FrontAccounting vs LedgerSMB

FrontAccounting is free, self-hosted web accounting software for small companies, covering accounting tasks across a broader ERP chain. It includes purchasing, sales, accounts payable and receivable, inventory, manufacturing, fixed assets, and a general ledger with budget. Sales tools include quotations, orders, delivery notes, invoices, credit notes, batch invoicing, point-of-sale definitions, and payment allocation. Purchasing includes purchase orders, goods receival notes, supplier price lists and payments, and transaction attachments. Inventory supports stock items, locations, transfers, reorder levels, average material cost, and barcode scanner entry; manufacturing includes bills of materials and work orders. It supports multiple companies and users with different privileges, along with backup, restore, and simple audit trails. Reports can be printed, emailed, converted to PDF, or exported to Excel or OpenOffice Calc. Multi-currency and GST/VAT support are listed. Installation requires a web server, PHP, and MySQL with InnoDB enabled; other database systems are unsupported. The software is web-only, and support requests are directed to its forum. The listed plan is free.

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.