Welcome to Lighthouse: Open-Source Accounting for Small Businesses
Discover Lighthouse, our open-source alternative to Xero, QuckBooks and Freshbooks, designed to streamline accounting for small businesses.
We're excited to share this project with you, it's still actively evolving, and as a work-in-progress, it may have some bugs that need ironing out and could benefit from more features to fully support businesses of all sizes.
That said, Lighthouse is already robust and reliable enough for everyday use — especially for small UK-based operations.
I personally rely on it for my own small business, having un-subbed from Xero months ago and made the full switch to Lighthouse without looking back. If you're a small business owner seeking a free, customizable accounting solution, give it a try and join our community to help shape its future!
A business that has to report financials to HMRC yearly.
A business that "doesn't" have to report VAT or submit quarterly returns using MTD.
Currently working on VAT and MTD, this is a massive project that will open up Lighthouse to a much larger audience, but will also require significant community support and testing.
Lighthouse was developed with Revolut, and works 100% with this bank.
Other banks such as Monzo and Starling might/should work (but untested) - requires further development.
All other banks, unknown - requires further development.
This app has been developed as far as it can be, the data and submission appears to work, but I'm not VAT registered - requires community testing.
Current state - logs all VAT for current period, connects to HMRC, and submissions return with the validation messaging.
App still in sandbox mode.
As Make Tax Digital only affects Sole Traders ATM, that's been my focus, especially with the impending April 2026 deadline where income exceeds £50,000.
Same as above re: readiness, I'm not a sole trader - so it requires community testing.
App still in sandbox mode.
Simply register, visit your profile, and download the files.
You'll wonder why you didn't switch to Lighthouse before!
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