Reconstructed · Clean-room · MIT-derived

Bookkeeping that stays on your computer.

SlowBooks Pro is a free, source-available accounting app for Mac and Linux. No cloud, no subscription, no account to create. Your books live on your hard drive — where they belong.

Get SlowBooks View on GitHub
Windows · Mac · Linux Docker or native install Analytics & AI · v2.0.0 No telemetry · no account
SPECIMEN · DASHBOARD · v2.0.0
SlowBooks Pro 2026 — Company Snapshot
SlowBooks Pro dashboard with total receivables, overdue invoices, active customers, and monthly revenue chart
Connected: localhost:5432 39 accounts loaded Ready
§01 · What makes SlowBooks different

Your data, your machine, your books.

Every other accounting app today wants you to host your books on their servers. SlowBooks doesn’t. It runs on the computer in front of you, and that’s the whole point.

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Completely local

No SaaS backend. No third-party cloud. Your ledger is a PostgreSQL database on your hardware. Close the laptop and your books close with it.

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Free forever

No free trial, no freemium tier, no “upgrade to Pro” paywall. Source-available under a license that permits personal, internal, and enterprise use at no cost.

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You own the data

PostgreSQL backups, IIF exports, CSV downloads, PDF statements. Walk away to another tool any time. No lock-in and no contract to exit.

§02 · New in v2.0.0 — May 2026

Now with analytics, AI, and inventory.

v2.0.0 ships a full analytics layer, an AI-insights brief with seven provider options, a real perpetual-inventory ledger with drill-down, and OAuth integrations with Stripe and QuickBooks Online — all without leaving your machine.

Analytics dashboard with KPI cards, 12-month revenue trend, A/R aging stacks, expense doughnut, and 90-day cash forecast
§A · Analytics

Real-time analytics dashboard

KPI cards, 12-month revenue trend, A/R and A/P aging stacks, 90-day cash forecast, expense doughnut. Chart.js self-hosted — no CDN. Period selector for MTD / QTD / YTD. CSV and PDF export with branded headers.

4 KPI cards 5 charts CSV + PDF ~26 ms on 3K invoices
AI Insights provider configuration screen with curated model dropdown and seven supported providers
§B · AI Insights

Bring your own AI provider

Seven providers supported: xAI Grok, Groq, Cloudflare Workers AI, a self-hosted Cloudflare Worker gateway, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, and Google Gemini. Keys Fernet-encrypted at rest. Eleven predefined analyses spanning customers, vendors, banking, P&L, and tax.

7 providers Encrypted at rest 11 analyses Optional
Items form with inventory tracking enabled, showing quantity on hand, weighted-average cost, and reorder point
§C · Phase 11

Perpetual inventory & drill-down

Real inventory ledger with weighted-average cost, automatic COGS journal entries on sale, reorder points, and a low-stock report. P&L and Balance Sheet rows are now click-through to the underlying transactions. Saved reports and fuzzy duplicate detection for customers and vendors.

Perpetual ledger COGS auto-post Drill-down Saved reports
QuickBooks Online integration screen with OAuth connection status and entity sync options
§D · Integrations

Stripe Checkout + QuickBooks Online

Accept online payments via Stripe Checkout — the webhook auto-records the payment with a balanced journal entry on completion. OAuth 2.0 sync with QuickBooks Online imports and exports accounts, customers, vendors, items, invoices, and payments with ID-mapped deduplication.

Stripe webhook QBO OAuth 2.0 Public pay page Import + Export
§03 · Demonstration

A full day of bookkeeping, in under a minute.

Create an invoice, receive a payment, run a P&L. All the things you’d do in QuickBooks — done locally, done fast, done without a subscription.

6.3 seconds
From open invoice form to posted journal entry.
SlowBooks Pro 2026 — Create Invoice
Invoice entry screen with line items, totals, and customer details
Posted to journal DR=CR Ready
Local latency < 5 ms
Cloud round-trips 0
Monthly fee $0.00
Data leaves machine Never
§04 · Install

One command, three platforms.

Docker is the recommended path on every OS — one docker compose up and PostgreSQL, migrations, and seed data are handled for you. Native installs on macOS and Linux are still here for the bare-metal crowd.

Docker — recommended for every OS

One command on Windows, macOS, or Linux. PostgreSQL, migrations, and seed data are handled by the compose stack.

git clone git@github.com:VonHoltenCodes/SlowBooks-Pro-2026.git
cd SlowBooks-Pro-2026
docker compose up

Open http://localhost:3001 in your browser. First run pulls images, applies migrations, and seeds the chart of accounts. Container runs as a non-root slowbooks user.

§05 · Provenance

A love letter to software that respects you.

Owns nothing. Phones home to nobody. Runs on hardware you can unplug. Accounting software should be the last thing you’d rent.

“Intuit’s activation servers died in 2017. The hard drive died in 2024. We just wanted to print invoices.”
§06 · Questions

Frequently asked.

Is SlowBooks really free? What’s the catch?

No catch. SlowBooks is source-available under a license that permits free use for personal, educational, and internal business purposes — including at commercial enterprises. The only restriction is you can’t repackage and resell it as your own paid product or hosted service. See the LICENSE for the full text.

Is it “open source”?

The source is public on GitHub and you can read, modify, and redistribute it. Technically the license is “source-available” rather than OSI-certified open source, because of the No-Commercial-Resale clause. In practice, if you’re using it to run your own business, there is no functional difference.

Why is it not on the cloud?

Because accounting data is the last thing that should live on someone else’s server. Your financial history, customer information, payroll, and tax records shouldn’t be subject to some other company’s pricing decisions, breach history, or terms-of-service updates. SlowBooks sidesteps the entire question.

How do I back up my data?

SlowBooks creates PostgreSQL-native backups on demand from the Settings screen. You can also export everything as IIF (for re-import into QuickBooks), CSV, or PDF. If your computer is already backed up by Time Machine, a cloud drive, or an external disk, SlowBooks’ data is already safe along with the rest.

Does it work on Windows?

Yes, via Docker Desktop — install Docker once, run docker compose up, done. A true Windows native installer is on the roadmap, but the Docker path is the supported and tested Windows story today.

Can I import from QuickBooks?

Yes. SlowBooks imports IIF files exported from QuickBooks Desktop (including the finicky Mac QB format with quoted thousands separators). It also has OAuth integration with QuickBooks Online for direct import.

Does SlowBooks really have analytics and AI built in?

Yes — v2.0.0 ships an analytics dashboard (KPI cards, charts, 90-day cash forecast, CSV/PDF export) and an optional AI Insights brief. The AI is bring-your-own-key: pick from seven providers (Grok, Groq, Cloudflare Workers AI, a self-hosted Cloudflare Worker, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini). Nothing is sent until you click. Keys are Fernet-encrypted at rest. If you don’t configure a provider, the feature simply isn’t there.

Can my customers pay me online?

Yes. Wire up a Stripe account once and SlowBooks emails invoices with a “Pay Online” button. Stripe Checkout collects the payment on their hosted page, and the webhook posts a balanced journal entry back into your local ledger automatically. The public payment URL is a token-scoped page — no SlowBooks account, no login.

Is my data secure if it’s all on one machine?

Single-user authentication is built in — setup wizard on first run, argon2id password hashing, rate-limited logins. All API keys you add (AI providers, Stripe, QBO) are encrypted at rest with Fernet. The Docker image runs as a non-root user. v2.0.0 also completed an external security audit pass: SSRF guards on outbound LLM calls, CSV formula-injection protection, schema-validated config payloads, constant-time secret comparison on the Cloudflare gateway. Your books are still on your hardware — same backup story as the rest of your machine (Time Machine, an external disk, whatever you already use).