please maintain compatibility with https://github.com/ledger/ledger https://github.com/ledger/ledger also i dont see mention of an API. Being able to provide an API to one's own accounting system is a super-power (and probably very incremental to the work you're doing anyway)

RamblingCTO 3y ago
I don't see how this is actually a use-case. How many people that need accounting software do it from the terminal? And on what earth is that a worthwhile business decision to spend time and money on this?
- sandGorgon 3y ago
  being able to maintain local backup/copies of your entire general ledger, even if u are using a cloud tool is generally the #1 blocker for any accounting team. Instead of building a whole new format (with implications on testing, etc) - it would be incremental effort to build support for ledger-cli format . And completely mitigate 90% of the objections by accounting teams. not asking for them to build cli functionality. this is the file format - https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Example-Journal-File https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Example-Journal-File
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    I understand. But this is not a proper journal file imho. We're actually building something in this space as well and there are way better but probably local standards like the Datev format (essentially CSV). Accountants need double book formatted journal entries. This is just a collection of amounts it seems. But I really appreciate all the different solutions in this space! I build our own when we started.
    - sandGorgon 3y ago
      as far as the ledger-cli google groups [1] go, they seem to think it is a proper journal file. It has been fairly tested with OFX imports (https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/OFX-Import https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/OFX-Import) as well bank autosync (https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync). In fact, someone also wrote a book on this - https://leanpub.com/personal-accounting-in-ledger/ https://leanpub.com/personal-accounting-in-ledger/ I will defer if you are indeed building your own competing tool in this space which is better, but holding to the original point of my request - maybe it will be incremental to support your format if ledger-cli format is supported today. versus not supporting any disk format (or inventing a new one). [1] https://groups.google.com/g/ledger-cli/search?q=double%20entry%20 https://groups.google.com/g/ledger-cli/search?q=double%20ent...

deleted 3y ago

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v3ss0n 3y ago

If you are going to self host , why not just selfhost a fullblown alternative such as ERPNext or Odoo , they all are much capable than quickbook. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://odoo.com https://odoo.com I prefer erpnext/FBook over odoo due to much better performance ,not gimped by freemium/opencoure model (ERPNext promise no freemium )

revskill 3y ago
What you need is accounting, not a full-blown ERP.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  ERPNEXT have accounting module package as standalone books https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books

jesprenj 3y ago

Given that it's AGPL, are there contributor licence agreements that give bigcapitalhq any exclusive rights over your contributions? If that's the case (if bigcapitalhq gets full IP ownership rights to your contributions), bigcapitalhq can dual licence the software other contributors made and profit of them.

f_devd 3y ago
I don't see any indication of a CLA from the pull requests

marcopicentini 3y ago

I would have a software that automatically categorize expenses from my bank account. It’s time consuming to add every new expensive every time. Specially with so many small SaaS subscriptions.

0393134149 3y ago

[flagged]

gamedna 3y ago

Payroll Payroll Payroll, please - Quickbooks has a hold on so many companies b/c of the payroll subscription.

TrueSlacker0 3y ago
give gusto a try, you will never go back.

watchdogtimer 3y ago

Another option is Front Accounting (https://frontaccounting.com/ https://frontaccounting.com/). I found it much easier to install than ERPNext.

octobus2021 3y ago
Yep it's basically some PHP code and MySql backend, nothing fancy (save maybe for PDF generation).

octobus2021 3y ago

Some constructive critique for the authors. Would definitely help to have more information about the functionality other than 9 paragraphs on the front page. GL, chart of accounts, AR, AP, inventory, invoices, purchase orders, financial reporting (income statement/balance sheet/cash flow), etc etc. Preferably with screenshots and links to some walk-troughs. Would definitely help to add comparison to other solutions (including OSS) out there. I used frontaccouting back in 2010s and was mostly satisfied with it (it is not free or open source but does have "community edition" which is). There's gnucash, plain text accounting, ERPNext, and probably dozens of others... How are you different/better? People already mentioned discord support. I know people hate BBs these days and consider them old-fashioned, but they do provide one central point to see the latest announcements, questions sorted by area (installation vs accounting vs upgrade etc), links to articles and any other useful resources. Discord lacks all of this, and requires de-anonymization and can restrict your access to the platform on a whim. Non-starter for a lot of people. Just my 2c.

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

I wonder if this is a good opportunity to incorporate some form of LLM built in? Could be a killer feature.

the_arun 3y ago

Title seems like click bait. Is this an Open Source software?

dboreham 3y ago

Ok well this makes some sense -- the Gitea business model, where a pretty complex piece of s/w is developed open source primarily funded by one or more business deploying said s/w as a commercial SaaS. But...while QB is a dumpster fire, it has incredibly deep and finicky functionality. Accountants know how to make magic "integrity override" journal entries in its data. It understands how to electronically file a W-2 report in all 50 states. And on and on. I'd be surprised if any OSS solution ever has this richness of functionality, with the level of trust in its correctness required for money and taxes. The SaaS vendor might be able to produce such a thing but it'll end up being the "enterprise upgrade" that isn't available OSS.

TrueSlacker0 3y ago
"It understands how to electronically file a W-2 report in all 50 states." Filing a w-2 is payroll related not accounting related. While lots of accounting software does payroll it is not a requirement for accounting software to do so.

enos_feedler 3y ago

Every time I check my finances on Mint I cringe at the $15 charge for Quickbooks. I'll pay the $2/mo to drop ads on Mint. I absolutely hate paying $15/mo for an app that allows me to swipe left/right to sort my credit card charges into business vs. personal. It's disgusting.