Crater Invoices - Open Source, Self Hosted Invoicing and Billing software with Power!

[@bossmbgaming]

Was having issues getting crater setup a few weeks ago, knowing how informative your videos are I can say that you will most definitely help me get this setup right 😀

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I hope it helps, and definitely let me know if my method works for you.

[@bossmbgaming]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I got it to work! Though it didn't work on my first few tries yesterday I got an error that the database wasn't empty. I tried again today, and it just worked (on the first try)! I have no idea how or why, but it is working now, very excited to try this program as I work on starting my tech business.

[@liquidmobius]

They also have a free and open source app (ad-free) for smartphones, but it has to be connected to your server to function. Definitely going to try to get all of this set up for my business. Thanks for all the great content!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

That's awesome!

[@SunblaKhan-lk6ol]

Crater Invoices looks like a powerful solution for those wanting complete control over their invoicing and billing with a self-hosted option! Open-source tools like this give flexibility and customization, which is awesome. If you're looking for something cloud-based and hassle-free, InvoiceBerry could be a great alternative-it’s simple and designed with small businesses in mind!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Crater is amazing, as is InvoiceNinja, InvoicePlane, and a dozen other powerful, open source, and freedom loving options.

[@kbit8473]

you've got some of the best content i ever seen ! I appreciate it !

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

thanks, and super glad you enjoy it.

[@viihunnid7099]

Love the content and you’ve just helped me a lot more right now

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Awesome, thank you!

[@iota347]

Anyone else having an issue where nginx will request the javascript and other materials from the reverse proxy which is localhost?

[@Mr-360-View]

I add Customfield in invoice section but that values not printed on invoice preview

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmmm. haven't tried to do that. You might ask over on their github to see if it's a bug.

[@Mr-360-View]

@@AwesomeOpenSource query found

[@BryceAndEveeNZ]

Deffiently one I will be looking at ... I have wanted an invoice option for a while now ... good to know crater looks good and isn't a complete arse to install

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hope it works well for you.

[@shivanshsharma7422]

Awesome video! I was having issues setting this up on my Synology so after spinning up an Ubuntu VM and doing the same steps, everything works fine! Really appreciate the tutorial! Just out of curiosity, do you know how to automate backups? I'm guessing I'd have to setup some type of cron job or something to dump the DB every 6 hours.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm super glad it helped. As for the backups, I would setup a cron job to stop the VM or container (maybe Synology can do this for you ) then make a snapshot / backup. The smaller backup would be of course to stop the container, backup the mounted volume for the db, then start the container again. You can backup a container's volume while it's running, but if something is being changed when you make your copy, it may corrupt the db. There are tools for this like Borg backup, and may even be some docker tools available to do it, but I haven't researched them specifically. I use the PRoxMox backups each night, and stop the VMs / LXC containers, have it make a backup saved to my NAS, and then start them back up.

[@surgical_17]

I am having a issue where my PDF's do not displaying or downloading (Server Error 500). something to do with dompdf missing but I'm having issues installing it. Anyone have some advice?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmmm. I didn't try to make the PDFs using crater. i Just did the printable version, and then downloaded it as a PDF. Maybe that's the same thing, or am I thinking the wrong thing?

[@microcisco]

I have the same issue - did you resolve it?

[@alka4711]

On my home server with NGINXProxyManager it works fine. On my internet server with HAProxy on the OPNSense with wildcard certificate the setup still works with LAN-IP and over the domain with http. As soon as I switch to https, I only get a blank page displayed. Does anyone have any idea?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmm...maybe a TLS versioning issue in the ceert?

[@roscore5]

Thank you for this great video. It is always awesome to learn about new opensource software. I am using docker on a Raspberry Pi and I ran into a problem with mariadb. Maybe this will help some other Pi Users. I found tobi312/rpi-mariadb:10.3 and I used this for the db: image in the docker-compose.yml file. This works like a charm. And secondly, for some reason I got permission errors during the crater setup. After "chmod -R 775 ./" in the crater root folder these were gone. (This ist just step 3 of the official crater manual installation guide)

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Great tip! Thank you so much.

[@davidharris7793]

The problem with all opensource invoicing software - little to no way of customizing the invoice template, which in turn renders them utterly useless.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I don't quite agree that they are useless because you can't fully customize them. The pre-built invoices work just fine for me, as I imagine they would for many businesses. If you need to be able to customize the invoice, I'm sure any Open Source project would gake a well written enhancement request seriously, provided they can understand the need / use case due to a really good description.

[@MaulikParmar210]

​@AwesomeOpenSource It's not simply easy, best library I've come across still requires a lot of code around tokenaization of data and then there are loops, alot of loops of repetitive data for invoice lines that needs to be parsed and structured. Being open source there can only be two options, have generic ones and give customizable base template. If generator is created for end user it becimes so complex that is comparable to half the comolexities of such project. It's simply easy to ask people hire one time customization rather than maintaining code that's only going to increase maintainance burden because average end user cannot do programming.

[@savageaus_gamez]

Hey, great video as usual. Found this while looking for a self hosted parts management app. Got anything like that in the pipeline?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Let me see what I can find. I know there are some really powerful open source inventory management apps out there.

[@helpotherstriumphh.o.t2402]

Thanks for the good Job, but I am having this error while setting up the database Error: Database should be empty

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

If you tried to bring it up the first time, and had an issue, you may need to remove the mapped volume before trying again.

[@mactech8167]

Great video but I want to run this on my "Synology Docker" any chance you can do a tutorial on that? as there is 1000s of Synology NAS users out there

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It should be a very similar setup if you ware using docker on synology, but no, I don't have a synology to even try with. Sorry.

[@dsulvadarius]

Thanks for thinking about people watching on their phones. It doesn't happen often.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I try to keep it in mind. I do the same, so for me it's really great to see things zoomed up.

[@JonJonNeddo]

Which is better Crater or Invoice Plane?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I currently use Crater. I've never gotten Invoice Plane to run properly, so I don't know if I could give a fair comparison.

[@andmuteall8421]

I've been using NPM for a few years now and all my other apps work perfectly but for some reason I'm getting a 504 error with Crater. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Is there anything in the docker logs for Crater or NPM?

[@andmuteall8421]

Not that I can see, although I've just modified the Dockerfiles to use PHP apache rather than FPM. rebuilding the images and see if I can proxy from NPM like all my other apps which are hosted on Apache.

[@dummag4126]

I need this software but I dont have an "host"

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Crater isn't supported anymore unfortunately. So, probably better to look at other alternatives.

[@dummag4126]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I solve!! i install easly in Apache2, yes is not supported but is a great piece of open interpreted code

[@gabrielferrer2400]

Can you do a video about Kill Bill deployed in Docker using an external MySQL database?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'll add it to my list.

[@cmdr-reflipd]

Looks great.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks!

[@SYMBIOTGAMINGsid]

Dude your content was awesome really appreciate, next can open source mail hosting server pls

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I already have a video on that. Here it is... kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZXQZXqQm5eprdk

[@SYMBIOTGAMINGsid]

@@AwesomeOpenSource thanks Brian ❤️❤️

[@HiImKyle]

Do you have a video on an open source smtp service? I'm just assuming you use an open source one

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I use an open source mail server and that's how OI setup my SMTP. Here's the video on it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZXQZXqQm5eprdk

[@dummag4126]

FUCK!!!! I stay 4 days to install Crater, and now is all ok.......................but, but, but..... I discovered that is not possible send mails with invoices atached, but only LINK...link at my HARD DISK????????????? WHY????????????

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You can save the invoice as a PDF and send it as an attachment, but that's the only way.

[@dummag4126]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Yes, i found option...it was hide at the bottom of option page ...wow

[@chrispeak3928]

Hey can you do one on farmOS?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Let me see what I can come up with. I'm not a farmer, but I could probably do one on getting it running.

[@mandrael]

Title should be more like: install crater on a vps

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Why?

[@mandrael]

@@AwesomeOpenSource because 90% of the video is about installing (via terminal). Begin is a short overview about crater, ending a very short time within crater itself. This is good, but the title implies diving into crater itself, which it isn’t.

[@jh-gcx]

​@@mandrael The crater project has died anyway... Github Owner has ghosted the community

[@isabelbrown4899]

Hi i have timtres payroll community addition its free and does employee sign ins im wondering it doesnt have invoivng in its free version is there a way to add this opensource invoicing to the timetrex or visa versa they are both open source so surly you would be able to join them in some way? basically trying to have both invoicing and payroll in the same app and all open source and free do you think this is possible?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

This would really be more of an interfacing question. most likely best posed to the Timtres and Crater teams. I can't really answer this.

[@michaelthomasross3251]

Do they support Australian Finance?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You'll definitely have to as them over at their project. Sometimes, just by asking you can get them to add it.

[@il51diablo]

I don't know if I understood correctly... You install crater without having a database?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No, the database is part of the docker-compose file. It is pulled down and run as a separate container in the same docker-network as Crater is.

[@il51diablo]

@@AwesomeOpenSource OK, thanks. It's stupid but I really can't get it to work I don't even understand why.

[@RutvikPatel2611]

How about update the script to levrage traefik docker image with http - https redirected and ssl resolver as lets encrypt stage /(production ) optional with $domain as env variables that can be asked and if you want clouldflare resolverer may env to token input , j have a script going but it my use case specific ,may be you can modify for genneral use case Another script called entertainment that includes jelly qbit (open vpn optional) sonar and radar

[@RutvikPatel2611]

Honestly i am trying to go one more step further with ci cd with gitlab and leveraging gitlab runner to deploy mutiple things in server may be can for your whole server config like that

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm happy to take pull requests for modifying my script, as long as it will work for everyone.

[@CaptZenPetabyte]

Have you got an tutorial for people who don't have a permanent IP address so someone who would need to have duckDNS & Nginx PM

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I do. I have one on DuckDNS as a matter of fact. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ep6YfqyrismkaNU

[@SibulTheTauren]

Do they support German regulations as well?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You'd have to check their documentation for that. I'm not sure.

[@_pr0xy]

Tried crater using WSL2, and fail XD

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmmm. Not sure why if it's running in Docker, you (in theory) wouldn't even need WSL2...just set it up in docker.

[@charlene-patasmonkey]

sorry but dolibarr is more simple to install and use

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I think of Dolibarr as an ERP, not an Invoicing and billing system. Not sure they are strictly comparable from a use case standpoint, but I like Dolibarr, and if it works for you, then definitely use it. I've covered it in the past, and it was great.

[@jh-gcx]

The crater project has died anyway... Github Owner has ghosted the community

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It has been a few months since the last update. I hope the maintainer(s) are just on sabbatical. But we shall see.

[@mikemiller2131]

a company that does not disclose prices is BS

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I disagree since you can use the system for no cost if you wish. The worst thing that could happen is you ask, don't like the price, and move on to other options. It only costs a bit of time to give it a try.

[@pjhandle]

Great video. Shows me to stay away from this. How can basic invoicing made so difficult to setup even with a container.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

This project is sadly abandoned. Setting up the project to run wasn't too difficult, but once running it ran great, and making an invoice was super simple. I have a video on InvoiceNinja now, which is just as good or better.

[@TechySpeaking]

first

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Nice.

[@alfredorodriguez4871]

i've tried this but i keep getting realpath of /var/www/tests/CreatesApplication.php failed to resolve, got false install [--prefer-source] [--prefer-dist] [--prefer-install PREFER-INSTALL] [--dry-run] [--dev] [--no-suggest] [--no-dev] [--no-autoloader] [--no-progress] [--no-install] [--audit] [--audit-format AUDIT-FORMAT] [-v|vv|vvv|--verbose] [-o|--optimize-autoloader] [-a|--classmap-authoritative] [--apcu-autoloader] [--apcu-autoloader-prefix APCU-AUTOLOADER-PREFIX] [--ignore-platform-req IGNORE-PLATFORM-REQ] [--ignore-platform-reqs] [--] [...] Warning: require(/var/www/vendor/autoload.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/artisan on line 18 Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Failed opening required '/var/www/vendor/autoload.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /var/www/artisan:18 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /var/www/artisan on line 18 Warning: require(/var/www/vendor/autoload.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/artisan on line 18 Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Failed opening required '/var/www/vendor/autoload.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /var/www/artisan:18 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /var/www/artisan on line 18

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You might look at dockerhub, and try the version previous to 'latest' and see if it comes up. If so, then it's likely an issue with the version they've put out. If not, then it could be a permissions issue on that folder being specified.

[@iota347]

hi i know this is really late but you gotta chown the directory to uid 1000 by doing sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /path/to/your/installation

[@alfredorodriguez4871]

@@iota347 that's what I was missing and I figured it out snd documented it

[@alfredorodriguez4871]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I've looked around and grab bits and ounce from different forums

[@gkhaled1]

@@iota347 thanks, installing on a Synology and it was kicking my butt, changed ownership and boom it worked