How to use online or download and install BAS Off

Announcement: A web browser based version of BAS Off is now available. To join click here.

So there are now 2 ways to use BAS Off:

BAS Off Online - use in your web browser
BAS Off Enterprise - download the desktop client app

Note that both options store the data on our servers and you can use both options.

Option 1: Use BAS Off online, join here and check the below video for instructions

Option 2: BAS Off Enterprise - download the desktop client.

You can download a Windows installer here: SetupBASOff.exe

Mac, Linux or if you just want to use the Jar file: Download BASOff.jar

Step 1. Download one of the Open source Java Runtime Envronments JRE

Open Java is now the main source of java. In fact I develop the software using OpenJDK so there is absolutely nothing to be gained by paying Oracle for a commercial license.

Get it from bell-sw.com Then download and install.

Note that it's java version 8 (which is technically 1.8 but there is never going to be a 2.0 so they just call it version 8)

Step 2. Download and install BAS Off

Thankfully our website has changed a bit since the video. The software was launched in march but builds on the work done since 2004. It's the third version!

Download the SetupBASOff.exe from the above link and run it to set up the jar file and shortcut.

Note that the font shrinking is done by typing ctrl-, to expand just type ctrl+. You can save you preferred font size on the Setup -> Confguration page.

Step 3. Free Accounting Software (FAS) Identity set up

BAS Off uses your Free Accounting Software identity so if you have been using the www.freeaccountingsoftware.com.au FAS3Desktop product then you will already have a FAS identity that BAS off will automatically pick up and start using.

Just some extra information

Your FAS identity is installed in C:\users\<your username>\AppData\roaming\FASidentity and the file is called MyFasIdentity.fid. Probably a techincally better place to store this is on a usb. You can configure the location of the FAS identity on the Setup -> Configuration page. You can then take the usb with you to multiple computers to log into the software.

LibericaJRE-8 by BellSoft

This gets installed in C:\Program Files\BellSoft\LibericaJRE-8\bin and this is the path that gets added to the environment variable, PATH. The installer will automatically do this so you would rarely need to worry about it.

The executable program of interest is "javaw.exe".

When I installed BAS Off before installing java and muck up the shortcut (deliberately), I just put javaw as the program. The full target for the shortcut was:

javaw -jar "C:\users\glen\AppData\roaming\FASidentity\BASOff.jar"