Open Source ERP: accounting, invoicing and more

Chris Travers — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 06:08:41 +0000

Mission

The LedgerSMB project provides small and mid-size businesses with solid open source accounting software: integrating invoicing, order processing, quotations and more (ERP). LedgerSMB aims to provide a strong (multi-currency accounting) basis to build your business on -- without vendor lock-in.

The project team considers correctness and performance equally important key usability features and is dedicated to providing both, even on the biggest data sets.

Features

Sales (Invoices, Orders, Quotations)
Receivables & Payables
General ledger
Inventory management
Fixed asset accounting & depreciation
Profit & cost centers, departments, projects
Output documents in PDF, HTML, CSV, Office formats
Mail documents (e.g. invoices) from within the application
Translatable to your language (comes with 45 languages)
and more

The fact that LedgerSMB is open source - meaning that the source code is freely available - makes it even more customizable and flexible.

Use-cases

By company size

Company size is measured by its data and data growth. There are companies known to run with these numbers (as per April 2023):

Transactions and invoices: 650 000 accumulated, growing over 50 000 per month
Journal lines (across invoices and general journal): 2.3 million accumulated, growing over 170 000 per month
Customers and vendors: 260 000
Products: 40 000 configured products with inventory tracking

Most installations are much smaller (50 to 500 transactions per month). Many of the more complex features required for larger companies remain hidden until explicitly configured. This way the software stays simple for smaller, less demanding companies.

By industry

While LedgerSMB will generally work in any industry for its basic accounting functionalities, it is known to have been deployed in the following types of businesses:

Communications
e.g. VOIP services
Factoring
i.e. invoicing of others
(IT) Services
e.g. Website design, IT Support, hourly services
Financial services
e.g. Investment firms
Rental
e.g. Housing rental, IT Hosting
Retail
e.g. Sewing necessities
Trade
e.g. Trading pet foods

Many of these applications include integration with domain-specific applications to perform specific business functions.

Next to the ones listed above, various manufacturing setups have been deployed, ranging from standard (batch based) mass production, to make-to-order one-time product configurations. The latter being supported by a custom developed product configuration plugin.

By country

Although the nature of open source projects makes it hard to know where our software is being used; however, the project is aware of installations in the Australia, Barbados, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, European Union, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, United Kingdom and United States.

The software can run in a different language for each user. Also: documents (invoices, orders, etc) can be produced in selectable languages, different from the user's language.

Contributions

The project welcomes any and all contributions. With lots of areas which would benefit from more attention, we like to invite newcomers to read our community guidelines and start out simple. Good (and helpful!) starting points are translation contributions as well as reviewing our (beginners) documentation.

Current versions

Our current stable version is 1.11 - initially released on Oct 3, 2023. This release has a wide variety of improvements and code cleanups: it features support for barcode scanner input on invoices, printing of GL transactions, cross-referencing between reversed and reversing transactions, fixed migration from SQL-Ledger 2.8/Ledger123, improved migration from not-the-latest LedgerSMB 1.3 and much more... More details about this release can be found in the release notes. This release will see its End-Of-Life for community support on Oct 3, 2025.

Our current old-stable version is 1.10 - initially released on Oct 8, 2022. This release has a wide variety of improvements and code cleanups: it features support for customized workflows, the ability to export document templates from the database, much more flexibility for customization by dependency injection, cleaned up document templates, login.pl & setup.pl being translated based on browser preferences and much more... More details about this release can be found in the release notes. This release will see its End-Of-Life for community support on Oct 8, 2024.

Older versions

Version is 1.9 has been declared End-Of-Life on Sep 24, 2023 (released on Sep 24, 2021). This release has a wide variety of improvements and code cleanups: it features faster loading of the menu, fixed migrations from 1.2, the ability to upload a logo into the database and include it in printed documents and much more... More details about this release can be found in the release notes.

Version is 1.8 has been declared End-Of-Life on Sep 04, 2022 (released on Sep 04, 2020). This release has a wide variety of improvements and code cleanups: it features faster loading of the menu, fixed migrations from 1.2, the ability to upload a logo into the database and include it in printed documents and much more... More details about this release can be found in the release notes.

Version is 1.7 has been declared End-Of-Life on Oct 04, 2022 (released on Oct 04, 2019). This release focusses on improved support for foreign currency transactions, lifting the restriction of a single rate per currency per day; UI improved by showing both the functional and foreign currency amounts. Additionally, a lot of work has been spent on increasing the application stability through more rigorous testing and code cleanup. A full summary of the changes since 1.6 can be found in the release announcement. More details on this release can be found in the release notes.

Version 1.6 has been declared End-Of-Life on 2021, June 10th (released on June 10 2018). With 33 patch releases, we consider this version highly stable. Although there are more patch releases for 1.6 than thee are for 1.5, their size is on average smaller, attesting to the project's promise of delivering increasing software quality.

Version 1.5 has been declared End-Of-Life on 2019, Dec 23rd (released on 2016-12-23). With 30 patch releases, we consider this version highly stable. We believe that the lower number of patch releases over a similar life-span as 1.4 is an indication of better stability of the initial 1.5.0 release. We conclude that the project is delivering on its promise of increasing stability of minor releases.

Version 1.4 has been declared End-Of-Life on 2017, Sep 15th (released on 2014-09-15). With 42 patch releases, we consider this version highly stable.

Version 1.3 has been declared End-Of-Life on 2015, Dec 23rd (released on 2011-10-11). With a total of 48 patch releases since the initial release in October 2011, we consider this version highly stable.

Although their use is highly discouraged for both security reasons and data stability issues, older versions are still available for download. When using LedgerSMB versions 1.6 or earlier, you should to do so in only in a highly restricted network environment, because of known security problems.

It's project policy to provide at least 24 months of community support for every 1.x release series, aiming to have two versions supported at any time.

History

LedgerSMB began in 2006 as a fork of the popular general ledger software package called SQL-Ledger largely written and maintained by Dieter Simader since 1999. Versions 1.2 and earlier are heavily based on SQL-Ledger's code.
As of 1.3 our codebase is quickly moving away from what we inherited.
As of 1.5 our User Interface has moved to Dojo Javascript libraries providing a more dynamic feel.
Some of the improvements that we've made to the code base so far include:

Enhanced security
More reports
Better data integrity controls
More code quality control measures
Major code size reduction while growing functionality
Unit testing Infrastructure to help ensure once an issue is fixed it stays fixed
BDD (headless automated browser) Testing infrastructure
A very large number of tests against both testing frameworks

Travel in our history with Internet Archive and WayBackMachine.

Matrix support request ownership proof: ehuels@gmail.com

Chris Travers Sat, 03/17/2007 - 23:08

Screenshots for 1.11

ehu — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 19:14:46 +0000

Screenshots for 1.11 ehu Fri, 11/10/2023 - 11:14

Topic

Screenshots

Release

1.11

Download

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 12:28:25 +0000

Download

Maintained releases

The current stable release line is 1.10. For more information about older versions, see the FAQ item about supported releases. Versions 1.6 and older should no longer be used due to known security issues that will not be resolved in that code base.

Official release distribution

The latest official release of LedgerSMB is always at download site. Releases are signed with GPG to assert integrity. Our public GPG key can be found on MIT's key server or on pgpkeys.eu. Install and upgrade info.

You can verify the release with the command

$ gpg --verify ledgersmb-<version>.tar.gz.asc ledgersmb-<version>.tar.gz

Docker images

There are production level Docker images available on GitHub. New containers are released on every stable (1.10) and old-stable (1.9) release. Docker images are around 250MB in size.

The docker repository identifier is "ledgersmb/ledgersmb" with the "latest" tag always pointing to the most recent stable release, which is currently the most recent 1.10.x release. The "master" tag points to the most recent alpha or beta of the development version (1.11).

Distribution packages

A Debian package is available in Debian v11 (stable, 'bullseye') and Debian v10 (oldstable, 'buster') but was not available in Debian v9 (Stretch, oldoldstable) due to problems with the Dojo dependency (which failed to build). Note that the current LedgerSMB version that is recommended for use is one in the 1.10.x series, which is not in Debian. We're working to get 1.8.x or 1.9.x packages into Debian.

Newer packages than those distributed by Debian can be found in the LedgerSMB APT repository (along with their updated dependancies as necessary).

Ubuntu packages are available in the standard distributions based off of the Debian packages.

Newer packages than those distributed in Ubuntu can be found in the LedgerSMB PPA repository.

RPM Packaging contributions solicited.

FreeBSD Packaging contributions solicited

OpenBSD Packaging contributions solicited.

Virtual Box No up-to-date images at this time.

Keeping up with the latest developments

The latest 1.10.x and 1.11.x are available directly from GitHub as a .zip file (it's not an official release, but has the latest fixes you may need) 1.10.x from GitHub, 1.11.x from GitHub. Check the repository for the change log in 1.11.x from GitHub or the changes in bleeding edge ('master').

LedgerSMB public GPG key
The LedgerSMB GPG public key can be found on the MIT key server. Here is the direct link.

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/01/2017 - 05:28

Topic

Operating system

RedHat Enterprise Linux

Which versions do you support?

ehu — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:17:51 +0000

Which versions do you support? ehu Sun, 12/30/2012 - 03:17

Active support

Versions 1.10 and higher are under active development and are supported by the community. Planned end-of-life dates for current releases are:

1.11: Planned End-of-life date: 2025-10-03 (released 2023-10-03)
1.10: Planned End-of-life date: 2024-10-08 (released 2022-10-08)

End of life

If you're looking for help on how to use EOL-ed versions, please try mailing the users mailing list.
If you're looking for someone to create bugfixes, please check with one of the parties providing commercial support or for less urgent fixes LedgerS MB Issues

Version 1.9 has been declared end-of-life on 2023-09-24. The last release in the series is 1.9.30. No futher releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.8 has been declared end-of-life on 2022-09-04. The last release in the series is 1.8.31. No futher releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.7 has been declared end-of-life on 2022-10-04. The last release in the series is 1.7.41. No further releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.6 has been declared end-of-life on 2021-06-10. The last release in the series is 1.6.33. No further releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.5 has been declared end-of-life on 2019-12-23. The last release in the series is 1.5.30. No further releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.4 has been declared end-fo-life on 2017-09-16. The last release in the series is 1.4.42. No further releases will be made by the community.

Version 1.3 has been declared end-of-life on 2015-12-23. The last release in the series is 1.3.47. No further releases will be made by the community.

LedgerSMB versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 won't be maintained any further due to the fact that there are some known security issues which can't be fixed.

Release

FAQ Category

Topic

System requirements

ehu — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:58:33 +0000

System requirements

Hardware requirements

The hardware required to run LedgerSMB greatly depends on the number of users. However, with a small number of users (up to 10 or so), a 32bit server with 512MB to 1GB of memory (including Linux Server OS) and just a few hundred MB of storage (excluding OS) should be enough to get good performance.
For a 64bit server, you probably need 1GB to 2GB of memory, but otherwise the requirements are the same.

Operating system requirements

LedgerSMB runs on Linux/Unix (for the Server) and any platform with a compatible Web Browser (for the Client).
Platforms that have known-compatible browsers are Linux, Windows, MacOS, most smart phones and tablets should also work although the current UI requires a large screen for optimum usability. (Minimal size: 9.7" tablet in landscape mode.)

Unix includes all flavours (variants) of Linux including

Debian
Mint
Ubuntu
RedHat
Fedora
BSD
MacOS / OS X
and many more

MS Windows

While in the past the server would run on Windows as well, this is currently not tested and not expected to work.
LedgerSMB has a client / server architecture, so while it is often better to run the server on Linux, this will not stop you from running the clients on windows. In fact this is a common situation and is fully supported.

For more information on running on windows please look at the FAQ item Can I use LedgerSMB on MS Windows?

Software requirements (client)

On the client, LedgerSMB requires a compatible browser. As of version 1.9, the development team keeps track of which exact browser capabilities that are used by LedgerSMB to determine which browser versions are supported and which ones are not. On versions 1.8 and older, the indicated minimum requirement is based on the indication provided by the Dojo Toolkit development team in combination with a rough impact estimation of additional capabilities used by LedgerSMB's own JavaScript.

Minimum browser versions supported by LedgerSMB (by version)
	Chrome	Safari		Firefox	Opera	Edge	Internet Explorer
	Chrome	Desktop	Mobile	Firefox	Opera	Edge	Internet Explorer
1.4	13	5		3.6	10.50	(all)	8
1.5							10
1.6
1.7
1.8							n/a
1.9	2017-09 (61)	2017-03 (10.1)	2017-03 (10.3)	2018-05 (60)	2017-09 (48)	2017-10 (16)	n/a
1.10	2017-09 (61)	2017-09 (11)	2017-09 (11)	2018-05 (60)	2017-09 (48)	2020-01 (79)	n/a
1.11	2018-03 (65)	2018-03 (11.1)	2018-03 (11.3)	2018-05 (60)	2018-03 (52)	2020-01 (79)	n/a

Please note that on Android, browsers are being pushed to end-user devices so that most devices always have the latest Chrome, FireFox or Opera browser. To that extent, there's little point in mentioning the oldest supported version. If you would be interested to know anyway: the desktop versions of the same browsers are a good indication of support of the required capabilities on mobile as well.

Explicitly unsupported clients include:

Lynx
w3m
IE9 or earlier

Software requirements (server)

LedgerSMB builds upon technology of some very widely used - proven - projects:

PostgreSQL - the enterprise level quality open source database
Starman (perl webserver)
Perl - the programming language of the web
(Xe)LaTeX - the typesetting language (optional)
This is used by the Templating system to generate PDF and Postscript output for printing, email or saving to disk

Each version of LedgerSMB has its own requirements. The high level requirements are listed in the table below.

Requirements by LedgerSMB version
	Status	PostgreSQL	Application server / HTTP server	Perl	PDF
	Status	PostgreSQL	Application server / HTTP server	Perl	PDF	PDF/A
1.4	End-Of-Life (no community support)	8.4 and up	Apache 1.3 and up	5.10 and up	LaTeX for ASCII or XeLaTeX for UTF-8 characters	LuaTeX with pdfx TeX package
1.5		9.4 and up	Starman*	5.10 and up
1.6				5.14 and up
1.7				5.18 and up
1.8		9.6 and up		5.20 and up
1.9	old stable	10 and up		5.24 and up
1.10	stable	13 and up		5.32 and up	Customizable; default: LaTeX for ASCII or XeLaTeX for UTF-8 characters	Customizable; default: LuaTeX with pdfx TeX package
1.11	preview	13 and up		5.32 and up		Customizable; default: LuaTeX with pdfx TeX package

* While Starman is the prefered (and tested) webserver for 1.5 and newer.
It should ALWAYS be reverse proxied as HTTPS using Apache/Nginx or possibly other HTTP servers.
It may be possible to run directly from another HTTPD server, but this is not a supported configuration.
Also, in most cases there are performance gains to be had by using Starman.

Perl module dependencies

The Perl module dependencies are listed in the 'cpanfile' in the root of the project tree. Many distributions include at least some of the dependencies in their repositories, so that it shouldn't be necessary to install all the dependencies listed in the cpanfile from CPAN.

During the installation process, the availability of the "cpanm" binary is required.

ehu Sat, 06/30/2012 - 05:58

Topic

Installation

1.11 release notes

ehu — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 21:35:30 +0000

1.11 release notes

Be sure to check the UPGRADE NOTES below!

What's new in LedgerSMB 1.11

This release features a new, fresh logo! Next to that, there are:

Barcode reader support added (back) to invoices
Reclassification of negative (current) assets to liabilities
Tracking of the relationship between reversed and reversing transactions

New features

Barcode reader support added (back) to invoices

Before LedgerSMB 1.5, partnumber input fields would pick the correct part when filled with the barcode associated with that part. This functionality was lost in 1.5. A replacement has now been added to 1.11: if a database contains barcode numbers, a barcode entry field is shown on the invoice entry screen as per the screenshot below:

Here's where to configure the barcodes for use:

Note for upgrades: There is no impact on upgrades. Users who want to use this feature need to configure barcodes and make/models in the parts configuration screen.

Reclassification of negative (current) assets to liabilities (and vice versa)

In it's common practice to present negative current assets as positive current liabilities. An example where this regularly happens is when a bank current account goes into overdraft: instead of the bank owing money to the company (an asset), the company owes money to the bank (a liability). This release adds a new configuration on the account settings screen: "Negative balance heading". This setting applies to asset and liability accounts. See the screenshot below to find where to set the configuration.

When the "Negative balance heading" is set, when an asset account has a credit balance, it will be reported as a liability under the heading indicated in this option.

Note for upgrades: Users wanting to use this option need to explicitly set it on affected accounts after migration of the database completes.

Tracking of relationship between reversed and reversing transactions

To enhance clarity of what happened between transactions, tracking of transaction reversal has been added, tracking which transactions have been reversed and by which transactions. Related transactions are shown at the top of the transactions and invoice entry screens; see the screenshot of the GL transaction entry screen below.

Note for upgrades: The relationship is only tracked for new reversals. Existing reversals can't be retroactively detected and tracked.

Webservice for Countries

A webservice has been created to manage configuration of:

Countries (/erp/api/v0/countries)

This was created in support of moving the front-end to Vue3 components. For more information on how to use these services, see LedgerSMB Webservices.

Note for upgrades: There is no impact on upgrades.

Notable changes

Transaction state shown in transaction and invoice headers

Transactions and invoices show their state (e.g. Saved, Posted, Reversed) in the top part of the data entry screen. An example for a GL transaction is shown in the screenshot below.