Adagio Accounting vs Beancount

Adagio Accounting is software for small to mid-sized companies whose accounting offices are managed by trained accountants. It processes transactions in batches, allowing review and correction before entries post permanently to the general ledger. Modules cover general ledger, financial reporting, bank reconciliation, accounts payable, receivables, inventory, order processing, job costing, CRM, and more. Reporting can span departments, divisions, and multiple companies, while inventory includes accurate costing. Adagio supports audit controls and provides batch detail as an additional audit trail. Deployment options include on-premise LAN or terminal-server installation and a hosted cloud service. Cloud base subscriptions allow up to five companies, with licensing based on simultaneous users. Workstations require Windows 11; Windows Pro is recommended and Windows Home is not. Adagio for Accountants costs $100 a month and includes specified modules, one administrator and one general-user license, and unlimited client accounts. Softrak Systems was founded in 1984 and released Adagio Accounting in 1999.

Beancount is a double-entry bookkeeping language for recording transactions in text files and producing reports. The `bean-check` command checks ledger files, while `bean-query` extracts tables of data from them. Documentation covers importing files downloaded from financial institutions and automating parts of that process. The `bean-price` tool can retrieve prices for commodities held in accounts, but ledger processing does not fetch prices automatically; reports can therefore run offline and remain deterministic. Beancount supports multiple currencies and documents portfolio export to external tracking websites. Version 3 is identified as the current stable, maintained branch, while version 2 is frozen and obsolete. The v3 guide notes that some tools were removed and that `bean-report` and `bean-web` are deprecated. Installation instructions cover uv, pipx, pip and source, including Windows instructions for v3. Contributed editor support includes Emacs, Sublime Text, Vim and two Visual Studio Code extensions. Beancount is open source under GNU GPLv2 only and has a free plan priced at free; it has no free trial.