PostBooks is a proprietary accounting and

enterprise resource planning Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suit ...

business system geared toward small to medium-sized businesses. It used to be released under an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

CPAL license on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, but was made non-free in June 2019. Postbooks was based on the commercially licensed xTuple ERP system created by xTuple, a private software company based in Norfolk, Virginia (VA), United States.

Name

The name PostBooks is derived from three aspects of the project. The first "Post" alludes to the common concept of posting journals in accounting. Second, the name refers to the project's technological roots as it runs exclusively on the

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

database. Finally, the name suggests PostBooks as a logical step of progression for businesses that have outgrown the popular

QuickBooks QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1992, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as ...

small business accounting product by

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparati ...

History

PostBooks is the foundation of the xTuple ERP software developed and marketed by the company of the same name beginning in the year 2000. All of the xTuple ERP Editions are targeted toward small to midsize companies. PostBooks is offered on a commercial base in the Distribution Edition, the Manufacturing Edition, and the Enterprise Edition. The first stable release of PostBooks was version 2.2.0 announced in September 2007 when its code was first made publicly available on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

. Since then

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

management has been moved to GitHub.John Rogelstad (2013-07-18
We've Moved!
xtuple.org. Retrieved 2013-07-18. On June 20, 2019, it was announced the distribution of the free PostBooks Editions has been discontinued.

Functionality

PostBooks is divided into 7 functional modules: Accounting, Sales, CRM, Manufacture, Purchase, Inventory and Products. It supports multi-currency and multi-language capability and is therefore suited for international deployment. All modules are integrated into a single common code base in the client, and reside in a single database schema on the server. The difference between PostBooks and commercial editions is completely managed in the database schema where the Commercial database includes additional tables and functions to support larger enterprises. The PostBooks project includes two application interface options: a locally installed Graphical User Interface (

GUI Gui or GUI may refer to: People Surname * Gui (surname), an ancient Chinese surname, ''xing'' * Bernard Gui (1261 or 1262–1331), inquisitor of the Dominican Order * Luigi Gui (1914–2010), Italian politician * Gui Minhai (born 1964), Ch ...

) client and a

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

based web services

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

for integration with third-party applications, all of which feed into the same

back end database. The GUI client is using a client–server methodology written in C++ using the Qt framework. Both the Qt client and PostgreSQL

database server A database server is a server which uses a database application that provides database services to other computer programs or to computers, as defined by the client–server model. Database management systems (DBMSs) frequently provide database- ...

may be run on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

, or

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating systems. The GUI client also uses the OpenRPT report writer and renderer as its embedded reporting engine. OpenRPT is an

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

licensed open source project also administered by xTuple and hosted on GitHub. The web client is written entirely in JavaScript using

Enyo In Greek mythology, Enyo (; ) is a war-goddess, frequently associated with the war-god Ares. The Romans identified her with Bellona. Enyo is also the name of one of the Graeae, one of three grey-haired sisters who share an eye and a tooth. ...

to manage the presentation layer and

Backbone The spinal column, also known as the vertebral column, spine or backbone, is the core part of the axial skeleton in vertebrates. The vertebral column is the defining and eponymous characteristic of the vertebrate. The spinal column is a segmente ...

for the model layer. It communicates with a

NodeJS Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser. Node.js lets develope ...

server which provides the REST web services interface. The web client uses

Pentaho Pentaho is the brand name for several data management software products that make up the Pentaho+ Data Platform. These include Pentaho Data Integration, Pentaho Business Analytics, Pentaho Data Catalog, and Pentaho Data Optimiser. Overview P ...

to provide reporting and business intelligence functions.

Extendability

One of the major advantages of the PostBooks (and commercial) software is the technology it is written in, which allows significant customization of the database and functionality of the system. Customization is overlaid over core functionality and allows easy manipulation of the system from the simple addition of an extra field, to significant functionality overhauls. This is evident in that the entire Manufacturing feature set is developed as a scripted package over the commercial core application. As such PostBooks can be modified to meet the requirements of most organizations.

Community

Before going proprietary, PostBooks had a mature and established community. While the project was technically maintained on GitHub, most community activity is initiated at the xTuple hosted community website where additional forums and technical documents are available. PostBooks is written using English as the base language but has been or is being translated into several languages by the community at large including Spanish, French, German, Russian, Turkish, Chinese and Portuguese.

Notes

{{reflist Free accounting software Free customer relationship management software Free ERP software Enterprise resource planning software for Linux