Open source accounting software for SMEs

The economic market constantly shifts and change, requiring increasingly complex and agile adaptations from companies, particularly in a global world where the future is becoming unpredictable. Therefore, it is critical for an effective accounting management tool to build a successful business, especially for SMEs - small and medium enterprises, where the margin for error is small. Accounting software systems are a great solution for SMEs to improve accounting management and to assist managers to overcome the complexity of the various regulatory and administrative obligations that currently attends any commercial transaction. Unfortunately, despite all the benefits, they are not yet common in SMEs that still favour outsourcing their financial information, frequently due to the wrong idea that accounting software is an intricate tool as well too costly. In this paper, we propose to refute this preconceived idea, and present open source software (OSS) as a viable alternative to proprietary software regarding accounting software systems. We describe and compare six top open source accounting software systems and study the applicability of these tools in fitting the requirements of SMEs.