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An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

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Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#141

Post by icemelt8 »

FredPret wrote: post #96
M_bara wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

you are right, its impossible to set up frappe, the documents are a mess.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#142

Post by d_e_solomon »

mNovak wrote: post #16
djbusby wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your accountant knows it. When you're on other software, it's a challenge for them - and that costs you extra money.

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.

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.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#143

Post by master-lincoln »

robomartin wrote: post #52
themerone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 s…

Why are you so aggressive in your tone?

> This is nothing new. That does not mean that millions don't benefit

Nobody claimed this is new or that not millions benefit or are happy with QB (source needed though).

> Before the mob interprets what I am saying through their reality distortion field

Which mob? Reality distortion? Nobody was accusing you of hating FOSS, why do you feel you need to defend yourself?

> This doesn't have to be a war.

To me there was no indication it is a war. Why do you feel it is?

> Nobody has the moral high ground. There is no such thing.

Bold claim. There is no such thing as moral high ground?

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#144

Post by d_e_solomon »

paddw wrote: post #7

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?

Bank, payroll, and tax integration on the lock in front. Also, QuickBooks is really easy to get going for non-accountants and historically at least, their support was really good. That's what really made them really popular.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#145

Post by RamblingCTO »

sandGorgon wrote: post #137
RamblingCTO wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 functionali…

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.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#146

Post by paulnpace »

softgrow wrote: post #65
neilv wrote: post #11

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/ One thing GnuCash doesn't currently do, but this Bigcapital apparently does, is inventory management.

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 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.

> 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.)

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#147

Post by v3ss0n »

revskill wrote: post #109
v3ss0n wrote: post #106

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://odoo.com I prefer erpnext/FBook over odoo due to much better performance ,not gimped by freemium/opencoure model (ERPNext promise no freemium )

What you need is accounting, not a full-blown ERP.

ERPNEXT have accounting module package as standalone books https://github.com/frappe/books

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#148

Post by homero »

nulbyte wrote: post #18
bratao wrote: post #2

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, leavin…

> 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 bus…

You'd rather talk to a salesman than chat with the developers? Stripe at the beginning had a chatroom for support

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#149

Post by paulnpace »

basilgohar wrote: post #50

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, includin…

I think it goes against the spirit of FOSS, as docker is all but a proprietary Linux format, and definitely not POSIX(-ish) compliant.

As I prefer using OpenBSD for self-hosting (and I speculate that if more self-hosters learned OpenBSD, they likely would also prefer it), I am acutely aware of not only how Docker has gradually taken over nearly all new FOSS projects, but also how many people involved in FOSS projects generally assume GNU / Linux as a prerequisite to all FOSS projects.

Re: An open-source alternative to QuickBooks

#150

Post by sandGorgon »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #145
sandGorgon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 functionali…

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.

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) as well bank autosync (https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync).

In fact, someone also wrote a book on this - 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%20ent...

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