Community Interview with Creator of Invoice Management App Gestion

Are you a small business owner that needs to keep track of customers, quotes, and invoices? If so, you may benefit from an app called Gestion.

We interviewed Benjamin Aimard from France about Gestion – meaning management in French – that helps small businesses with their invoice management.

Read more to learn about its creator and why it’s the newest excitement in the Nextcloud community!

Nextcoud: Tell us about yourself!

Benjamin: I work as an IT consultant in Cyber Security. What I really enjoy about my work is the diversity of fields I work in, from network, to IT architecture, to programming in various languages, and reviewing code. All these skills may prove relevant when auditing systems, for instance for pentesting web applications or other components.

Nextcoud: Why did you develop this app and why did you publish it?

Benjamin: I have been coding since I was 12 years old in VBA 5.0. It’s really a passion for me. For example, when I have free time, I like to relax by simply coding for a personal project. I started to develop this app because in my company I noticed that we had difficulties to organize ourselves to generate quotes. We had a random directory with the same customers and it was difficult to keep track of all the elements related to one customer we shared between colleagues. I believe very strongly in free software, open source code, and knowledge sharing. I also thought that if I have the need, others may too have the same need. Nextcloud is used by many people around the world, so perhaps my application can help those develop their company, by simplifying their customers management. IT is a solution, not a problem. I thought, if I write an application, it should be simple enough to help the user save time for other important projects on their agenda. Managing the administrative part of a business is really time consuming and can prevent a business from flourishing.

To put in simply, I want to help people.

Nextcoud: What does Gestion mean and why did you pick that name?

Benjamin: Gestion means management in French. It’s a very simple and straightforward name that exemplifies you can manage your own company with this app. 🙂

Nextcoud: How was the development experience?

Benjamin: My developmental experience was very progressive. I started with a very simple application to understand the documentation and the way that the Nextcloud framework works. After one year, I got the idea and thought Nextcloud was a great place to develop this application. I believe Nextcloud is very developed for a small company.

Nextcoud: Have you had any feedback from the community yet?

Benjamin: Yes! I have gotten lots of feedback from the community in my git repository. I was very surprised because some users started to ask me for new features and all the requests were really relevant. For example, some people wanted me to help correct bugs.

Nextcoud: What are your plans for the future?

Benjamin: My plans are very simple. I want to try to consolidate the code, make the application usable in as many countries as possible, and extend the functionalities without complicating the application.

I would like to thank all of the community members for their work and the Nextcloud team who work everyday to make this project great and powerful!

Support Benjamin’s work here:

Benjamin Aimard from France created the app Gestion that was made publicly available on Nextcloud on July 16th, 2021 (version 1.0.0 in Nextcloud 20).

Check out the app available here: