Saturday, March 20, 2010

Free and Open Source Finance/Accounting Software for Linux

If you have a small or medium-size business, then you may consider using finance or accounting software to efficiently manage your own venture.

You can choose from a wide variety of finance programs. --Some of them are really expensive, while others will cost you nothing.

To those who are using Linux and are living on a tight budget, you can try some of these open source finance/accounting software that you can get for free:

GnuCash
GnuCash was initially aimed at developing capabilities similar to Quicken; a popular personal finance management tool developed by Intuit, Inc.

GnuCash has features for small business accounting. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, it allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses.

Some of its main features are:
* Scheduled Transactions
* Mortgage & Loan Repayment Druid
* Double-Entry Accounting
* Small Business Accounting Features
* OFX, QIF Import
* Transaction-Import Matching Support
* (Limited) Multi-User SQL Support
* Multi-Currency Transaction Handling
* Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolios
* Online Stock & Mutual Fund Quotes


OpenERP
OpenERP is claimed to be a complete ERP and CRM system. It has separate client and server components. Among the features are management accounting, financial accounting, inventory management, sales and purchase management, tasks automation, Human Resource Management, marketing campaigns, help desk, and point of sale.

Open ERP is known to be very complete and extremely modular, with 350 available modules. It is based on a strong MVC architecture, with a distributed server, flexible workflows, an object database, a dynamic GUI, an XML-RPC interface, and customizable reports.


Compiere
Compiere is an ERP and CRM business solution for the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise in distribution, retail, service and manufacturing.

Compiere is distributed by Compiere, Inc. and through the Compiere Partner Network, a collection of trained and authorized business partners.

The application and source code is provided on the basis of the GNU General Public License version 2. A commercial license, documentation and support contracts are also available for a fee.


Adempiere
Adempiere is a community-driven project that develops and supports an open source business solution of the same name that delivers Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management functionality. The following business areas are addressed by the Adempiere application:
* Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
* Supply Chain Management (SCM)
* Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
* Financial Performance Analysis
* Integrated Point of sale (POS) solution
* Integrated Web Store


SQL-Ledger
SQL-Ledger is a double entry accounting/ERP system. Accounting data is stored in a SQL database server, for the display any text or GUI browser can be used.

The entire system is linked through a chart of accounts. Each item in inventory is linked to income, expense, inventory and tax accounts. When items are sold and purchased, the accounts are automatically updated.

Invoices, Packing Lists, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Sales, Work and Purchase Orders, Statements, Receipts and Checks are generated from templates and can be changed to suit your needs.


I would like to add 7 more to that list. As I've said before, finance or accounting software will prove valuable for those who have small or medium-sized business as it will allow users to do important tasks like recording and processing accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and trial balance.

So here is another list of Free and Open Source finance/accounting software that is available for Linux:

Grisbi
Grisbi is a personal finance system that can manage multiple accounts, currencies and users. It handles third party, expenditure and receipt categories, as well as budgetary lines, financial years, and other information that makes it suitable for associations.

Some of its other features are:
* Totally customizable financial printable reports
* Scheduled Transactions
* OFX, QIF, GnuCash, CSV Import
* QIF, CSV Export
* Multi-Currency Transaction Handling


Openbravo
Openbravo is a web-based, open source ERP business solution for small and medium sized businesses or companies that was originally based on the Compiere ERP program.

It features a web-based interface, where the user can view the entire status of a company, including production information, inventory, customer information, order tracking, and workflow information.

It is possible to synchronize this information with other applications through the Java-based Openbravo API. Openbravo can also create and export reports and data to several formats, such as PDF and Microsoft Excel.

jGnash
jGnash is a free personal finance management application for the Java runtime environment. It is a double entry system with support for multiple currencies.

jGnash can import OFX, QIF and GnuCash files. It can also automatically update stock prices and currency exchange rates.

Here are some of its features:
* Report Generation in PDF Format
* Double-Entry Based Transactions
* Account Reconciliation
* Fast Auto-Completion of Form Fields
* Schedule Recurring Payment Reminders
* Track Investment Accounts and Transactions
* Secure File Encryption
* Scriptable through BeanShell
* Advanced Server/Client Networking Architecture


KMyMoney
KMyMoney is a simple and user-friendly personal finance manager for the KDE desktop environment. The project aims for accuracy, ease-of-use, and familiar features.

KMyMoney has functionality similar to that of Microsoft Money. It supports different account types, categorisation of expenses and incomes, reconciliation of bank accounts and import/export to the “QIF” file format.


LedgerSMB
LedgerSMB is a double entry accounting system where data is stored in an SQL Database Server and a standard web browser can be used as its user interface.

The system uses the Perl language and a Perl database interface module for processing, and PostgreSQL for data storage.


HomeBank
HomeBank is a personal accounting software package that can be used to manage personal accounts. With it, you can create dynamic, easy, and powerful reports with graphical charts using Cairo.

Some of its unique features are:
* Transaction import in CSV format (homebank specific format)
* Direct add of payee and categories from the register dialog
* Tag feature for transactions
* Pre-defined transactions, which can be automated
* Pre-filling of transactions from a bookmark
* Dual pad of cheque and automated cheque number increment
* add transactions by inherit from existing ones
* Multiple transactions edit for each columns at once
* Easy transfer between accounts, which can be automated


JQuantLib
JQuantLib is a comprehensive framework for quantitative finance that offers several mathematical and statistical tools needed for financial instrument valuation, calculation of VaR, portfolio valuation, etc.

It is based on QuantLib and is written in Java. JQuantLib does its best efforts to mimic as close as possible the API exposed by QuantLib, offering a smooth transition path for developers and organizations willing to employ financial applications written in Java while keeping commitment to high performance and low latency.

Features include:
* Support for generic pricing engines;
* Support for generic financial instruments;
* Date, Calendar and IMM support;
* Trading calendars for the most important markets;
* Support for generic term structures;
* Support for generic 1D and 2D interpolations;

5 comments:

  1. Great list. Thanks for sharing this informative article. If you want to know more about the differences of other accounting software. Just visit cheap accounting software

    Jane

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  2. Wow, I'll give this a try. An open source accounting software is pretty hard to find. I've been using Peachtree Quantum since its first release, and it has been doing its wonders for my business on the accounting side. I'm willing to try this software of yours out to compare it to Peachtree's current version, Peachtree Quantum 2011.

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  3. Great idea...it will definitely work perfect..I appreciate you share it.
    Church Software


    Hank Hendricks is a sports man and has played for the University of New Hampshire Foot ball team.

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  5. Hi, thank you very much for help. I am going to test that in the near future. Cheers



    Open Source Management Software

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