Accounting is a major process in any sort of business, It's even a major part of our lives as for managing personal expenses and personal business operations. Many sectors oriented open source solutions, has integrated accounting modules and extensions, so as ERP solutions which base their ERP systems around the accounting process. As an example, many hospitals, laboratories, and dental clinics are running their own custom practice management as hospital information systems, electronic medical records and laboratory management solutions which have in common integrated accounting modules, Simple but effective.
However, the integrated accounting modules within the solution are not enough for many business owners, Therefore we have created this list to point and mark the most used and powerful open source and free accounting solutions, those are supporting multiple platforms, with easy to use and advanced accounting features.
Benefits of open source accounting solutions
- Cost-effective Open source solutions are free solution free to install and use. They are also free to customize and extend by the advanced developers which provide the user with options to pay for the custom extensions and modules, not for the solution itself.
- Freedom Freedom to download, use and extend. Unlike commercial software, freedom in open source solution is felt and measured when using the solution either by advanced users or simple users.
- Support Most of the powerful open source solutions are backed by a powerful community of its own users, developers and software engineers which ensures the project updates and upgrades so as continuity.
- Transparency The transparency we mean is the end-user has the right to know about the code and evaluate it is advanced user how much secure is it and how can extend it or not, also transparency allows the community to follow up with bugs and follow up with updates.
- Advanced accounting features Accounting based solutions come with advanced features as double entry, import, and export, advanced reporting features, advanced financial calculations, Taxes compatibility and calculations, automated accounting workflow process. There are more features than integrated accounting solutions and often more flexible with a wide range of customers demands, needs, and business requirements.
Accounting solutions not heavy loaded ERP solutions.
In this article we are covering free and open source accounting solutions for different platforms, not ERP suites, Therefore we have excluded several open source ERP solutions with integrated features-rich accounting modules.
GnuCash
GnuCash is a free open source accounting manager solution, It was built for personal finance and small business, It was released as open source software under GNU GPL.
GnuCash supports double entry, advanced reporting features, Import, and export. financial calculations, Scheduled transactions and more.
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
GnuKhata
GnuKhata is a free and open source accounting software, It has been built to automate accounting operations for companies. GnuKhata has been developed in India and has a very successful implementation in different sectors.
GnuKhata features
GnuKhata is featuring a high level of customization and optimization for end-users and developers, as it provides easy migration for existing accounting software either commercial or open source.
Manager.io
Manager is a free open-source accounting manager program for small business. Its the perfect fit for small clinics, dental clinics, veterinary clinics, and small laboratories.
Manager has a desktop edition, and it works perfectly offline with data synchronization option. It was built as cross-platform to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It supports multiple languages.
Manager has rich features regarding the accounting process including multiple accounts types, sales and invoice management, payroll management, cash management, notifications, and advanced reporting with easy to read charts and summaries. If you want to read more about the full features you may visit Manager features page.
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. Cloud platform available.
Frappe desktop accounting for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux
Frappe accounting is an offline accounting program aiming for personal finance and small companies. Frappe is a product of the famous company that released the next generation ERP ( ERPNext ). Frappe accounting has been released under MIT license.
Frappe accounting features Advanced reporting with powerful visualization including charts, Taxes manager, Invoices and payments management, Accounts charts.
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
TurboCASH open source accounting manager for Windows
TurboCash is a free open source accounting managers, built for small business and personal finance, but it has advanced features to handle complete and complicated accounting workflow. download and code.
Platform: Windows
GNU accounting
Gnu Accounting is a free open source cross-platform accounting software. It was built to be integrated with open source solutions as Apache Derby, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, and services like email servers. Gnu Accounting supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Platform: Linux and Windows.
Open Miracle: Open source modular accounting solution
Open Miracle is a free open source modular accounting solution, Open Miracle is going beyond personal finance, as it supports counter sales and POS operations, Payroll management, Barcode generation, and scanning and Dot Matrix printers. Open Miracle also supports advanced financial reporting, multi-currency.
Open Miracle developers have provided the users the choice to choose between MsSQL and MySQL.
Platforms: Windows
Akaunting Open source mobile ready accounting solution
Akaunting is a free open source cloud-based accounting manager, It provides mobile and tablet ready responsive user-interface with multi-lingual support ( 34 languages are supported ). Akaunting is a self-hosted cloud-based solution the user can download it and install it on their servers.
Akaunting supports multiple users with a set of advanced accounting features as customer management, vendor management, inventory management, client's portal, deposit, and transfer operations management, invoices management, multiple bank accounts management.
Akauanting has an app store to extend its features with more usable features, though most of the apps are paid applications not free.
Platforms: Cloud-based solution, self-hosted with desktop browsers support and mobile browsers support
Webzash
Webzash is a self-hosted open source solution for accounting, It was released as an open source solution under MIT license.
Webzash supports multiple ledgers and accounts, dynamic entry types, export features in CSV/ XLS format, Multiple user management backed by user groups and permissions.
Platforms: Cloud-based solution, self-hosted with desktop browsers support and mobile browsers support
Flectra: Open source Accounting solution for enterprise
Flectra is The Open Source Easy to Use Accounting System to keep track of organizational Expenses, Receivables, and Payables with All Good Practices built-in
Flectra is an open source features-rich accounting solution, It has features fit to work for enterprise environment but yet it's released as open source under LGPL.
Well, Flectra is an ERP solution actually but mainly accounting based ERP solution. That's why we excluded it from our exclusion. It's the perfect fit to work in healthcare settings as hospitals, laboratories, and multi-clinic settings.
Platforms: Linux with Redhat and Debian Linux packages, Windows.
LogicInvoice
LogicInvoice a modular self-hosted open source solution, It was built to provide companies with free features-rich accounting options. LogicInvoice supports multiple accounts, multiple currency, and multiple languages. It supports also multiple payment gateway options which makes it ideal for eCommerce and online payments.
LogicInvoice has an advanced accounting module, invoicing module and billing module. It has an integrated blog module and the ability to create pages. LogicInvoice has been released as an open-source solution under GPL. With the support of multiple modules which are available at its marketplace.
Platforms: Cloud-based solution, self-hosted with desktop browsers support and mobile browsers support.
LedgerSMB: accounting manager for small and medium size business
LedgerSMB is a complete open-source solution for accounting built for companies. It has full accounting workflow features ready alongside integration features to support dynamic payment operations, assets management, sales management, and reporting management.
LedgerSMB is considered a lightweight enterprise resources planning (ERP) to manage accounting workflow. It supports multi-lingual user-interface (45 languages), documents expert in office ready format, inventory management, and integrated email support.
Platforms: Linux ( Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat), Windows, Mac OSX.
Money Manager EX
Money Manager EX is a free open-source desktop accounting manager. Its full feature accounting solution for the small and medium-sized company. It supports attachments, transactions, automating repeating transactions.
Money Manager EX has the features beyond the common features required in any accounting solution as billing and invoicing management, payment management, budgeting management. It also has been localized with many languages to work in different business environments/ with multiple languages settings. It supports advanced import and export for data and reporting as well.
Platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. Mobile: Android version
Imperium: open source self-hosted web based accounting
Imperium is a free open source self-hosted accounting solution, It provides full accounting workflow control including IMAP email integration, double entry support, billing and invoice management.
Platform: Server Linux ( Apache, PHP 5.2, PostgreSQL and Radis )
Grisbi: Personal finance manager
Grisbi is an open-source program for personal finance. It supports multi-languages and has advanced accounting features for novice and advanced users. It also supports multiple currencies, advanced reporting, and many other features.
: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
FrontAccounting: Web-based self-hosted accounting solution
FrontAccounting is a free open source self-hosted web-based accounting software. I was built using open-source web technologies featuring easy to use user-interface with multi-lingual support, and multiple currency support. It's easy to install if you are familiar with PHP/ MySQL based solutions.
FrontAccounting has daily use modules for accounting and stock management, it's well fit for small and medium-sized business as hospitals and clinics especially those require remote access and multiple installation settings. FrontAccounting supports multiple companies, multiple users, multiple languages and multiple assets and accounts.
Platform: Cloud self-hosted, Server: Linux (PHP/ MySQL), Client Web browser.
osFinancials: open source desktop accounting program for Windows
osFinancials is a free open-source accounting solution with extensions for different industries as manufacturing, storage, and shipping. It was built for Windows machines featuring advanced reporting, accounts management, budget management, and invoice and billing management. It was built to support multiple eCommerce solutions as osCommerce, Magento eCommerce, ZenCart,.
Platform: Windows
PhreeBooks: A self-hosted open source accounting software
PhreeBooks is a comprehensive accounting manager built as web-based cloud software with PHP7 and MySQL as database backend. PhreeBooks has very clean and easy to use user interface, and complete accounting workflow solution. PhreeBooks features can be extended through extensions and applications which are available in their application store.
Platform: Client-Server solution, Server: Linux, Client: Web browser with responsive web design suitable for mobile browsers.
KMyMoney: a personal finance manager for KDE desktops.
KMyMoney is the Personal Finance Manager for KDE. It operates similar to Quicken, supports various account types, categorization of expenses, multiple currencies, online banking support via QIF, OFX and HBCI, budgeting and a rich set of reports.
Platform: Linux ( KDE desktops ), Windows and Mac OSX
Yapbam Personal bank account manager
Yapbam is a personal accounting and banking manager. It was released as an open source software under GPL3.0, It supports data backup and synchronization backed by Dropbox.
Platform: Cross-platform ( Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux)
Fakturama enterprise grade open-source accounting solution
Fakturama is an open-source enterprise accounting program. It is compatible with open-source office suites as LibreOffice and Open office. It has powerful invoicing and billing feature with the support of documents exporting, importing, conversion and comprehensive reporting exports.
Platforms: binary installable packages for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.