It's not perfect yet, but it already works (1/3): GesTCP Lite, accounting without internet
There's a kind of tiredness only people who run a business in Cuba know. It's not just working a lot, although that too. It's having to sort out your numbers with a connection that drops, a spreadsheet that one day woke up with a broken formula, and the feeling that any small mistake can turn into a big fine.
I saw it up close. I know self-employed people who spend entire weekends balancing sales, expenses and taxes. People who are very good at their work, whether it's cutting hair, fixing equipment or selling food, and who still end the month with their minds on the tax office. That's where I asked myself a question that wouldn't let me rest: why does a self-employed person's bookkeeping have to depend on having internet?
From the question to the program
That question gave birth to GesTCP Lite. The initial idea was small: a program that lived on your own computer, worked offline and kept your data with you, not with a company in another country. No clouds you sometimes can't reach, no depending on whether there's signal today.
At first it did the basics. But reality is a good teacher, and little by little the program grew with what people truly needed.
What it does today
Today GesTCP Lite:
Records your sales and expenses, so you always know how the business is doing.
Calculates the monthly tax, without redoing formulas every month.
Controls basic inventory, so you know what you have and what's running out.
Handles payroll for the people who work with you.
Tracks fixed assets and their depreciation, something almost nobody does well by hand.
Issues invoices.
Includes a point of sale, so you can charge right where you sell.
When I write it like this, it surprises me. I didn't imagine it this big when I started. It grew one need at a time.
What matters most to me
There's something I want to say plainly: clients already use it. It's not a prototype forgotten in a folder or a promise for the future. There are people who open the program every day to run their business, and for the person who built it, that weighs more than any feature.
And everything stays on your computer. That's not a technical detail: for many people, it means sleeping easy.
The honest part
The title of this series is a promise, and I intend to keep it: it is not yet perfect.
I am still working on features for local development, licensing, license management, and automated database backups.
I don’t say this to make excuses. I say it because I believe that software created here—tailored to the local reality—improves as it is used and as I listen to the people who employ it. Everything that is currently missing is something I plan to develop.
What’s next?
This is the first of three parts. In the next one, I’ll tell you about another project that seems quite different, but stems from the same idea: an LMS—a system for managing usage licenses for the products I create.
Thanks for reading.
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