Turning ERPNext Into a Simple Online Pre-Accounting Solution — Is It Possible?

ERPNext is a wonderful project — one of the rare ones in our world that is built by people with a truly free spirit. I’m grateful it exists.

In our country, there is a strong demand for a high-quality online pre-accounting (basic accounting) solution. We’ve been researching for a long time for a system that is easy to use and offers clear, understandable reports.

On the other hand, we’ve also fallen under the spell of ERPNext — especially the Frappe Framework. May God protect you all.

To avoid rowing in the wrong direction and wasting effort due to bad decisions, I decided to post here first and seek guidance from people who truly understand this field. Because we ourselves do not have a clear answer.

Here is the question: What would it take to turn ERPNext into a pre-accounting system? In other words, the user does not want a full ERP, but rather a clean, simple interface for basic accounting tasks. They want to quickly open an account, record purchases and sales without going into deep details, track expenses, and evaluate their current situation at a glance.

ERPNext already does all of this properly. But users who are looking for a simple pre-accounting tool are often scared of the idea of an “ERP”. Encouraging them and training them requires a completely different kind of effort.

At this point, Frappe Books shines brightly, but it is not online. Would it make sense to create something like Frappe Books as an ERPNext module? Is that even feasible? For example, a new app such as “Next Books”? I might be thinking nonsense, but there really is such a need.

Yes, I want to become an ERPNext expert over time. If I succeed, I want to take part in the community: to write code, contribute translations, and be active in such a wonderful ecosystem.

Leaving ERPNext aside — is there any existing initiative for a pre-accounting module supported by ERPNext? Is there a similar need in other countries as well?

Kind regards.

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Yes, as the program is open source, there are endless possibilities for what you can think and deploy. This is a good and easy project to deploy as the framework supports integrations with other frameworks and calls and customization. So there is a possibility of “Next Books“ that can be installed over Frappe Framework and used as the purpose defined by you. To initiate that you have to first define the workflow and the integrations. Or as you said Frappe Books works offline perfectly, you can replicated the same workflow for you module.

Best of luck for the module.

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It would not be too difficult to launch Frappe Books as an online tool.

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@aligalip yes you are very right …
I have come from a Quickbooks (desktop) background and ERPNext was really amazing but overwhelming
So i think ERPNext is not for SME - the “small” part should be removed…
More like medium and enterprise should be looking into it…
But the key question is - today your company is small and may scale … then ERPNext will fit nicely with that expansion …
In the meantime some developers can get together and create maybe “small ERPNext” but one that can take advantage of the all benefits of the frappe framework and the other apps built around it (HRMS, Education, CRM, etc..)

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All depends on the deployment environment.