Frappe Books vs LedgerSMB

Frappe Books is accounting software for small businesses, available free under the AGPL-3.0 license. It supports quotes, invoices, payments, bills, supplier payments and returns, alongside double-entry bookkeeping, journal entries and financial reports. Inventory tools track stock across locations, including batches, expiry dates and serial numbers, and the software supports point-of-sale transactions. Businesses in India can produce GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 reports for GST returns. Books User, Books Manager and System Manager roles control access to records, reports and settings. Company data stays in the database of the customer’s Frappe site, and the software runs on the customer’s own server. It is listed for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, self-hosted use, web and Windows. On phones, it runs in a browser and can be added to the home screen, but an internet connection is required. The old desktop app is no longer supported. Frappe states that its quality and information security systems have ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 certifications and SOC 2 Type II attestation.

LedgerSMB is free, open-source ERP and accounting software for small and mid-size businesses. It combines double-entry general ledger functions with quotations, sales and purchase orders, invoices, receivables, payables, and cash management. The application also supports inventory, light manufacturing, and fixed-asset depreciation and disposal. Transactions can use multiple currencies, while budgets can be tracked by project or department with variance reports. LedgerSMB produces PDF, HTML, CSV, and Office documents, can email documents from inside the application, and includes 45 languages. A web services API enables programmatic interaction; connecting an online store is not available out of the box and requires custom integration. The web application is intended for installation on the user’s own infrastructure, with Linux installers and production Docker images available. Official release tarballs are GPG signed. Free volunteer support is available through a users mailing list and Matrix, with paid professional support also offered. The project began in 2006 as a fork of SQL-Ledger.