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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 integra

by 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.
  - theK 3y ago
    I had mentioned the problem and my workaround in their support forum. The only feedback I got was from other users stating they had the same problem. Maybe I'll make an out of the blue PR at some point but looking at PRs and Issues on GH it doesn't seem that there is a lot of crossborder discussion happening there either. That said, I'm still going to be invoicing my clients via my selfhosted akaunting instance tonight. So maybe its not that bad after all.
edpichler 3y ago
Guys, all of this amazing text based accounting software are very interesting to me. Does anyone knows if is there any feature for automatic registering of depreciation? If not, how to do not forget to register and how to keep track of all assets that will depreciate? Separated file?
- husky00 3y ago
  A cursory Google search lead me to this[1], which seems to be what you're looking for, something similar probably exists for ledger/hledger. Personally having dealt with crypto in beancount a few times I used a separate file which got updated periodically with a script, which worked well enough. If you're interested I suggest reading the beancount cookbook[2] as it contain many examples. [1] https://github.com/davidastephens/beancount-plugins#automatic-depreciation https://github.com/davidastephens/beancount-plugins#automati... [2] https://beancount.github.io/docs/command_line_accounting_cookbook.html https://beancount.github.io/docs/command_line_accounting_coo...
- kqr 3y ago
  The dumb answer is that it should be fairly uncomplicated to write a script that idempotently adds depreciation for depreciable assets. I suspect that's the general strength and weakness of plain text accounting. There's not as much pre-built tooling, but it's not that hard to build on your own.
- Naga 3y ago
  You'd need to write a script yourself for this. The general ledger generally doesn't include enough information about all of your assets, expected end of useful life, serials, etc. It's pretty common for accounting software packages to track this stuff and calculate depreciation, but like you're guessing its a separate process. I was an accountant in a former life, and this is a question that most companies end up solving with their accounting software. Last time I looked into ledger or hledger it didn't include this stuff (or I didn't notice that it did).
  - simonmic 3y ago
    After a quick search of docs, I think that's still the case. hledger-interest is possibly a useful component.
ShandyDeal 3y ago
I 1000% agree with the comment about tax reports. When I was a contractor, I set up a Ltd company in the UK and had a really hard time working out which software could do my reports for me. I just wanted something that could easily make documents that would be accepted by HMRC. The UK tax system is incredibly lenient in my experience. They're happy to help you out with any problems or mistakes you make. You just need documents filed on time in the correct format. But it was a nightmare working out which software could export the correct format for me, so I ended up just paying for Xero in the end. £28/month for a small business, that's over £300 a year I could save if something open-source was well document and said on the website that it supported UK tax documents. But I didn't have the time to download every option, put in a bunch of fake data, and then inspect the report against the HMRC guidelines.
jonathanstrange 3y ago
Unfortunately, many countries also have the market regulated and not very open. AFAIK, in Portugal accounting software needs to be certified and comes with some connection to the tax authority for electronic transmission of reports (although this is optional). The certification process is complicated, and the accounting software on the market is all quite expensive. Everybody hires an accountant. My girlfriend works for a small business (6 employees) and they're paying 400 Euro/month for accounting.
funnym0nk3y 3y ago
What about all the add-on apps? Are they Foss as well? Or is this a minimal open core product like Odoo?

by xvilka 3y ago

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.
- theK 3y ago
  I had mentioned the problem and my workaround in their support forum. The only feedback I got was from other users stating they had the same problem. Maybe I'll make an out of the blue PR at some point but looking at PRs and Issues on GH it doesn't seem that there is a lot of crossborder discussion happening there either. That said, I'm still going to be invoicing my clients via my selfhosted akaunting instance tonight. So maybe its not that bad after all.

edpichler 3y ago

Guys, all of this amazing text based accounting software are very interesting to me. Does anyone knows if is there any feature for automatic registering of depreciation? If not, how to do not forget to register and how to keep track of all assets that will depreciate? Separated file?

husky00 3y ago
A cursory Google search lead me to this[1], which seems to be what you're looking for, something similar probably exists for ledger/hledger. Personally having dealt with crypto in beancount a few times I used a separate file which got updated periodically with a script, which worked well enough. If you're interested I suggest reading the beancount cookbook[2] as it contain many examples. [1] https://github.com/davidastephens/beancount-plugins#automatic-depreciation https://github.com/davidastephens/beancount-plugins#automati... [2] https://beancount.github.io/docs/command_line_accounting_cookbook.html https://beancount.github.io/docs/command_line_accounting_coo...
kqr 3y ago
The dumb answer is that it should be fairly uncomplicated to write a script that idempotently adds depreciation for depreciable assets. I suspect that's the general strength and weakness of plain text accounting. There's not as much pre-built tooling, but it's not that hard to build on your own.
Naga 3y ago
You'd need to write a script yourself for this. The general ledger generally doesn't include enough information about all of your assets, expected end of useful life, serials, etc. It's pretty common for accounting software packages to track this stuff and calculate depreciation, but like you're guessing its a separate process. I was an accountant in a former life, and this is a question that most companies end up solving with their accounting software. Last time I looked into ledger or hledger it didn't include this stuff (or I didn't notice that it did).
- simonmic 3y ago
  After a quick search of docs, I think that's still the case. hledger-interest is possibly a useful component.

ShandyDeal 3y ago

I 1000% agree with the comment about tax reports. When I was a contractor, I set up a Ltd company in the UK and had a really hard time working out which software could do my reports for me. I just wanted something that could easily make documents that would be accepted by HMRC. The UK tax system is incredibly lenient in my experience. They're happy to help you out with any problems or mistakes you make. You just need documents filed on time in the correct format. But it was a nightmare working out which software could export the correct format for me, so I ended up just paying for Xero in the end. £28/month for a small business, that's over £300 a year I could save if something open-source was well document and said on the website that it supported UK tax documents. But I didn't have the time to download every option, put in a bunch of fake data, and then inspect the report against the HMRC guidelines.

jonathanstrange 3y ago

Unfortunately, many countries also have the market regulated and not very open. AFAIK, in Portugal accounting software needs to be certified and comes with some connection to the tax authority for electronic transmission of reports (although this is optional). The certification process is complicated, and the accounting software on the market is all quite expensive. Everybody hires an accountant. My girlfriend works for a small business (6 employees) and they're paying 400 Euro/month for accounting.

funnym0nk3y 3y ago

What about all the add-on apps? Are they Foss as well? Or is this a minimal open core product like Odoo?