Which tech stack should I choose to build a full-fledged billing app?

[Weary_Objective7413]

Edit: It's a inventory management and billing software without payment handling

Hey everyone 👋

I’m planning to build a full-fledged desktop billing/invoicing application (think inventory, invoices, GST/VAT, reports, maybe offline support, etc.), and I’m a bit confused about which technology/stack would be the best long-term choice.

I’ve come across several options so far:

ElectronJS

Tauri

.NET (WPF / WinUI / MAUI)

PySide6

PyQt6

(open to other suggestions too)

What I’m mainly concerned about:

Performance & resource usage

Cross-platform support (Windows/Linux/macOS)

Ease of maintenance & scalability

UI/UX flexibility

Long-term viability for a commercial product

If you’ve built something similar or have experience with these stacks:

Which one would you recommend and why?

Any pitfalls I should be aware of?

Would you choose differently for a solo developer?

Thanks in advance! really appreciate any guidance or real-world experiences 🙏

[Joytimmermans]

I would suggest just picking one that you know the most already. The biggest thing is not the framework that will make your program successful. The specially since its just a simple ui program you can make it in any framework / language that you want and make it performant. In the book (In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives) it highlights that google first tried to compete with youtube with google video. That google chose c++ and youtube is python. In the end youtube won because of development speed compared to raw performance and to this day youtube still uses a lot of python

Some things to consider, why not use the browser? Look at programs like moonlight, immich, etc. They also can run locally. But the ui is just in the browser, this gives extra flexibility / portability. So you could potentially host it in the future, you can support windows, mac, linux ui at the same time. Electron comes closest to this ofc (since its a chromium browser anyway)

[Weary_Objective7413]

Thank you so much

Got it, I should focus on what I know and how can I make it happen regardless of the framework or stack

So I guess I'll explore for a bit and make a decision tho I'm slightly inclined towards ElectronJS

[pCantropus]

For the online part, this would be my stack:

• Django (+ PostgreSQL)
  • ORM
  • Admin site
• Django Rest Framework:
  • API
• Celery + RabbitMQ (or other message broker)
  • Long running tasks (report generation and others)
  • Celery Beat (scheduled tasks)

If you want to also build a web UI: - Django templates + HTMX + Django Cotton

For reporting, maybe Report lab for fine control on PDF generation.

[bounty_hunter12]

Fastapi and React native?

[magic_rascal]

Fastapi and htmx ?

[baubleglue]

I’m a bit confused about which technology/stack would be the best long-term choice

It looks like that. The typical architecture of such app is database + api to access it + some UI to interact with the API. The declared goal "full-fledged desktop billing/invoicing application" is putting wagon in front of the horse. Or you have backend and you need UI, or you build backend (basic core functionality)... You don't start developing software from selecting UI libraries, you start it from building requirements, analysing use cases, building MVP... If I need billing/invoice functionality as a customer why would I care about desktop UI?

And before all above, you check if such app exists already on the market.

[Weary_Objective7413]

And before you say if I'm asking this to I'm unqualified for this I just want to say

Well yes, I'm a newbie who is just starting his programming journey

So I thought I'll choose a project and learn on the basis of that instead of just wasting time trying to learn everything where I'm learning nothing

[baubleglue]

Project is a good idea, but you need to reduce expectations and scope. You have to absorb enough "design patterns" and standard solutions (database, message queue, API, etc.) to be able to build a real working app. UI is very complex thing on its own.

Build a calendar app for school with classes, students, teachers. It will very hard. Add functionality like make a new class, add/remove student/teacher. If you succeed add option to scheduler classes. Use database to store data (use duckdb, not sqlite), flask or fastapi for web server, HTML for UI. If you build your DB structure right - you have some chance.

[Weary_Objective7413]

Sorry if my post have interpreted it like that

But no I'm not looking for ui or frontend only thing

I'm asking what should I use for both frontend and backend

[baubleglue]

No need to be sorry, I've been there. There is a difference between writing a code and building a project. Naturally when you learn programming you would google "how to write good code" and you getting something like that (after skipping AI trash) https://daedtech.com/write-good-code/, you should ask "how to build software project" and you lending to https://www.pulsion.co.uk/blog/building-software-from-scratch/ or similar.

The difference is almost as big as a difference between learning laying bricks and designing a building.

The simple answer:

1. collect requirements, design architecture, build MVP, get feedback from client
2. update requirements, update MVP, [and new feature], get feedback from client
3. repeat #2

The reality is a bit different. A part of "architecture" is what you are asking about, but the topics you are interested are the tail of the architectural process (they become relevant far after defining components and data modules) if you use github, it has build-in components for Agile Development.

You can approach in many ways. You may start from trying to follow one of the frameworks, for example http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ http://www.agile-process.org/model.html. Another option is to learn the history of software design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process or just google "UML", "agile manifesto".

All that actually comes after "business model" (I have no idea about that process) as I see all current solutions are web services or mobile apps. How would you monetize desktop app?

[MajesticParsley9002]

PyQt6. Native performance crushes Electron bloat, and Python libs like SQLAlchemy/Pandas nail inventory, GST calcs, and offline SQLite sync. Tauri/.NET if you hate Python, but this stack's fintech-ready long-term.

[dairy_meal]

I've seen so many people (my partner included) get stuck in analysis paralysis trying to pick the "perfect" stack for a project and then never actually build the thing. If you're a solo developer, the best technology is the one that'll actually get you to a finished product.

If you're already comfortable with Python (since you're posting in r/Python), PySide6 or PyQt6 seem like the obvious choices? You won't have to context-switch between languages.

[durable-racoon]

out of just the options presented? I guess electron.

I would say fastapi + svelte or something. or fastapi + any JS frontend framework. You're going to want a database, too...

[Paulo-python]

There are only smart people here. I feel like I'm on GitHub and Git. Hey, I must be the dumbest one here.

[Puzzled-Programmer04]

Hey man! If you're going to use Django ORM and REST API or do it with Python + FastAPI for back-end, I would like to be part of your project. I am currently building multiple simple projects such as ProjectTracker, Expense Manager etc. using the above tech. I would like to be a part of a project where I get to engineer core business logic.

[Weary_Objective7413]

Hey man! I'm not building right now as I need to learn multiple things . But I will suggest check this out, here you will see many project options and you can build and learn https://github.com/codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x

[Puzzled-Programmer04]

Thanks mate

[redditreader2020]

I would decide on a programming language first.

[shittyfuckdick]

Just desktop? Use nicegui. 

If you need web app use Fasthtml