Railbase for Finance
Close the month on one shared, audit-ready ledger instead of stitching subledgers together in spreadsheets.
Updated
Month close should not be a spreadsheet project
If your close drags on for a week because AP, AR and fixed assets each live in a different place, the problem is not your team — it is the plumbing. Journals get keyed by hand, numbers get copied between tabs, and by the time the trial balance ties, nobody can explain who changed what. Railbase gives finance one shared ledger that the rest of the business posts into automatically.
One ledger, connected subledgers
Railbase Finance is a set of business modules built around a single general ledger:
- GL is the ledger provider — your chart of accounts, journals and trial balance.
- AP, AR and FA are subledgers that post balanced, idempotent journal entries to GL over the event bus.
Because posting is idempotent, an entry lands exactly once even if a message is retried, so your books never double-count.
A real workflow
An AP invoice is approved through the built-in work inbox. On approval, AP publishes a balanced journal to GL, which posts it and confirms. Your trial balance and P&L reconcile with no spreadsheet handoff, because there was never a spreadsheet in the loop. When the period ends, the numbers are already tied out and every entry carries its source, so close is a review — not a reconstruction.
Why the usual options fall short
- Spreadsheets have no controls, no audit trail and no clear owners. They tie once and drift the next day.
- Scattered finance SaaS duplicates the same vendor and customer records across tools, so reconciliation becomes a second job.
- ERP is the right shape but the wrong weight — a multi-year rollout for a team that needs clean books this quarter. Railbase is lighter than ERP: one binary, one file, simple self-hosting you can run with your IT partner.
Pricing and rollout
GL is billed per accountant or controller seat — the people posting and owning the books. Viewers are free, so managers and auditors can read the ledger at no extra cost. Start on the free self-hosted core, install GL, then add AP, AR and FA as you are ready. There is no big-bang cutover.
FAQ
Do I have to migrate everything at once?
No. Start free with the core binary, install GL first, and add the AP, AR and FA subledgers one at a time. Optional migration help is available if you want a hand moving opening balances.
Where does my financial data live?
On your own server. Railbase is self-hosted — one binary and one data file. railbase.app only handles the catalog, your licenses and signed module downloads; it never sees your ledger.
Is this an ERP?
No — it is lighter than ERP. You get a shared ledger and connected finance modules without a multi-year implementation, and you adopt only the modules you need.
How are journals kept accurate?
Subledgers post balanced entries, and GL posts each one idempotently by source, so a retried message never creates a duplicate journal. Every posting keeps its origin for the audit trail.
Ready to tighten your close? Browse business modules or plan an implementation.