Many small and medium corporates are turning to open source in these hard economic times to find ways of reducing costs whilst improving their productivity and service level. Open source solutions have traditionally been used in the IT infrastructure side of businesses, because this is where the IT staff can often choose the tools that suit them the best, and IT staff are far more aware of the benefits of open source than other business areas. however there are a large number of effective open source business applications available that can have the same positive impact on a businesses bottom line as open source has had on the IT infrastructure side.

One of the most expensive business application, for which there are ready open source replacements, is in the finance and accounting functions. some of the more popular applications include:

  • Tiny ERP,
  • Open Bravo,
  • SQL Ledger, and
  • Compiere

Although these are strong financial and ERP applications ,none of the above solutions suit a business that needs to manage a large number of individual contracts of relatively low value, with recurring monthly or annual billing. this type of business requirement is characteristic of many service orientated businesses in the world today, such as Internet Solution Providers, Cell phone and other rent-to-own companies.

These businesses require an application with features such as:

  • Easy and fast contract entry, with strong validation to avoid errors during capture,
  • Inventory price list and cost list maintenance with date rules to enforce new pricing for contracts at appropriate times,
  • Easy contract lookup and customer issue resolution,
  • Ability to email customer statements and invoices,
  • Debit order and payment matching management,
  • Customer detail management and,
  • Supplier management

If you are one of the many businesses that are looking for an open source application that can provide these features then you are in luck. Open bill is a application that provides all this and more. Open bill is hosted on Java.net and recently released version 1.2 of the application. Version 1.2 is a minor release with some new functionality such as the:

  • ability to add dynamic line items at contract capture time (i.e items that have not been captured into the inventory system),
  • reporting on sales and cancellation on a weekly and monthly basis,
  • contract shipping and confirmation management

If you are interest in trying out Open bill for your company download a free version from Java.net and try the application at no charge.

Open Source Advanced Billing, Invoicing and Contract Management …