Your accounts. Your file.
Yours forever.
Beancount is a free, open-source double-entry accounting system. Your entire financial history lives in a single .beancount file — back it up anywhere, open it on any computer, hand it to any accountant, and never worry about a vendor disappearing, raising prices, or locking you out.
It will look like this
Fava is the browser-based interface to Beancount. It gives you balance sheets, income statements, a full transaction browser, and charts. Our platform will host it for you — with your ledger always mirrored in GitHub, so you have a full copy at any time, on your terms.
Every bill and invoice will be stored in Dropbox and linked directly to its transaction in Fava. Click any entry and the source document opens. Your auditor, your accountant, or your team can trace every number back to the original paper — in seconds, not hours.
On top of that, an AI engine will read uploaded documents, guess the accounting entry, and propose it for your review. It will also match bank payments to outstanding bills and received money to open invoices — so your reconciliation is mostly done before you even open the interface.
Actual Fava interface — numbers blurred for privacy
Use AI to automatically match and categorise your imported transactions — and learn your preferences over time
Let you click any transaction and see the original bill or invoice — documents stored in Dropbox, linked directly in the interface, traceable in seconds
Read an uploaded bill or receipt, propose the accounting entry automatically, and match bank payments to outstanding bills and received money to open invoices
Reconcile the monthly statement export from any Malaysian bank — Maybank, CIMB, Public Bank, RHB, Hong Leong, AmBank, and more. No import engine yet? We'll build it — free
Export a full GL, P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, and Aged A/P & A/R — all in one unified Excel, in one click
Create your salary, EPF, and SOCSO journal entries automatically — and generate salary slips and EA forms ready for staff
Help you estimate your CP204 instalment tax based on your actual year-to-date figures — not a guess from last year
Let you query your entire financial history in plain English — "which client paid late most often?" — and get a table back in seconds
Track SST collected per bimonthly period — show your SST-02 balance, link payments, and keep your filing position current with Malaysia's submission cycle
Provide full Malaysia e-Invoice support — direct MyInvois submission with your X.509 certificate, or export a valid e-Invoice XLS and sync status updates back automatically
Integrate with Microsoft and Google for login — your team uses the company account they already have, controlled by your IT admin
SST module — bimonthly period tracking, payment reconciliation
You'd expect enterprise pricing. A subscription. A setup fee. A vendor who owns your data.
The file format is free and open. TechSpace is building the tooling on top. We already teach you how to use it — for free.
Double-entry accounting, as plain as it gets
Every transaction moves money from one account to another. The books must always balance — Beancount enforces this automatically. You can assert your bank balance on any date and Beancount will tell you immediately if something doesn't add up.
That's it. No schemas, no databases, no formats you can't read with your own eyes. Your five-year-old records open exactly the same way as today's.
; March payroll
2024-03-28 * "March salaries"
Expenses:Salaries:Staff 18,500.00 MYR
Liabilities:EPF:Employer -2,035.00 MYR
Liabilities:SOCSO:Employer -231.20 MYR
Assets:Bank:Maybank -16,233.80 MYR
; Client invoice received
2024-03-29 * "Acme Corp" "INV-2024-031"
Assets:Receivable:AcmeCorp 12,720.00 MYR
Income:Services:Consulting -12,000.00 MYR
Liabilities:SST -720.00 MYR
; Assert Maybank balance matches statement
2024-03-31 balance Assets:Bank:Maybank 47,831.40 MYRPlain text is not a constraint. It's a guarantee.
Your copy, always — in GitHub
When the platform launches, we'll host it for you — but your ledger will be continuously mirrored to a GitHub repository you own. Every change is versioned. You can clone it, inspect it, or take it elsewhere at any time. If we disappeared tomorrow, you'd still have every transaction, in a format any accountant can open.
Yours forever — regardless of what any vendor does
Cloud accounting subscriptions can be cancelled, repriced, or shut down. When that happens, your data is held hostage until you export it — in a format you didn't choose. A .beancount file belongs to you, unconditionally. No terms of service, no pricing change, no acquisition can change that.
Hand it to anyone, on any computer
Your new accountant doesn't need to use the same software as the old one. No seat licences, no shared cloud workspace to set up. Send the file. Anyone with Beancount installed — which is free — can open it immediately and see the full history.
Every change is tracked — automatically
Because it's a text file, any version control tool works with it. Put it in a folder that syncs to GitHub, Gitea, or even just a dated archive. Every edit is reversible. Every month's snapshot is preserved. You get a full audit trail by default, not as a premium add-on.
AI reads it natively — no integration required
Paste your ledger into Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot and ask anything. "Which expense category grew fastest this year?" "Do any transactions look unusual?" "Draft entries for these receipts." The AI understands the format immediately — because it's readable text, not a proprietary binary.
Multi-currency, multi-entity, multi-year
MYR, USD, SGD, shares, foreign invoices — all handled with the same model. Run separate books for separate entities in the same file or across files. Ten years of history loads in milliseconds. There is no archiving, no year-end close that locks old data away.
The learning curve is real. We're already removing it.
The only barrier to Beancount is getting started — learning the format, setting up Fava, and building your first chart of accounts. While our hosted platform is in development, we already run free half-day workshops for Malaysian SMEs covering exactly that. You leave with a working ledger and enough confidence to maintain it yourself.
Where Beancount fits — and where it doesn't
A great fit if…
- You want to own your data with zero dependency on a vendor
- You want AI to be able to read and reason over your books directly
- You run a small business or manage your own finances
- You deal with multiple currencies or entities
- You want a full audit trail without paying for one
- You're willing to spend a few hours to learn something that lasts
May not be the right fit if…
- →Your accountant requires a specific proprietary format for submission
- →You have a large team that needs concurrent editing, role-based approval workflows, and a managed audit process — consider AccountEdge
- →You are not willing to learn even a minimal text-based format
Beancount is developed and maintained by Martin Blais. The full documentation, source code, and community resources are at the official site.
Official Beancount documentation ↗