Lx-Office is a fork of the accounting package SQL-Ledger that is independently developed since 2003. It is especially customized to meet German requirements regarding accounting and financial reporting. There is also a module for CRM.

In March 2012, Lx-Office was renamed into "kivitendo"  to rule out misunderstandings  by equating name part "office"  to "office package" for spreadsheets and text processing. The new name comes from the Swahili, translated it means "practically".

To preserve the project history, the sourceforge area will keep the previous product name for the time being.