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Akaunting is free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses
- Exuma 2y agodat name doe
- nashashmi 2y agoI love seeing open source business administration software. I go thru it and learn business administration concepts. I wonder if there is any other resource for exposing these things.
- 31337Logic 2y ago"Online" and "accounting" in the same sentence? I'm out.
- giantg2 2y agoThere's a self-hosted option that's free.
- ariejan 2y agoMeh, this feels more like marketing than open source. The "free" on premise hosted version is limited. Also, no mention of "apps", like inventory, stripe, PoS, etc. for the self hosted version. Edit: it seems the on-premise version supports apps: There is no app included in any plan. All apps must be purchased separately from the App Store.
- srockets 2y agoAs in not-too-large can of a beer, as it is limited to no more than 2 users and 1000 invoices. It isn't free as in software, as both FSF and OSI requires software compatible with their goals to have no limitations on use.
- systems 2y agoalmost all ERP systems now moved to the cloud on premise is the exception
- throwaway4good 2y agoAs far as I can tell that is the way things are going. A number of countries, eg Denmark, is implementing legislation that basically requires this - by requiring backup, standard accounting model for compliance check, electronic invoices, online vat etc.
- macmac 2y agoThere are absolutely no requirements in Danish law neither current or pending that requires a system to be "online" or "hosted".
- throwaway4good 2y agoIt is not an explicit requirement - the new legislation just lists a number of things that are kinda hard to do without being online.
- macmac 2y agoI am curious which requirements you think this applies to?
- agos 2y agoelectronic invoicing is hard to do offline
- throwaway4good 2y agoThe ones I listed. I think the traditional standalone accounting software will be a thing of the past here after the implementation of the new accounting law. Also cloud based accounting systems are probably easier to make money on.
- twarge 2y agoERPNext is the actually open source accounting software to consider here.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoIndeed. ERPNext is GPLv3. https://erpnext.com/license-trademark https://erpnext.com/license-trademark
- cabronerp 2y agoWe're working on an MIT-licensed ERP built on Supabase/Remix. Currently ERPNext is much better (because it's more flushed out). But not for long I hope :) https://github.com/barbinbrad/carbon https://github.com/barbinbrad/carbon
- notpushkin 2y agohttps://carbon.us.org/ https://carbon.us.org/ Interesting choice of a TLD. At first I thought it was free (like eu.org) but it seems that it's around $15, so pretty much like other domains. Is there a particular reason you went with .us.org?
- cabronerp 2y agoYeah, I like it -- but our team unanimously think it's stupid haha. So we'll be moving over to this domain soon: https://docs.crbnerp.com https://docs.crbnerp.com -- It's tough to get a good domain.
- ahachete 2y agoThe software seems to be licensed under the BSL license [1] which is not open source. Please correct the title to avoid misleading headlines. [1] https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting/blob/master/LICENSE.t...
- Timshel 2y agoI was not familiar with the BSL license. It's interesting that it will "automatically" switch to GPLv3 in 4 years (as specified in the license). Would be nice if more closed source software were released with such a license. Edit: the production Use Grant are atrocious : > You may make production use of the Licensed Work, provided you do not use it in any of the following ways: (1) Use the Licensed Work with a total of more than two users or one company or one thousand invoices.
- graemep 2y agoIf you have a single user you can use desktop software (I use Gnucash myself). If you have more than two users you cannot use it in production. SO it only useful if you have exactly two users. The SSPL seems far close to being open than the BSL.
- jstummbillig 2y agoIt's also useful as a single user if you prefer it over using desktop software, for the same reasons/tradeoff that it always is.
- sofixa 2y ago> I was not familiar with the BSL license. > It's interesting that it will "automatically" switch to GPLv3 in 4 years (as specified in the license). > Would be nice if more closed source software were released with such a license. And it would be nice if there was a better term than "source available" to describe licenses such as BSL and SSPL, and ideally to differentiate usage grants. GitHub project under BSL with the above very constraining usage grant vs GitLab project BSL with "do whatever you want just don't host to sell to others" vs code with no license thrown on a .zip on an FTP are all "source available".
- mgulick 2y agoBah, not open source, rather BSL licensed. Stop it with the open-washing already!
- naasking 2y agoGithub: https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting Written in PHP.
- Bluescreenbuddy 2y agoLet me guess. Free until they get a lot of users and then they'll switch to Paid knowing not everyone can simply move.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoOh, no, not at all... For anything but the most trivial of uses, it's paid now. The title says "free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses", but it's more like "free xor online" and source-available, not open source.
- systems 2y agothe website act a bit weird, like laggy, when i scroll or click a link and to save you few click, it uses PHP as the underlying platform and language
- esskay 2y agoFor additional context, it's using Laravel, Livewire, Alpine and Tailwind (the 'TALL' stack) - pretty common and a nice stable base.
- oldandboring 2y agoI doubt that will appease the haters. I still think it's funny that we've somehow birthed a whole generation of young developers who will talk shit about the tried-and-true technologies that practically everything runs on, and then go back to reinventing every possible wheel they can find in checks notes Javascript.
- Operyl 2y agoPeople have been hating on this or that language. In particular PHP for the better part of 15/20 years now. It’s just human nature and tribalism at this point I guess. There’s the potential to create insecure code in any language, it just happened most often in PHP because of how accessible and cheap it was for the masses with shared hosting is all.
- esskay 2y agoIt also didn't help that a wildly inaccurate blog post was spread around (PHP: A fractal of bad design) and people took it as gospel, and still do to this day even though its a totally different language these days. PHP pays the bills and these days has fewer novices writing utter junk, that's a plus in my book!
- esskay 2y agoThe easiest way to silence someone who's die-hard over the top in love with Javascript is ask them to compile something they wrote 3 years ago from scratch without a copy of the node_modules directory from its original compilation. Then you get to watch the mountain of errors and ridiculous amount of time wasted.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoIs there actually open source accounting software?
- balderdash 2y agoGNU Cash?
- mih 2y agoGNUCash - https://gnucash.org/ https://gnucash.org/ Ledger - https://ledger-cli.org/ https://ledger-cli.org/
- graemep 2y agoGnucash is good but single user only.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EvanAnderson 2y agoAn earlier commenter referenced ERPNext. It's GPLv3-licensed. https://erpnext.com/ https://erpnext.com/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sfont 2y agoOfbiz is open source with the Apache license. https://ofbiz.apache.org https://ofbiz.apache.org
- rushabh 2y agoAlso Frappe Books - https://github.com/frappe/books https://github.com/frappe/books
- unmole 2y ago
- mirzap 2y agoIt's a nice product, but unfortunately it doesn't come with an OSS-friendly license. FSL could be a middle ground, but BSL isn't good.
- caseysoftware 2y agoI've used this one for the last ~18 months, self hosted. Terrible name but pretty solid product.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> Akaunting is free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses So my obvious questions are 1. if it's free, how do they make money / maintain it, and 2. if it's online, how is it kept secure. So... > That's right, completely free. The Standard plan of the On-Premise (self-hosted) version is free in terms of price and freedom (source code available). If by "completely free" you mean "with a lot of restrictions, starting with self-hosting" and by "freedom" you don't mean the same thing everyone else means by that (since as everyone else pointed out this is not open source). Okay, fine, by "free, open-open source online accounting software" they mean "free or online but not both, and source-available". That's more lies than I would want from accounting software, but let's see if they're secure. From the front page: > As we talk about your financials, you must be sure that data is in safe and software doesn't abuse them. Open Source software provides you full privacy. Again, not open source, but source-available does mean auditable. Of course, it doesn't mean privacy-respecting (even real FOSS can expose your data, you can just see that it does and patch it), and it helps but it certainly doesn't automatically mean secure. Then on https://akaunting.com/plans https://akaunting.com/plans : > Is my data safe? > Completely safe. Our servers are protected physically and electronically. Any connection between you and Akaunting Cloud is protected by 256-bit SSL encryption, and backups are taken hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. So, uh. I cannot stress enough how much that would not reassure me. No mention of at-rest encryption, no audits, no reason to think they aren't hosting the thing on servers that never get security patches. "We use HTTPS and take backups" is something but it's the bare minimum for any paid SaaS, not something to brag about and nowhere near good enough for something with all your financial information.
- jxdxbx 2y agoI would not trust an "open source" app that is just a web app.
- focusgroup0 2y agoI looked into Akaunting a few months ago. Pulling and running the latest docker image immediately resulted in an error. Going to the forums, there was a thread with many complaining about the issue. No response from the devs for weeks. Would recommend looking elsewhere.
- ipaddr 2y agoWhat open source package do you recommend?
- rabbitofdeath 2y agoI looked at Akaunting, but the licensing was not appealing. I've used Invoice Ninja (https://www.invoiceninja.org/ https://www.invoiceninja.org/) for over a year now. I pay for the white label and have had minimal issues.
- notpushkin 2y agoInvoice Ninja license is even worse: https://github.com/invoiceninja/invoiceninja/blob/v5-stable/LICENSE https://github.com/invoiceninja/invoiceninja/blob/v5-stable/...
- rabbitofdeath 2y agooh wow. I don't know how I missed this.
- fallat 2y agoI started using ledger-cli this year. I can't imagine anything better. Someone should just write a ledger-cli graphical view with the text file as still the primary way to input new data.
- candiddevmike 2y agoLedger seems too tedious to me for some reason. Tabbing through a form view like GnuCash was a lot easier/faster than ledger's CLI. Editing the text files isn't great either, the text formatting is white space heavy and meant to be readable (but not very writable). Would've been nice to have it as YAML or Jsonnet maybe.
- rigid 2y agoledger-cli is rock solid but it lacks a decent TUI. Really all I want is an 80s TUI accounting app that "just works" as ledger does but with a menu driven interface with keyboard shortcut support. Modern stuff like multi-user capabilities, plugins, templates, API etc. wouldn't hurt.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ultimatebms 2y agoI just tried to create a company named 'Test Company' and got validation error. I changed to 'Real Company' and got through validation. That's just silly logic. What other special validation will trip me up? What if my company name is really 'Test Company'? How do I receive a payment against an invoice?