
Show HN: FrappeBooks – Free and Open Source, Modern Desktop Accounting for SMB - rushabh
https://frappebooks.com
======
sudosteph
I'll admit I've been a little depressed about the state of open-source
software lately - especially when it comes to GPL licensed projects.

So to see a new project like this - one that isn't just developer tooling or
bleeding edge new-tech experimentation for nerds - it's refreshing! There's
nothing wrong with the other sorts of projects - but good GPL software that is
actually useful out of the box to average people - that's the dream. At least
that's the dream that drove me into this industry in the first place. Thanks
for creating and sharing your work.

~~~
pjmlp
Yeah, from the looks of it, one or two decades more and some flavor of Linux
will be the only surviving major GPL software.

[https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-
whitesource/t...](https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-
whitesource/top-open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions)

------
reilly3000
I just opened a new entity and was looking for an accounting package that was
not Quickbooks. It turns out the hardest integration for accounting software
isn't some file format or API - its accountants. In the US at least,
Quickbooks is the defacto standard, and I've had a terrible time trying to
find somebody that is willing to deviate from it.

That said I am open and eager to try something new. I really respect the
Frappe and ERPNext team, and enjoyed this home page a lot so I downloaded it
to my Linux box. I had some really odd UI glitches from the start, mostly just
with electron window management (setup screen is not resizeable, then I
accidentally resized the main window to 1 px wide). I found that the date
picker was hilariously wrong - it would show 30 or 31 for all dates of the
month except for the first row, then jump back to the prior month every time I
selected a date. I could not remedy this with manually typing in a date entry.
Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3](https://imgur.com/a/7XjT9i3)

Other little issues: \- no app icon on Ubuntu (gnome) desktop \- I wish the
account names were 'frozen' to the left side of the P&L and Balance Sheet
reports. I have to scroll left and right to read the reports. \- I kind of
need a description line on my invoice line items, or I'm going to need to make
a ton of items, which will kind of mess up reporting. \- Some of the UI and
language isn't really customized for US norms. Its not a big issue but
sometimes feels awkward.

I hope this is helpful feedback. I'm going to talk with my accountant soon and
see if they would be open to trying something new, but until then I'm stuck
with Quickbooks. I just can't stand paying for a product that is chock full of
ads for other products, and which walls off competitors by design.

I do love the stack, and would like to be able to just keep the sqlite.db in
Dropbox and share with my other machine and accountant.

Best of luck. I could definitely see myself paying for this in the future,
preferably one time or annually.

~~~
notenoughhorses
As an accountant (working on becoming a software developer), I've started to
develop a reluctance to working with different tools because there are so many
bad ones out there. Sometimes clients don't realize how bad they are, because
they don't use it as much as accountants do, or they don't use the same parts
of the software that accountants do (for example, bookkeeper uses data entry
side, client uses report reading side) so they aren't bothered by the same
issues that really slow you down when you're spending all day working with a
tool.

I'd be open to working with an open source tool, but it sounds like some of
the little issues you already noticed imply there'd be a lot more issues with
smooth usability.

Odoo is also an open source accounting program, that's been around for awhile,
aimed more at ERP side.

------
ofrzeta
From the same people who also made ERPNext, "the world's best 100% open source
ERP" which was built in their own (open source) web framework called ...
Frappe [https://frappe.io/frappe](https://frappe.io/frappe)

~~~
rushabh
We have been doing ERPNext for 10 years now and a lot of what we did with
Frappe Books is based on that learning.

------
keyrat
This looks great. Is there any plan to add time tracking? It's the only reason
I'm still with my current *books hosted solution, even though I'm not
particularly happy with it.

~~~
ianmcgowan
This is the first thing I looked for - timetracking is critical for
freelancers and contractors. I use freshbooks.com and generally like the
product, and love the support. Wish they had a way to import time entries from
CSV though..

It's probably like the old excel joke - everyone only uses 20% of the
features, but every user uses a different 20% ;-)

------
nodesocket
I use Quickbooks Self Employed and would love to migrate, but absolutely
require three of their features before I can:

\- Automatically pull transactions from credit cards and banks.

\- Allow me to manually and automatically tag transactions as business and
personal and which tax deduction category it belongs to (rent, apps/software,
computers, utilities, etc)

\- Estimates my quarterly federal tax payments based on income and transaction
deductions.

Any support for those features?

------
nh2
Hey, this is cool, I'm looking to switch from a proprietary accounting app to
something open-source.

It being open-source is important mainly because accounting apps UX usually
sucks for some specific types of data entry and I want to be able to fix that
for my use cases to get the annoying job done faster and get back to
programming.

I immediately hit some dealbreakers with Frappe though (and filed them as
issues, hopefully they are useful), most importantly that I cannot figure out
how to delete General Ledger entries (if it is possible at all), see
[https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129](https://github.com/frappe/books/issues/129).

In terms of product feedback, I also recommend that you add a "spreadsheet
mode" in which you can quickly and immediately edit most of the ledger data in
one view, (without having to open popups and so on), with effective search-
and-replace. That is a key accounting tool feature to get things done fast.
For example, I currently use Banana
([https://www.banana.ch/en/features](https://www.banana.ch/en/features)) which
is spreadsheet-based and pretty effective for this task (but could still be a
lot better).

------
xupybd
How do they pay that many people giving away software?

This is amazing I just don't understand how they do it?

~~~
jpalomaki
[https://erpnext.com/pricing](https://erpnext.com/pricing)

They offer paid support and hosting.

------
kevindeasis
out of curiosity how do you guys make money?

looks like you guys have a big team and have been running for a decade now
doing open source stuff

~~~
rushabh
We are just under $1M annual revenue, so not really making a lot of money, but
not to bad either. Since we are bootstrapped, so no really pressure to grow
exponentially. From very early days we had paying customers (just enough to
support a lean team). Our major growth has come in the last 2 years, where our
team size grew from <15 to >40.

So we are based in India so salaries tend not to inflate too much. We also
pick raw talent and nurture them (and also pay above market), so it just about
works!

Having said that, I think the market for products like ERPNext (our flagship)
is huge, in the tens of billions. Looking at our current traction, we really
hope we can make the product good enough for enterprises to switch to this. I
see a huge potential revenue in support, assurance, consulting when it comes
to it. So its a waiting game.

------
anon102010
Two notes.

Fiscal year end start or end normally is sufficient to define the fiscal year.
Why is both a start and end date needed for the fiscal year here? That's
usually an immediate tell that system was designed by programmers not
accountants.

Why can't users type in a fiscal year - the date picker is broken, the size of
the date picker jumps around for different months, lot's of repeating dates
etc.

The system allows datepicker to pick odd fiscal year ends (ie, leap years and
mid month dates) are these fiscal years properly supported?

ERPnext looks great though - I look forward to trying it and supporting it - I
imagine it's more refined!!

------
qikquestion
Just want to say this is an awesome work and much needed product in the
market.

Hope you get good leads for ERPNext premium offerings through this. It's
important for more open source projects to flourish in the market.

------
xhkkffbf
Can you import your old data from Quicken? Or Quickbooks? Or GnuCash?

------
dalerus
This looks great, we've been a long time ERPNext customer, but we really only
use the accounting and invoicing systems. This might be a better fit for us.

------
jdeisenberg
I absolutely adore the Hergé style art on the home page!

~~~
rushabh
Made by the amazing team at Timeless
[https://timeless.co/](https://timeless.co/)

------
Nextgrid
How does this relate to ERPNext? Is this just a packaged ERPNext installation?
Is there any way to replicate this with standard, hosted ERPNext?

~~~
rushabh
No this is a fresh implementation and completely in Javascript. ERPNext is a
client-server application based on Python.

There were a couple of itches we were trying to scratch. First we realized
that a _lot_ of people were looking for a good free accounting application and
ERPNext was just too heavy. Also we realized that cloud is a bottleneck. Most
SMB owners can't manage a cloud or write a simple Shell command.

The only way to truly build decentralized solution was Desktop. Also we
realized this was a big gap in FOSS offerings.

This is just the first version, we do plan to add inventory and other
capabilities overtime.

~~~
mathnmusic
Did you evaluate existing FOSS solutions like GNUCash or KMyMoney? Would be
interesting to see what you found lacking.

~~~
rushabh
Yes, mostly a modern user experience. Also the web stack is much more
accessible there are many developers who are already familiar with it.

------
jesterson
Looks fantastic! Cheers for good work.

Any plans to develop something like it for personal finance?

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franga2000
Is there an online version of this? I see one of the "features" is that it's
not cloud-based, but it is a web app... so can I self-host it, or would I be
stuck with Electron and sharing files on a thumb drive like a caveman?

------
asbasawaraj
Much needed desktop app for accounting!

~~~
Nextgrid
Don’t get your hopes up, it’s Electron.

~~~
codegladiator
So what ?

~~~
pjmlp
[https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-
desktop-...](https://medium.com/@dhormale/install-pwa-on-windows-desktop-via-
google-chrome-browser-6907c01eebe4)

No need for Electron fat.

------
sylvain_kerkour
Great job! Can it sync between devices (to avoid to lose data if my computer
die)?

~~~
rushabh
Thank you! It is single threaded. Since it is a file based system (sqlite), so
you can put it on your favorite cloud backup.

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osrec
This looks nice! Do you mind me asking what you used to build your desktop
client?

~~~
serkanh
If you look at the package.json, it looks like they used electron and vue.js.
[https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json](https://github.com/frappe/books/blob/master/package.json)

~~~
osrec
Ah great, thanks!

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aloukissas
I just came here for the awesome name of the product :D

