OpenBooks is a Nigeria-first digital cashbook for small businesses and freelancers to record sales, manage customers, create invoices, track payments and keep expenses together.
Invoices
Keep money visible.
Outstanding
₦158,500
Paid
₦420,000
Invoices
18
Live
public product
Open source
core codebase
Nigeria-first
local workflows
The problem
For a small business or freelancer, the financial trail can live across paper notes, spreadsheets, invoice files, bank messages and chats. The business can be working and still lack one dependable view of what was sold, what was paid and what is still outstanding.
Recorded in one place today, reconstructed tomorrow.
Created, shared and then separated from the payment trail.
Different payment methods make history harder to reconcile.
Small costs disappear into notes and memory.
Who it serves
OpenBooks focuses on the operational side of financial record keeping for independent workers and small teams: the daily work of selling, invoicing, collecting and recording.
User
Professional invoices, payment records and a clear history of work.
User
Sales, customers, invoices, expenses and reports in one workspace.
User
A stronger financial trail before accounting complexity becomes necessary.
The solution
OpenBooks brings the everyday trail together: customers, sales, invoices, payments, receipts, expenses and reports. The product is deliberately simpler than full accounting software while still giving business owners a reliable record.
Keep customer records and history together with the transactions they create.
Create invoices, share public invoice links and keep outstanding balances visible.
Record Cash, Bank Transfer and POS payments and keep payment history attached to the right records.
Turn recorded payments into receipts that can be kept or shared as proof.
See business totals and reporting periods without rebuilding the numbers manually.
Use authentication, tenant isolation and server-side financial rules to protect business records.
The product
The current V1 is live and covers the core record-keeping loop from customer and invoice creation through payment, receipt and reporting.
Invoices
Keep money visible.
Outstanding
₦158,500
Paid
₦420,000
Invoices
18
How it works
The workflow keeps the customer's identity, the sale or invoice, the payment and the resulting receipt connected instead of forcing the owner to maintain separate records.
Add the business profile and the payment methods the business actually accepts.
Create customers, make sales or issue an invoice for the work completed.
When a payment arrives, record it against the right business record.
OpenBooks updates payment history, balances and receipts so the trail stays together.
Why OpenBooks
Nigeria-first
Designed around local business workflows and NGN-focused records.
Simple by design
The product starts with the daily financial tasks, not accounting jargon.
Open source
The core codebase is public and documented for inspection and contribution.
Clear boundaries build trust.
V1 does not claim to replace every accountant or every accounting system. It focuses on the everyday record-keeping layer and keeps future provider integrations explicit rather than presenting unfinished capabilities as live.
Current payment boundary
Paystack is documented as a future provider boundary and is not treated as active V1 payment processing.
Product strategy
OpenBooks is intentionally free at the current stage. The product priority is reducing the barrier to keeping proper business records. Future commercial layers should grow from real user value rather than blocking the basic record-keeping workflow.
Today
Give small businesses a usable financial record system without an upfront software fee.
Distribution
A public product, practical guides and browser tools create multiple entry points.
Next
Learn which workflows businesses value enough to support sustainable future revenue.
Long term
Build beyond record keeping into useful business workflows without losing simplicity.
Roadmap
Keep financial correctness, mobile usability, public invoice flows and documentation strong.
Use real product usage and conversations to decide which recurring business problem should come next.
Reintroduce payment-provider workflows through explicit, testable integration boundaries when ready.
Turn trusted financial records into more useful business actions without turning OpenBooks into a bloated accounting suite.
The ask
OpenBooks is live, open, documented and focused on a simple job: help business owners know what happened to their money without making the process harder than the work itself.
OpenBooks
Simple bookkeeping, invoicing and payment tracking.
Live product
openbooks.click
Product documentation
Product boundaries, feature surfaces, architecture, security rules and release notes live in the repository docs so future changes do not silently make the deck inaccurate.