PHP Ledger 0.5.0-preview: eleven synthetic businesses and a clearer setup

What changed

0.5.0-preview brings the accounting starter into a more coherent working environment. The setup flow now explains the neutral core, a primary industry package and optional capabilities before installation. It shows account names and codes for review, rejects stale previews and records an immutable installation snapshot after confirmation.

The application keeps the company, book and currency visible while moving between daily work, review, management and help. The responsive list/detail patterns are intended to make common entries usable on smaller screens as well as desktop browsers. Amounts, selected sources and validation feedback remain visible while an entry is corrected.

Choose a synthetic business

The public chooser contains these teaching scenarios:

• Cedar Studio — professional services and agency work.
• Sunrise Garden Services — seasonal services.
• Willow Corner Shop — retail.
• Harbour Trade — wholesale and trading.
• Harbor Supply Company — distribution.
• Cedar Table — restaurant and cafe.
• Riverside Community Club — membership activity.
• Meadow Training Pharmacy — non-medicinal training inventory.
• Lantern Finch Jewelry Studio — synthetic jewelry business.
• Maple Bench Works — light manufacturing examples.
• Wheel & Spoke Workshop — service workshop with customer-owned property kept separate.

Each pack uses fixed dates and exact amounts, durable event identities and reconciled monthly and annual checkpoints. Depending on the scenario, the history includes invoices, bills, partial settlements, credits, ageing, bank examples and stock receipts, issues, returns, counts and valuation.

Keep the boundaries in view

The samples are operational teaching data, not claims of industry compliance. Meadow Training Pharmacy does not provide pharmacy compliance; Maple Bench Works does not provide production planning or recipes; the other names do not imply statutory, commodity, warehouse or sector-specific capabilities that the application does not implement.

The core remains country-neutral. A real-company setup can use released catalogue packages; research and preview-only packages are restricted to isolated synthetic samples. Country tax rules, withholding, statutory filing, advanced vertical plugins, multiple stock locations and bank feeds remain outside this preview.

Try it safely

Open the hosted demo or install the exact release separately with synthetic records. Select one scenario, follow the prepared guide and inspect the source-linked journal and reports. A visitor's practice entries are separate from the trusted seeded history and the sample resets on the published schedule.

Download the matching package and checksum from the download page. For a reproducible issue, share the version, steps, expected result and a fictional example; leave customer data, credentials and private backups out of reports.

What this release does not establish

A passing technical check does not establish statutory compliance, tax approval, independent accounting acceptance, accessibility certification or production readiness for every business workflow. The package and hosted demo are evidence for the stated synthetic scenarios and boundaries.