Billing is one important area of all small and big businesses. Billing software market is crowded that choice of one becomes so difficult for a start up business owner. The question is will billing software survives the flood of software suits or packages offered by small and big software developing companies.

It should. The problem open software community today faces is the lack of skills or interest to learn the basics of programming and working of programs.

People also seek comfort zones all the time. We all live in an age of instant gratification and we are hardly programmed to wait or try hard to get something. This is the general trend and they will go for easily available packaged solutions, instead of trying to learn what it is about the working behind the things they see.

Needless to say a billing cum accounting system will, to a great extent take the load of learning accounting from your shoulders. With Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) the modern mantra, it is quite understandable if a few companies have taken the initiative to make major inroads into the field of free open source billing software.

It is necessary for the user to have a basic coding and programming knowledge to tweak the pieces of software to a workable suite. Then again the attempts in that direction should be recognized.

When introducing an open-source billing software, it is sure to be met with much skepticism and prejudices. No open source software is an exception. The whole hearted attempts from skilful people keep the trend alive. This project has been the hot favorite at SourceForge.net for a few months now.

A recent addition to free software, specifically billing software is JBilling, located at http://www.jbilling.com. The open source software works with all major operating systems and supports My SQL, Postgre SQL and Hypersonic. It runs on JBOSS. It is thus a 100% free open source billing system that supports recurring billing, automatic payment processing using credit cards etc. It also handles web-based interface directly with end customers.

There are also different advantages of this specific billing software. Most of the processes are automated. Though it is not a new thing in open source world, business persons appreciate automatic invoicing, billing, payment processing, etc. What more? JBilling v 1.0.4 also accepts online payment via credit card.

The software thus easily becomes an alternative to proprietary billing systems.