About Pbooks

Pbooks Logo

Pbooks is an open-source, php-based accounting and bookkeeping system. It is designed for use by small business, and uses the double-entry accounting model. Licensed under the Affero GPL v3, beta versions are available for download today, or you can view a public demo accessible from our website.

While the software is somewhat mature and fully featured, the open-source project is in its infancy as of Q2 2007.

Pbooks History
I developed this software because the available open source accounting and bookkeeping packages were way too bloated with unnecessary features, or simply didn’t work. Therefore, the goal of PBooks is to stay true to the core concept of double entry bookkeeping. To manage the finances of a small business, Pbooks was developed as a bookkeeping database and application for internal use. It was used successfully for over a year and a half, but then the bookkeeping was outsourced and the platform changed to Quickbooks. The current plan is to now switch back to Pbooks: the PHP accounting and bookkeeping system. Even though Pbooks was used on a day-to-day basis in 2005 through 2007, it should be still be considered alpha software during 2008.

Pbooks Roadmap
Over the next several weeks and months, we will be publishing documentation and source for the Pbooks software. The following goals will be pursued as time permits:

  1. Pbooks Demo
  2. PBooks Wiki
  3. PBooks Downloads and Installation Instructions
  4. Pre-packaged archives for various distributions
  5. Support Forums
  6. PBooks Trac
  7. PBooks Subversion Repository

Pbooks Demonstration
There is now a very basic demonstration of the Pbooks accounting and bookkeeping system. This is a stripped down, non-functioning demonstration. Its objective is to communicate the general concept of this project, generate interest, and serve as a reference for those installing the software for the first time.

You can access the demo here:

Pbooks Accounting & Bookkeeping Demonstration

We now have a live demo as well:

Pbooks Accounting & Bookkeeping Live Demonstration

Software bundled with PBooks

Software required by PBooks

  • Nexista
  • Cache_Lite
  • MDB2 or metabase
  • PHP5, php5-xsl, PEAR…

Legal Information
PBooks and the PBooks logo are trademarks of Savonix Corporation.

The PBooks software code is copyright of Savonix Corporation, and is licensed as free and open source software under the Affero GPL version 3.