from Hacker News

Akaunting is free, open-source online accounting software for small businesses

by excsn on 4/23/24, 11:16 AM with 75 comments

  • by ahachete on 4/23/24, 1:02 PM

    The 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.t...

  • by twarge on 4/23/24, 1:17 PM

    ERPNext is the actually open source accounting software to consider here.

  • by mgulick on 4/23/24, 1:05 PM

    Bah, not open source, rather BSL licensed. Stop it with the open-washing already!

  • by focusgroup0 on 4/23/24, 2:32 PM

    I 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.

  • by fallat on 4/23/24, 4:27 PM

    I 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.

  • by nashashmi on 4/23/24, 12:44 PM

    I 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.

  • by rabbitofdeath on 4/23/24, 4:07 PM

    I looked at Akaunting, but the licensing was not appealing. I've used Invoice Ninja (https://www.invoiceninja.org/) for over a year now. I pay for the white label and have had minimal issues.

  • by caseysoftware on 4/23/24, 2:01 PM

    I've used this one for the last ~18 months, self hosted.

    Terrible name but pretty solid product.

  • by naasking on 4/23/24, 1:05 PM

  • by Bluescreenbuddy on 4/23/24, 1:05 PM

    Let me guess. Free until they get a lot of users and then they'll switch to Paid knowing not everyone can simply move.

  • by ultimatebms on 4/23/24, 6:23 PM

    I 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?

  • by 31337Logic on 4/23/24, 12:47 PM

    "Online" and "accounting" in the same sentence? I'm out.

  • by mirzap on 4/23/24, 1:30 PM

    It'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.

  • by ImHereToVote on 4/23/24, 1:08 PM

    Is there actually open source accounting software?

  • by yjftsjthsd-h on 4/23/24, 2:25 PM

    > 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 :

    > 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.

  • by jxdxbx on 4/23/24, 2:26 PM

    I would not trust an "open source" app that is just a web app.

  • by Exuma on 4/23/24, 1:32 PM

    dat name doe

  • by systems on 4/23/24, 1:07 PM

    the 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