Luca for Mavericks

Luca is an accrual-based accounting system that runs on OS X. It has the ability to handle real-time double-entry postings and multiple currencies, yet we try to make it very easy to use, so that it will require minimal accounting knowledge to operate. It is designed for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Luca's Design Objectives

"The task of the accounting profession, in relation to intangible assets and knowledge-based enterprise, is less about counting than it is about giving an account - telling the story of both tangible and intangible assets in meaningful ways, for both managers and markets." - Accounting for Knowledge Management.

The primary aim of an accounting system should be to help its users understand the financial information better. And we believe there's no finer platform for understanding information design than the Mac.

So we're trying to take advantage of all the wonderful user-interface design technology that is available on a Mac to provide Mac users with an inexpensive, easy-to-use accounting system that has most of the standard accounting features (e.g., double-entry, multi-currency, real-time P&L reporting, the ability to drill down and verify the source of any piece of data), and yet is still recognisably Mac-like in concept and navigation.

We take advantage of multiple windows to allow the user to focus on more-manageable pieces of information at a time, while providing the ability to drill down into the details or bring up related information with just one click. And we take advantage of a Cocoa application's ability to keep all its windows synchronised when you make changes in any piece of data.

Luca also exploits the relational nature of the underlying database to allow the user to analyse the data from any angle – for example, by starting at the Profit and Loss Statement and drilling down to the specific transactions that made up an account, or by starting at a specific transaction (say, an invoice) and looking up all the payment transactions, comparing them against the debtor’s credit history.

Luca has been built on very strong foundations. It has an open architecture, which allows users to choose which database they want to use to store the accounting data. Luca works with the SQLite database, by default, but users can choose to use it with MySQL or PostgresSQL.

Also, Luca is written in Objective-C and can be used as an embedded database in mission-critical applications, e.g., in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or insurance systems.

Therefore, the way we've envisaged it, a user can begin to use Luca in a non-critical, entry-level setting. And we're hoping to make the data entry as streamlined as a Personal Financial Management Tool. Then if Luca proves to be useful, the user can look forward to exploiting the built-in scaleability of Luca's double-entry engine to handle the accounting requirements of even a large scale business.

The schedule for Luca for Maverick’s development is to add features like Inventory and Time Billing, and a feature for importing invoices to create associated vouchers automatically, etc.

Other Features

Recurring Vouchers

Recurring vouchers can be created for General Vouchers, Cash Receipts or Disbursements, and Receivables or Payables.

Parameters can be set to repeat a voucher daily, weekly, monthly or yearly over a number of periods. Vouchers can also be set to repeat at intervals, e.g. at a bi-weekly or 6-monthly interval.

Printing and Exporting

The listings e.g. Chart of Accounts, Trial Balance, Journals and Statement of Accounts, etc. can be printed, saved as a PDF file or exported so that you may format it in your preferred spreadsheet application.

Currency Formats

Currency display formats and decimal number precision can be set for individual currencies (e.g., the Japanese yen has no decimal places and you can set this, as shown below, by setting the Max fraction digits to 0) :

Fast Start

Luca is designed to make it very easy for novice users to establish an accounting system. When first launched, Luca displays an example Chart of Accounts and sample vouchers (e.g., payments, receipts, payables and receivables) for the current month. 

The Luca for Mavericks Manual

There is a Luca Quick Start Manual that will use the example Chart of Accounts to show you how you could go about using Luca. You can go to work immediately, following the examples in the Manual. It describes one month's worth of accounting data that's already been entered into the system. And it takes you from the initial setup to handling a variety of common scenarios. The Luca for Mavericks Manual can be found here.

Release Log

6.0 October 24th 2013. Luca 6.0 for Mavericks released.

6.0.1 March 15th 2014. Minor bug fixes and updated some wordings in Chinese localization.

6.0.2 March 23rd 2014. Minor bug fixes.

6.0.3 April 14th 2014. iCloud support is added for the Mac App Store version. Managing the Luca SQLite database files is made simpler. You can move, copy or create a Luca database file within the Luca Preferences Pane. There are also simple one-click buttons to create separate databases for the setup of multiple companies.

6.0.4 April 30th 2014. This version improves the error handling when moving or copying db files via Luca Preferences. Also fixes minor bugs.

6.0.5 May 20th 2014. Adds the flexibility to close accounts in advance for future accounting periods. Includes other minor enhancements.

6.0.6 June 10th 2014. Improvement in the export facility to export the accounting data in Luca's built-in SQLite database to MySQL or PostgreSQL database. Also includes minor bug fixes.

This is the support page for Luca previously purchased from our site. We will continue to roll out updates and bug fixes here, in parallel with the Mac App Store, for users who had purchased a serial number previously.

The latest version is 6.0.6

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Luca for Mavericks

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