Akaunting: A Free Accounting Software
Setting the stage for a new way to manage one's finances, Akaunting is a free invoicing, expenses and accounting software for businesses and freelancers. This open-source software, which is hosted on GitHub, offers a new perspective on how small businesses manage their accounting. It is significant because of its modern, open-source approach to an age-old business function - accounting. It represents a shift in the trend of proprietary, expensive accounting software to free and accessible tools for everyone.
Project Overview:
Akaunting aims to fulfill the accounting needs of small businesses and freelancers. It intends to compete against traditional, expensive accounting software by providing a user-friendly, free substitute that handles multiple roles of an accountant. Its target audience ranges from individual freelancers to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It attempts to demystify business accounting and make it easier for businesses to maintain and comprehend their financial records.
Project Features:
The free software includes an array of key features suitable for managing business finances. These include handling invoices, keeping track of expenses, managing inventory, financial reporting, and tax management. Furthermore, a user-friendly dashboard offers insightful summaries and reports. Each feature is designed to seamlessly integrate with the others, providing convenience and removing the need for multiple accounting tools. For example, one can manage inventory and directly link it to the invoicing and tax modules within Akaunting.
Technology Stack:
The project uses Laravel PHP framework for its server-side operations and MySQL for its database. Laravel, known for its expressive syntax, simplifies many common tasks and makes the codebase highly maintainable. MySQL, being an open-source relational database management system, offers the needed scalability and robustness for handling a considerable amount of accounting data. The toolset used also includes other notable libraries as Composer for dependency management and PHPUnit for testing.
Project Structure and Architecture:
The Akaunting project employs a modular design architecture, allowing developers to create or edit modules as per their needs. Each module manages a unique functionality such as invoicing or tax handling. This modular architecture fosters code reuse and separation of concerns making the project more maintainable and scalable.
