R. L. Dane  Aug 4, 2023

Hey #AskFedi,

Is *anyone* out there using FOSS for accounting?

I'm struggling with Quickbooks desktop (which you can only get as a subscription now, unless you pay four figures for an enterprise license).

#Xero comes highly recommended to me, but I'm loathe to go "#cloud" for accounting. Very loathe indeed.

#BoostPlease?

Edit: Thanks for all of the feedback so far, updates and clarification following in a reply...

...

Show threadMichael Cook

@RL_Dane Over the years LWN has had a series of articles as they tried to replace Quickbooks too. They finally settled on a solution a few months ago.

https://lwn.net/Articles/925782/

The end of the accounting search

Some things, it seems, just cannot be hurried. Back in 2007, your editor first started conside [...]

LWN.net
Aug 4, 2023 at 6:46pmIvory for iOS
Show threadR. L. Dane  Aug 5, 2023

@foobarsoft @mirabilos

Ahh, thanks for this. Very good read.

Unfortunately, from the journey they have described, it looks like no FOSS desktop program would be very workable for me, because the process of importing data from the dreaded QB is pretty pear-shaped.

I think I will investigate Akaunting for now, as they have a QB import feature, and I'll try to avoid going to xero, but may end up going there if Akaunting doesn't work out.

Show threadMichael CookAug 5, 2023
@RL_Dane @mirabilos Unfortunately that’s the impression I’ve gotten over the years too. As bad as QB is there is no great FOSS option.
Show threadR. L. Dane  Aug 5, 2023

@foobarsoft @mirabilos

Akaunting is looking pretty good. It's FOSS, and you can either self-host it or buy a subscription (pretty competitive pricing, from what I've seen)

Now that I've gotten pretty comfortable with Vimium C on Firefox, I'm not as dead-set against using web-based accounting (except for the lingering security concerns)