The open business suite. Run on open books.
Accounting and ERP for businesses of every size, across industries—from
solo operators and small teams to large, multi-entity organizations.
Start with everyday bookkeeping; add connected operations and project
workflows as you grow.
Open source, self-hosted, and built around a PostgreSQL-enforced double-entry
ledger.
Install with Docker · Screenshots · Features · Accounting kernel · Trust · Architecture · Status · Contribute
An invoice should connect to your projects, inventory, cash and financial statements. Your ERP should connect to the way your business works.
OpenBooks brings accounting, operations and people into one open-source business suite. Start with customers, invoices, expenses and your books when you work solo. Add purchasing, inventory, projects and payroll as your team grows. For larger organizations, connect legal entities, currencies, approvals and consolidated reporting in the same suite.
Follow a number from a dashboard to its report, source document and journal. Choose the capabilities that fit your business in Company Settings → Features, with one connected system underneath.
Self-host it. Inspect the financial logic. Extend the workflows. Add users and companies without per-seat software licence tiers. Your infrastructure and operating costs remain yours; the software is AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Start with a sample company, explore the workflows, then evaluate it with parallel books. OpenBooks is alpha software with a broad implementation and explicit accounting controls. It has not completed independent accounting or security certification. That distinction matters when choosing financial software.
Use Docker with Compose and curl in
a Linux, macOS or Windows WSL2 terminal. Download the two deployment files below;
the installer pulls the published OpenBooks image
and runs it with its supporting services.
mkdir -p openbooks/scripts
cd openbooks
openbooks_deployment="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/braedonsaunders/openbooks/350252fc633149c572a7d7257f6ef8043d00c018"
curl -fL "$openbooks_deployment/compose.yaml" -o compose.yaml &&
curl -fL "$openbooks_deployment/scripts/compose-up.sh" -o scripts/compose-up.sh &&
sh ./scripts/compose-up.shThe deployment files above are pinned to a specific revision. Application services use the official release image, pinned by the installer to its immutable digest. For source builds and local development, see Development.
Choose your organization's ISO country and base currency when prompted. The installer generates credentials, resolves the official release to an immutable image digest, starts the services, applies migrations, and prints the URL and first administrator login after health checks pass. Installation time depends on your connection and machine.
Open http://localhost:4780. Sign in with the printed credentials and follow the company setup wizard: identity, fiscal calendar, chart of accounts and features. You can defer setup and resume it from Company Settings. Enable the modules you need in Company Settings → Features.
For an unattended first install:
ORG_COUNTRY=US ORG_CURRENCY=USD sh ./scripts/compose-up.shThe deployment includes PostgreSQL 16, Redis 7, MinIO, the web app and a separate
background worker. Bootstrap provisions separate database roles for migrations,
tenant requests and installation-wide maintenance. Generated secrets stay in
.env.compose, created with owner-only permissions. Keep that file private and
back it up securely.
- Finish company setup and explore the built-in sample-company options in Data → Import. Use synthetic data for evaluation.
- Open the dashboard and drill into a profit and loss statement.
- Review a customer invoice, its journal and related project activity.
- Explore purchasing, inventory, approvals and audit history.
- Before importing real balances, validate your chart, currencies, tax and payroll scope, posting rules, permissions and opening-balance reconciliation.
# Service status and worker health
docker compose --env-file .env.compose ps
curl 'http://localhost:4780/api/v1/health?include=worker'
# Follow application and worker activity
docker compose --env-file .env.compose logs -f web worker
# Stop while preserving the named data volumes
docker compose --env-file .env.compose downdown -v deletes the data volumes. Treat upgrades as reviewed releases:
upgrade runbook. Before exposing an installation,
configure TLS, backups, monitoring, email and secret management using
SECURITY.md and the backup/restore runbook.
Compose runs on one host; the HA reference describes separately
operated infrastructure for a replicated application tier.
Move from headline performance to trends, exceptions, recommendations, and the underlying financial statements in one workspace.
 Personalized workspace: Cash, receivables, payables, quick actions, approvals, and recent accounting activity. |
 Financial reporting: Drillable statements with dimensions, saved views, comparisons, and exports. |
 Project profitability: Revenue, cost, margin, profit, and hours from customer down to job. |
 Project cockpit: Contract value, billable balance, actual and committed costs, and gross profit. |
 Project billing: Applications, schedules of values, change orders, and retainage stay inside the project record. |
 Connected invoices: Approved applications become regular customer invoices with project, line, posting, and audit context. |
Light mode is shown above. Screenshots use the built-in synthetic Summit Ridge Construction demo; no customer data is shown.
Prefer dark mode? View the same workflows in OpenBooks dark mode.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
OpenBooks is accounting-first, with connected operating modules. Optional features are controlled through the single Company Settings switchboard. Capabilities below describe code in the repository; they are not a promise that every business or jurisdiction is ready to adopt without validation.
| Your work | Connected capabilities |
|---|---|
| Accounting and close | Double-entry journals, chart of accounts, dimensions, budgets, open items, controlled reversals/corrections, close tasks, approvals, period locks and controlled reopen |
| Sales and receivables | Quotes, orders, invoices, credits, receipts, returns, customer balances, recurring/usage billing and revenue recognition |
| Purchasing and payables | Purchase orders, vendor bills/credits, payments, purchasing controls, expenses and approvals |
| Banking | Statements, matching, reconciliation, cash reporting and configurable feeds |
| Projects and construction | Job costing, budgets, committed cost, labor rates, profitability, schedules of values, change orders, progress applications and retainage |
| Inventory and manufacturing | Stock, locations, costing, landed cost, inventory/GL reconciliation, bills of materials, routings, MRP, work orders, material movements and production completion |
| Assets and equipment | Registers, depreciation methods/books, impairment, remeasurement, disposal and controlled corrections |
| Multiple entities and currencies | Legal entities, accounting books, intercompany, eliminations, FX evidence/revaluation, ownership-based consolidation and consolidated reporting |
| People and payroll | Employee records, recruitment, onboarding, performance, benefits enrolment, self-service, time/leave, pay-run readiness, statutory calculations, remittances and declared filing exports |
| Tax | Tax configuration, jurisdiction-specific workpapers, return mappings and income-tax provisions; filing availability varies by pack |
| Specialized operations | Nonprofit funds, gifts, grants, pledges and restrictions; property leases and CAM workflows; subscription billing and SaaS metrics |
| Reporting and automation | Shared report engine, period/dimension filters, saved views, drill-through, exports, dashboards, approvals, scheduled jobs and sandboxed extensions |
Manufacturing is broader than light assembly: routings, planning and production workflows are implemented. Evaluate capacity planning, shop-floor workflows, traceability and industry requirements against your actual operation before adopting it as a manufacturing system.
Payroll packs are registered for AU, BR, CA, DE, ES, FR, GB, IE, IT, JP, NL, PL, SG and US. A country name is not a universal compliance claim. Loaded tax years, regional calculations, required employer/employee inputs, filing formats, corrections and remittance schedules have distinct scopes.
Generate the source-labelled capability inventory with:
npm ci
node --import tsx scripts/localization-support-scope.ts > localization-support.jsonThe inventory comes from the calculation and filing declarations, including named refusals. It distinguishes implementation from agency acceptance and marks an uncommitted workspace explicitly. Follow the localization adoption guide before statutory use. The interface has English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese message catalogs; statutory coverage is independent of interface language.
OpenBooks remains alpha. It does not claim universal statutory coverage, certified agency submission, SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or independent accounting and security audits. It has no native iOS/Android app or general offline-first client. Benefits-carrier/job-board integrations, POS and storefront requirements need separate evaluation. Self-hosting means owning deployment, backups, upgrades and operational support.
The ledger is the foundation, rather than a reporting calculation applied after the fact. PostgreSQL controls protect balanced journals and period rules; exact decimal and BigInt helpers handle money. Posted history is corrected through controlled reversal and adjustment workflows. Source documents, open items, subledgers and audit evidence connect to the journal.
Financial features use organization and legal-entity scope, explicit permissions, lifecycle transitions, concurrency controls and effective-dated configuration. Feature changes preserve historical data. These mechanisms are engineering controls whose implementation and tested scope can be inspected.
Posted journal and completed downstream processing are separate states. The shared document drawer shows queued, running, retrying, terminal-failed or completed posting effects. An authorized operator can retry a terminal failure with a recorded review reason. Incomplete effects appear in close readiness and block hard GL close for the affected scope. See the posting-effects runbook.
Read TRUST.md, the standards matrix and control matrix for the assertions and scenarios measured. Tests do not substitute for an independent audit or prove every accounting rule.
The trust pipeline requires standards, internal controls, a nonempty successful ledger checkpoint and a complete workflow execution receipt to identify the same full commit. The receipt names every required unit, database, browser, simulation and restore partition. The published bundle includes component SHA-256 digests and append-only publication history. Missing, skipped, failed or mixed-source evidence refuses publication.
Historical checked-in reports retain their own provenance. A green workflow badge or a focused test run does not establish that the entire current tree has passed. Comprehensive verification remains an explicitly dispatched workflow; independent payroll browser workflows have their own scope.
A TypeScript monorepo with a Next.js application, bounded domain engine, PostgreSQL accounting kernel and shared packages. Engine module dependencies form an enforced acyclic graph; application adapters use named package contracts for new integrations. Shared lists, reports, drawers, setup, printing and email keep modules consistent.
| Layer | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Runtime | Node.js 24 |
| Web | Next.js 16.3, React 19, Tailwind CSS 4 |
| Language | TypeScript 6.0 workspace toolchain |
| Data | PostgreSQL 16, Drizzle ORM, SQL controls and forward migrations |
| Background work | Redis 7, BullMQ and a separate worker |
| Files | S3-compatible storage; MinIO in Compose |
| Money | PostgreSQL numeric values and exact BigInt decimal helpers |
| Extensions | QuickJS sandbox, native configuration and workflow machinery |
See engine module design and CONTRIBUTING.md for boundaries and development conventions.
Use Node.js 24 and the repository's npm lockfile. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md for local environment and database setup.
npm ci
npm run check:engine-boundaries
npm run check:engine-public-apiKeep test databases isolated from financial data. Unit, integration, browser and restore checks have separate owners and requirements; never interpret skipped database tests as completed verification. Schema changes use forward migrations.
OpenBooks is actively developed alpha software. Start with an evaluation installation and representative workflows. Before production adoption, validate financial policies, reconciliation, jurisdictional obligations, permissions, backup restoration and the release you intend to operate.
Found a refusal that is unclear, a workflow that breaks, or a number that does not reconcile? A reproducible issue with synthetic inputs and expected behavior is particularly useful. See issues and contribution guidance.
If OpenBooks is useful to you, star the repository and share a workflow you tried. Screenshots, clear bug reports, localization evidence, documentation and code contributions all help the next organization evaluate it honestly.
AGPL-3.0-or-later. Free to use, inspect and modify under its terms. If you modify and offer it over a network, the licence's source-availability requirements apply. Review the licence for your distribution and hosting model.