arrhes.com

What It Is

Arrhes is a modern online accounting application labeled as Open source, positioned around helping users regain control of their accounting work. It explicitly emphasizes compliance with French accounting requirements and targets freelancers, businesses, associations, and chartered accountants. In that sense, it feels more like a lightweight accounting SaaS built for the French tax and accounting context than a general-purpose global finance system.

Core Features and Collaboration

Based on the information on the page, Arrhes covers key capabilities such as basic accounting management, document storage, generation of consolidated files needed for tax filing, and Fichier des Écritures Comptable (FEC) export. The free tier also includes a full API, 1 million AI assistant tokens, and 100 OCR pages, suggesting that automated data entry and developer extensibility are intended as core capabilities. For collaboration, it supports multiple organizations and unlimited members, making it suitable for accountants serving multiple clients or teams maintaining accounts together. However, the page does not disclose enterprise governance features such as role-based permissions, approvals, or audit logs.

Pricing and Support

Pricing is highly transparent: core features are free, and document storage is free up to 1GB. Additional storage costs 0.10€ excl. tax/GB/month, AI costs 1.00€ excl. tax per million tokens, and OCR costs 0.01€ excl. tax/page. The license uses a “monthly free amount” model, mainly to support the project and server costs; paying users receive priority support. This model offers strong value for small teams, but the public information is still insufficient for customers that require SLAs, contracts, invoice-based payment workflows, or formal enterprise support commitments.

Pros, Cons, and Best Fit

The main advantages are its generous free allowance, feature set designed around French accounting compliance, FEC export, full API support, and beginner-friendly documentation with basic French accounting courses. The drawbacks are that third-party integrations, security compliance, backups, data residency, the open-source license, and self-hosting options are not explained in the captured text; management accounting is also still under development. Arrhes is best suited to French freelancers, small businesses, associations, and accounting professionals who want a low-cost way to manage French bookkeeping.

Access from China and Alternatives

Access from China, supported payment methods, and network stability are not disclosed, so they should be considered unknown. Because the product is centered on French accounting and FEC, its suitability is limited for Chinese companies that need to handle local tax compliance, VAT invoices, the Golden Tax system, or Chinese-language reporting. For China-focused use cases, options such as Yonyou, Kingdee, and Chanjet may be better starting points; internationally oriented small businesses can also compare QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books, or Odoo Accounting.