Best Open Source Accounting Software
This section covers accounting software. The three recommended solutions let you manage your firm’s finances and have everything in order for the tax man. Keep on top of statutory and legislative requirements. Everything is here to manage your numbers effortlessly and efficiently.
Whether you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, a barber or a florist, if you have any type of business, you really need a streamlined way to maintain your books. Step forward our recommendations to stay on top of your firm’s finances. The software is easy to use and offers an excellent way to keep apprised of the position of the business. And they are all cross-platform, with each application running under Linux, Windows, and OS X (and some other operating systems as well).
The software recommended below is primarily targeted at small businesses that don’t have a large budget. They are good alternatives to proprietary solutions like QuickBooks.
 | GnuCash gets our strongest recommendation. It's a perfect fit for small businesses with good support for invoicing and credit notes, accounts payable and receivable, employee expenses and some payroll features. It's multi-platform; available for Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Android, OS X and Windows. It's very mature software -- development started in the late 1990s. http://www.gnucash.org/ License: Primarily GNU General Public License |
 | LedgerSMB (Ledger Small Medium Business) is a better solution for midsize businesses. It brings accounting software integrating invoicing, order processing, quotations and more (ERP) to small and midsize businesses. https://ledgersmb.org/ License: GNU General Public License v2.0 |
 | Apache OFBiz is a cross-platform suite of business applications flexible enough to be used across any industry. It doesn't only offer accounting functionality. http://ofbiz.apache.org/ License: Apache License 2.0 |
About: Accounting Software
Almost all businesses have a need for good finance and accounting software. Besides ensuring compliance with your country’s legal requirements, good accounting software helps to automate activities such as generating invoices, billing, and dealing with the firm’s payroll. Accounting software offers a way to record and measure sales, costs and profits. It can also generate formal business correspondence. This type of software also lets a business undertake analysis, identify trends and patterns in the performance of the business.
There are many accounting services that are available online. Many cloud-based accounting solutions are aimed at larger businesses, and often have features you don’t really require.
Purchasing accounting software, especially for starting businesses, is expensive due to prohibitive licensing costs. Even for a large business, costs incurred in licensing of accounting software can make a considerable dent in the annual budget. So try the above open source solutions without charge.
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