These 2 are worth a careful look

• ledger and its derivatives
• quickfile

I am from the UK and been doing this for over 10 years, with a CSV general ledger.

I find the double entry accounting equation simple, but need meticulous book keeping and to fully understand the scheme of accounts to minimise the time spent preparing for tax, vat and PAYE along with annual financial statements to companies house.

To work on my own I follow the 'plain text accounting' principle, ledger seems good, but simpler for me to use SQL on a CSV file and a Rust program to handle MTD for VAT.

I've studied many accounting packages, all seem over complex and obscure the simplicity of the task.

To work with an accountant I would choose quickfile. It is remarkable, and one very smart person I expect to choose the best application uses it so I feel that it has credibility.

I love GNU Cash for my business.

The only thing I dislike is the search to find an accountant who will use it to review my books at year-end (only 1 out of 10 accountants will use it). But that's a social problem that gets better the more people use GNU Cash and pay industry experts to work with it

I also use it for stock trading. The Python bindings let me write scripts to analyaze the performance of my past trades. I like that its all offline. I can use the GUI for entry and easily write my own code against the data. Also there is a large and helpful community on the mailing list.

You seem to have a lot of recommendations already, but I just wanted to mention beancount as well. It's a decently powerful plain text accounting software. Not sure if it does invoicing.

For me it has been good because I think it is fun to hack some new functionality together that I feel missing. E.g. parse pdf receipts and break down transactions into postings based on what is in the receipt. But it you aren't interested in simple Python programming, I'd probably not recommend it.

Being able to easily version control it using git is really helpful when you are trying things.

May be Odoo - Git, the architecture is solid Postgresql - Python - JavaScript. Invoicing, Sales, Inventory, and so more modules are open source.

Depending on your need FrapeBooks may be worth a look: https://frappebooks.com/

Dolibarr is probably more than most need.

For invoicing at my small business, I use Invoice Ninja.

Open source, self-hostable, and they offer cloud hosting. Free for the base version with less than 20 users. It has a bunch of features, you are able to create very professional invoices, define services and products, calculate taxes, fees, etc.

It's very clean, fast, and intuitive.

For accounting, I use GnuCash. It's old looking and clunky, but it has a bunch of features and works fine for everything I need.

I’ve heard of GnuCash but I have no experience or knowledge of it

• open source, multi-platform
• aimed at individuals and small business
• Features
• looks like it can direct connect to your bank (but a Reddit post indicates might not be the most intuitive)

.

EDIT: only came across it because I was looking at the Guile language and GnuCash is listed as using Guile

EDIT 2: unwarranted advice – for memory and ADHD, take a look at the original bullet journaling (not the Instagram/TikTok fad it’s turned into)

Perhaps Firefly? It is meant for personal finances but considerably complex still. I am not sure if it does invoicing though.

Edit: This should give you a more precise idea of how fitting it might be: https://docs.firefly-iii.org/explanation/more-information/what-its-not/#business-finances-small-business-accounting-payroll-management