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 tools, business management ...

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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

CPAL license on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, but was made non-free in June 2019. Postbooks was based on the commercially licensed

xTuple xTuple is an enterprise software company that develops and markets software under the brand name ''xTuple ERP''. The company was originally formed in 2001 as ''OpenMFG'' and rebranded as ''xTuple'' in 2007. The company is privately held. Hist ...

ERP system created by

, 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 relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

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 1983, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward Small and medium-sized enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses and offer On-premises sof ...

small business accounting product by

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American 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 preparation application Tu ...

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 that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

. Since then source code 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 The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

) client and a

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

based web services

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

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++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

using the Qt framework. Both the Qt client and PostgreSQL database server may be run on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

, or

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

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 Enyo (; grc, Ἐνυώ, Enȳṓ) is a goddess of war in Greek mythology. She frequently is associated with the war god Ares. Description She is called the "sister of War" by Quintus Smyrnaeus, in a role closely resembling that of Eris, th ...

to manage the presentation layer and

Backbone The backbone is the vertebral column of a vertebrate. Arts, entertainment, and media Film * ''Backbone'' (1923 film), a 1923 lost silent film starring Alfred Lunt * ''Backbone'' (1975 film), a 1975 Yugoslavian drama directed by Vlatko Gilić M ...

for the model layer. It communicates with a

NodeJS Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code ou ...

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

Pentaho Pentaho is business intelligence (BI) software that provides data integration, OLAP services, reporting, information dashboards, data mining and extract, transform, load (ETL) capabilities. Its headquarters are in Orlando, Florida. Pentaho was ...

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