InvoiceShelf
Track expenses, payments & create professional invoices & estimates (fork of Crater).
Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.
Commit activity more than 60% of tracked projects; popularity more than 47%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 1.8k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 3.0.0-alpha.9 · 26 Sept 2026 |
| Repo updated | 26 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Built with | PHP, Docker |
Is InvoiceShelf actively maintained?
Over the last 11 months the project absorbed 424 commits, of which 147 arrived in the most recent quarter — roughly 49 commits a month.
The most recent tagged release, 3.0.0-alpha.9, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.
InvoiceShelf ranks #19 of 43 in Money, Budgeting & Management, placing it mid-table for maintenance activity.
What InvoiceShelf actually does
InvoiceShelf is a self-hosted financial management tool that allows you to handle invoicing, track expenses, and record client payments. As a fork of Crater, it provides a centralised interface for managing your business billing and estimates. It is written in PHP and distributed under the AGPL-3.0 licence.
Best fit: Freelancers and small business owners who want an open-source, self-hosted alternative to proprietary invoicing and expense-tracking SaaS platforms.
Worth knowing: The codebase relies on pre-release alpha software versions, which may introduce stability risks or breaking changes during upgrades. Additionally, the AGPL-3.0 licence imposes copyleft obligations if you modify the code and offer it as a service over a network.
Deployment notes
As a PHP application packaged for Docker, you will typically need to configure persistent volumes for your file storage and connect it to a separate database backend such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. You should also place it behind a reverse proxy to handle TLS termination.
Links
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