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Is kind of a big gap if you're invoicing actual humans. I looked at a couple of the existing open source panels last year and they all fell over on VAT handling or US sales tax. Not the collecting part, the *reporting* part. Stripe Tax exists but it's not free and at that point you're back to server eating your margin. Also 30 days quiet, is this still alive
I'm with @PascalOvid on the niche angle. Most open source panels try to be everything and die of complexity. Also @pam3 has a point about tax. Stripe Tax exists now but it's not free and the API surface is annoying. For tiny hosts VAT MOSS alone is a nightmare.
Stripe Tax exists now but it's another 0.5% and you still need to know nexus rules yourself
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34 days, guess this died but I'll bite.
This is the real killer for any billing panel. Stripe Tax exists now but it's not everywhere and the pricing can eat your margin on small invoices. Without proper tax handling you're either eating compliance risk or building something that only works in one jurisdiction.
For a Time4VPS target I'd actually look at what CloudCone does. They bolted a simple tax config onto their custom panel and it handles EU VAT and a few US states. Nothing fancy but it works.
Monolith is definitely the right call. Microservices just means you're debugging network calls instead of function calls.
Still curious about the tax side. 41 days later and no answer on whether this is even on the roadmap.
Stripe handles basic tax calculation now but only for certain jurisdictions. PayPal doesn't. If you're targeting "tiny hosts" they still get asked about VAT/sales tax eventually. Are you planning to integrate something like Contabo's tax API or just leave it to the gateway?
Also "PayPal" — typo or are you building support for a fictional provider? If it's a real gateway maybe spell it out so people know what you're actually connecting to.
51 days and no word on tax, that's a pretty big hole to just leave hanging
Yeah this is the thing that kills most diy billing attempts, everyone thinks invoices and payments are the hard part but it's the tax logic that'll make you cry
Stripe Tax exists but it's not free and it doesn't cover everything, PayPal basically tells you to figure it out yourself
If you're US only it's annoying but manageable, the second you have EU customers you need VAT place of supply rules and that's a whole job
Monolith vs microservices is a fun argument but honestly I'd rather know how you're planning to handle a German customer buying during a rate change on July 1st
Did you ever sort this out or did the project stall
57 days and still no tax engine answer, that's rough
This is actually the thing that kills most homegrown billing projects dead in the water, people think invoices are the hard part but it's the tax logic that'll make you cry
If you're in the US you've got nexus tracking across fifty states, in the EU it's VAT MOSS nightmares, and don't get me started on places like India or Brazil where the rules change quarterly
Stripe Tax exists but it's not free, same with PayPal's newer tools, so if you're building open source you need to decide if you're integrating those paid APIs or building a rules engine yourself which is basically a second product
My honest take: if you're targeting tiny hosts they probably aren't doing global sales anyway so maybe hardcode a few common jurisdictions and call it version one
Did you ever figure out the tax piece or did the project stall on that
59 days and no word on tax. Did this project die or did someone fork it and solve the VAT problem already.
This stuck with me.
