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GnuCash 2.0.0 Released 282

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the as-long-as-they-have-support-for-very-small-balances dept.
tashanna writes "After a very welcome GTK2 conversion and some additional feature hacking, GnuCash has released version 2.0.0. Other notable changes include: 'OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet, a "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current accounts tabbed window functionality, the ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data, support for Accounting Periods, the data file format has been improved with respect to international characters data files with international characters can be transferred to other countries flawlessly, GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME Help system (Yelp).'"
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GnuCash 2.0.0 Released More

GnuCash 2.0.0 Released

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  • I'm curious to try it out. Anyone have screenshots of the new GTK2-y goodness?

  • Great for... (Score:5, Funny)

    by andrewman327 ( 635952 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:21PM (#15692246) Homepage Journal
    This is a great program for calculating all of the money you saved by not using Windows!


    Oh, and has TFA [gnucash.org] been /.ed already?

    • Yeah, but the thing that kills me is having to donate a dollar to the community for every dollar I spend...

    • Re:Great for... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by baadger ( 764884 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:30PM (#15692308)
      ...unless of course you plan to use it on Windows [gnucash.org].

      Most of, and all of the best, 'Linux software' is available on Win32. Ports are made much more likely by open sourced code. So I think you made a bad assumption there :P
      • Grumble grumble... I believe that most of the users of this program will be on Linux. But if you insist, I will ammend my statement:


        You can calculate all of the money you saved compared to buying Quicken!

        • Re:Great for... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by pintpusher ( 854001 )
          You can calculate all of the money you saved compared to buying Quicken!

          which, with rapid sunsetting, subscription features and more, is not an insignificant amount.

          • Re:Great for... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by generic-man ( 33649 )
            $40 every three years is a significant amount of money? I've been using Quicken since version 1 (back when Linux was in its infancy) and I've never had to pay for any subscription features. Upgrading every few years is pretty inexpensive especially when you buy Quicken along with TurboTax. (Speaking of which, where's the open source USA tax program I've heard so much about?)
            • fair enough. my experience is with quickbooks which, at the time i left, looked like it was heading for annual upgrades required to continue using payroll services that I was already paying for. and quickbooks upgrades (at the time) were not $40.

            • Re:Great for... (Score:5, Informative)

              by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @02:03PM (#15692950)
              For many of us, the cost of using Quicken also involves switching to financial institutions who pay Intuit's .QFX ransom. You do know what .QFX is, right? It is .OFX (an XML-based transactions format) with a couple of Quicken-specific tags that tells quicken that the bank is paid up. It used to be not a big deal since you could use .QIF files to import transactions. But starting in 2005, that is no longer an option.

              Try and call up Quicken and ask them why...both as a financial institution and as a customer. You will get all sorts of laughable excuses like ".QFX makes the files you get from your bank more secure", or "we don't use OFX because it isn't secure". As if their additions to the file makes it secure (it doesn't, not even from a integrity standpoint because every customer gets the same, or similiar tags).

        • Re:Great for... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by athakur999 ( 44340 )
          In previous versions, GnuCash was nowhere near being a replacement for Quicken (or MS Money).

          I see this new version finally has the ability to set budgets. Since the site is still overloaded I don't know exactly what this entails. Can you setup recurring bills as well? If so, GnuCash 2 is probably pretty close to the "good enough for most people" mark.

          I would love to replace MS Money with GnuCash (once somebody makes a Windows port). Every so often I'll try out the latest version on my Linux partition t

          • Re:Great for... (Score:3, Informative)

            by jsled ( 11433 )
            Budgets: yes (new in 2.0)
            Scheduled/recurring transactions: yes (since 1.8)

            No, it doesn't have the polish of Commercial Software, but it's improving.

      • Re:Great for... (Score:5, Informative)

        by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot@NosPam.stefanco.com> on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:50PM (#15692442) Homepage Journal
        So I think you made a bad assumption there :P

        GnuCash is NOT available for Windows yet. It may be available in the future, or it may be possible to compile your own.

        According to the wiki: "FAQ: Is it possible to compile GnuCash on Windows? A: Currently, no".

        • ..yep, thats why I said "plan to". These organised finance managing types have plans you know, unlike the rest of us who like to buy shiney things and think about it later.
        • Now, I was thinking of running GNUCash at home, on a Linux box, and making it available over the home network on the wife's XP laptop.

          If she runs Cygwin, and X, I should be able to forward the GNUCash session, right? Can anyone comment (in a technical, helpful way) on the relative crack-smokingness of this idea?

          Microsoft Services for Uniux doesn't really offer much for this scenario, does it?
          • Not cracked-out at all... works like a charm. I develop gnucash that way sometimes from a windows (and OS X) laptop.

          • Re:Great for... (Score:3, Informative)

            by OctaneZ ( 73357 )
            Yes, with Cygwin and X it should be possible to forward this or any other X application. Just make sure your server (your /etc/ssh/sshd_config or equivalent file) has X Forwarding turned on, it should have "X11Forwarding yes" in the file. And that at the client end you are requesting X forwarding, by either making it the default action for ssh or by using the "-X" flag.
            -OZ

          • Re:Great for... (Score:4, Informative)

            by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @02:46PM (#15693243)

            Not only is it possible to use GnuCash on Windows using Cygwin's X Server. That's how I've been doing it for some time now with very good results. The only problem I've ever had is with default window sizes for non-maximized windows--probably from having a much larger screen resolution on the Windows system than the Linux system that gets X forwarded.

            As far as I'm concerned GnuCash is one of the big reasons I've managed to avoid bankruptcy in the past. It's standard approach to accounting and reports was very helpful for me when I got into financial trouble in the past. Seeing this announcement for 2.0 is heartening, and a good reminder that it's time to donate to the developers' beer fund (or whatever they spend donations on).

  • Any sarge backports available? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:21PM (#15692248)
    I'd like to try this out. GnuCash seems like a good foundation for keeping track of finances, but past versions haven't been user friendly enough for non-accountants like myself.

    • I'd like to try this out. GnuCash seems like a good foundation for keeping track of finances, but past versions haven't been user friendly enough for non-accountants like myself.

      Even if you are a non-accountant, you really should take a course in accounting fundamentals. After I did that, GnuCash makes much more sense to me (now that I understand basics in accounting).

      Any software app is just a tool. You really need to understand what the tool is doing. If this is too much trouble, then you should go a

    • I'm a non-accountant too and I found GnuCash the perfect tool... so much more up my alley than the pay to play alternatives I had mucked with in the past. Unfortunately once finances got to a point where I needed a real accountant, he used QuickBooks so now I do too... and since the new version of QuickBooks won't run on Wine it was the straw that broke the camel's back and brought me back to a Windows desktop.

      I'd love to see GnuCash get to a point where real life accountants used it, or maybe if it could j

  • Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kuxman ( 876286 )
    Interesting.. I just discovered an older version of GNUCash this morning and had some complaints (enough to keep me from using it), but according to the change log, my largest complaints are fixed. It'll be interesting to see how well the DirectConnect works... and more importantly... is it secure enough to trust?
  • With the adaptation to GTK2 , GNUcash may someday be available for Microsoft Windows according to the GNUcash wiki at http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Windows/ [gnucash.org]

    With GTK1, a port of GNUcash for Windows was only a dream [gnucash.org].

    GnuCash is pretty popular in the Linux world. It would be great to see this OSS project available to Windows users as well.

  • GNUcash (Score:4, Informative)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:29PM (#15692303) Journal
    I wasn't too sure what GNUCash was from the summery and the article seems to have gone down, if you're wondering:

    GnuCash is an application to keep track of your finances. GnuCash is a personal finance manager. A check-book like register GUI allows you to enter and track bank accounts, stocks, income and even currency trades. The interface is designed to be simple and easy to use, but is backed with double-entry accounting principles to ensure balanced books.

    That's from yum, although 2.0.0 isn't in the fedora repositories yet (well, not; livna, core, extras or updates)

    • Re:GNUcash (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gnuman99 ( 746007 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:44PM (#15692404)
      Double-entry accounting is the only way to fly in the money world. It is the only way to make sure you balance you transactions. For example, instead of having

      Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00

      You have,

      Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00
                      Liabilities:Visa              $200.00

      Or even better,

      Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00
                      Expenses:Taxes       $15.00
                      Liabilities:Visa              $180.00
                      Assets:Cash                    $35.00

      Then when your Visa comes in, you reconcile your transactions. This is much, much better than a checkbook register or other back of the napkin accounting methods. The point is that ALL transactions are balanced. Money in = Money out.

      • Re:GNUcash (Score:3, Interesting)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )
        Sounds good, but who is going to enter all their transactions manually... TWICE!

        In the days of cash and checkbooks, I could see it. But in these days of debit cards, credit card, and automated bill payments, a fairly detailed itemized statement is prepared for you automatically. I suppose there is some margial benefit in manually duplicating all those database updates yourself, but I wager the time you spend hunting down your data entry mistakes will more than negate the benefit.

        • Re:GNUcash (Score:5, Informative)

          by ceswiedler ( 165311 ) * <chris@swiedler.org> on Monday July 10, 2006 @02:34PM (#15693166)
          You don't have to enter anything twice. Everything is a single transaction which refers to two accounts. So as soon as you enter something saying "$200 from Checking into Expenses" there is automatically a "$200 into Expenses from Checking". It's just two ways of looking at the same transaction.
  • Hoppefully, it will get the QA it needs this week. I was kinda hoping it would be in the ~x86 branch already. Anyone have a prelim ebuild?

    BBH

  • Gnome Office? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by baadger ( 764884 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:36PM (#15692353)
    Gnumeric [gnome.org] (spreadsheets), Abiword [abisource.com] (word processing) and GnuCash (financing) are all excellent programs that the Gnome project collectively call Gnome Office [gnome.org]. Anyone know if this is co-operative in any manner? ..good 'competition' to Open Office, even if they are not in the same class. It'd be great if these apps had a certain level of integration, although I can't think in what way off the top of my head.

    • Re:Gnome Office? (Score:2, Informative)

      by iburrell ( 537197 )
      All three of them use the goffice libraries. They have a lot of interface similarities because they are Gnome applications. They are pretty much independent projects.

  • kmymoney (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wh_TiGER ( 621248 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:38PM (#15692362)
    I've been evaluating OSS solution and I found this one pretty interesting. Polished and yet, powerful.

    http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    I'll certainly give a try to Gnucash 2.0 anyway.
    • With a name like that, it's sure to be good!

      (seriously.... have the Gnome/KDE guys just stopped trying to be clever with their names?)
    • Is this a case of astroturfing?

    • Re:kmymoney (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jeddak ( 12628 )
      For a really excellent, lightweight, and easy-to-use alternative to Quicken, GnuCash, MoneyDance, et al, I can heartily recommend Ledger [newartisans.com]. It kicks!!

      It's a command-line program that implements double-entry accounting, without the clunky GUI/WIMPy frills.
    • I've been using GnuCash for about a year now, and have also tried out KMyMoney. I have no financial training background and use it for personal finances only.

      Although I am a KDE fan and prefer KDE apps on my Kubuntu desktop, I went back to GnuCash because their double-entry accounting system is more rigourous and more powerful. The equivalent in KMyMoney is categories for each transaction, but not only are the categories not well implemented (you have to drill down into the transactions to display the cat
      • I am looking forward to GnuCash v2 appearing in the Ubuntu repositories.

        unfortunately, it won't go into Dapper... it'll be in Edgy. For Dapper, you'll have to request the backport team for it to be put in Dapper backports or else some kind soul will package it and make it available on an unsupported repository.

        that's how I've got the most recent KMyMoney, someone has packaged it and stuck it on their own repository.

  • And you thought physicists were boring (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:38PM (#15692367)
    Accountantzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..............

    • Re:And you thought physicists were boring (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @01:03PM (#15692559) Homepage Journal
      Hear hear!! My method of accounting is simple:

      1. Only one bank account (with a debit card) into which everything I make is direct deposited
      2. No credit cards (they are EVIL)
      3. Mentally remember how much you generally have in the account ($9786, OK, so I've got about $10,000 in the bank)
      4. Confirm what you mentally think you have with your bank's automated phone system so that you have a fresh guess as to how much you've got
      5. Never spend more than %50 of what you think you have in the account unless you have a REALLY GOOD reason
      6. DO NOT bank online. Evar
      7. Memorize the general amounts of your monthly charges, which should all be automatic withdrawals. ($54.99 for cable? OK so assume $60 a month)

      In general it's all based on assumptions with a mental attitude that you have less than you actually do. So far it's worked wonders for my money situation in that I really don't have to think about it unless it matters at the moment. Because if there's one thing people like us HATE to do, it's thinking about money. Money is a nuisance in every way just as non-techs feel computers are a nuisance in every way. For those of you that have a strong interest in money, well... get help.

      • No online banking? Why not? (Score:4, Informative)

        by pestie ( 141370 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @01:28PM (#15692718)
        6. DO NOT bank online. Evar

        Uh... why not? I've been banking online for years and never once had a single incidence of fraud. Of course, I switched to running Linux full-time a year or so ago, but even when I was running WinXP I had no problems. Of course, I also somehow avoided getting spyware or viruses, too (probably due to the fact that I was a devotee of Mozilla/Firefox). It's surprising to me to hear this kind of attitude on Slashdot, since most people here are clueful enough about security to know how to avoid getting burned.
        • Well I'm going to try and answer you and a few of the other posters in this one reply...

          For me it's just a matter of paranoia and security. As much as I don't care about money or don't like to think about it, I'm not crazy either. I have WiFi access point on my network (A Cisco AP that work gave me). It's secured with WEP. I also use SSH tunnels to and from all the wireless devices on my network. I still don't trust any of it with the sensitive information for banking. I use Firefox on all my boxes si
      • I buy everything that I can with my credit card. I don't have debt, because I pay it off in full every month. Why use my card in the first place? Reward points. Mad reward points. Reward points paid for my honeymoon to Aruba. Again, I've never encountered a finance charge... not once.

        Credit cards aren't evil, you just have to know how to use them.
        • you make a good point, I would also add that (at least in the UK) when you buy with a credit card you are protected against fraud because your contract is not with the people you gave the credit card information to but with the credit company itself, so if goods don't turn up or a company goes under you can get your money back. Debit cards don't offer that protection... but I don't know how to pay credit cards so I guess I'll never get one.
      • Um, get some loans! Then you will find it very useful to know what you owe, what you can pay off, how much interest you are paying, etc. You will be able to make much better decisions about what to pay off and how quickly.

        However everyone should keep track of expenses though, even if just for a few months. Once you realize how seemingly small things add up (do you go out to lunch every weekday? do you only pay the minimum on your car/home/college loan?), when you could be savinig for whatever your highe
      • i>Mentally remember how much you generally have in the account ($9786, OK, so I've got about $10,000 in the bank)

        You round your bank balance UP? Are you insane? Always round your expenses up, and your balance down, so you aren't going around thinking you have more money than you actually do. So if you have $9786, you have $9500, not $10,000.

        Also, if you actually do have $10,000 in your account, why are you letting it all sit in checking? Unless you have $10,000 in monthly expenses, you should put som

      • Re:And you thought physicists were boring (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bushwuly ( 585191 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @02:05PM (#15692967)
        Good luck buying a car, or a house.

        Unfortunately today, the costs of purchasing such major items necessitate the usage of credit. My mother at 49 is unable to get a loan to fix her house, because she's paid in cash her entire life and has no credit history. She'll just have to save up until she has enough, right?

        While I appreciate the simpleness and ease of what you're promoting, fact is unless you are independently wealthy or have no interest in having a family (how are you paying for the kids' college?), you have to have some form of credit.

        People like us? Sounds rather elitist...

        (By the way, I gave up a career in IT to work with kids, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a strong interest in money.)
        • "...have no interest in having a family..."

          Good Lord NO!! Hehehe...no, I don't make enough money to do what I like to do, buy what I like to buy, and travel like I like to do, and also afford kids. I'd have to make in the high 6 figures before I could have enough to please myself AND afford the expenses kids run you. I guess it works for some people...but, not for me.

      • "Hear hear!! My method of accounting is simple..."

        I'm close, but, not quite there. I have all direct deposit to one acct. Towards the end of the month, I call my bank's automated line and get a balance...and I pay all my bills online.

        But thinking back...I cannot remember the last time I actually got a bank statment, went through the transactions vs. my checkbook (that I now very seldom use) and reconcile the account. I've not tried balancing a check book or bank statment in I'm guessing nearly 6 years or

      • Good morning,

        I am a representative of Prince Mojumbiquo Atolulu. He is currently in your country and is having troubles transferring money to buy a palace because identity got h4x0r3d. We trust you so much that we would like you to help us get his money to him. He is currently try to buy a palace for $100,000,000.00 and we would like to give you 10% of that for help us. It will just require j00 to transfer $10,000 to us to cover our costs and then you will have your money shortly.

        Please respond quickly
      • Sorry but you're silly. For... well.. many reasons.

        Ok you have one account. Into which everything is deposited. With a debit card. So it sounds like you have a checking account. How much interest do you earn on that?

        You spend less than you have. Great! But you have a 50% margin, which you could definately keep at a higher interest. Oh wait, no you can't because you only have one account.

        Then, you don't believe in credit cards and online banking, but you do automatic withdrawals? IE you allow your utilities
        • Out of curiosity, what is the APY on your money market account, and what bank is it with? I already have an online savings account, which pays far higher interest than a normal bricks-and-mortar savings account, but if your money market can get significantly higher than a bricks-and-mortar money market account, i'd like to explore that option as well once my savings account balance gets high enough.

          Thanks.
          • ingdirect.com current yield is 4.35% on savings accounts. No lower limit.
          • Both HSBC Direct and EmigrantDirect are paying slightly over 5% currently. INGDirect which used to offer higher yields, is lower, at about 4.25% or so. Your bank is probably half that.

            In general, Emigrant has been higher than Emigrant in the past. Now that HSBC is in the picture, they have consistently been at the top of the payoff, with Emigrant catching up quickly.

            Either way, much better than your local bank. The first 100k of each account is FDIC insured. Transfers between any of these accounts and your
            • Actually, the online savings I have is with HSBC direct, and is getting just over 5% currently. You mentioned money market, so I was thinking it might have been something different.

              At any rate, yah, I currently have two savings accounts, one with a regular bank and the other with HSBC. I am contemplating closing the regular bank one and just shifting everything to HSBC, since the interest rate is much,much higher.
      • 1. Only one bank account (with a debit card) into which everything I make is direct deposited

        You have no retirement or other investments? No money market accounts? No savings accounts? Nothing which pays any interest? Why not? Are you married? Do you trust your wife or girlfriend? No kids with bank accounts to keep track of?

        Mandating having only one bank account is taking a woefully simplistic approach to finances.


        2. No credit cards (they are EVIL)

        Credit cards are not evil. Interest rates

  • Want a Windows Version (Score:3, Funny)

    by greenegg77 ( 718749 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:42PM (#15692393) Homepage Journal
    We all clamor for Linux versions of Windows software, so where's the Windows version of GnuCash? Just program in some random GPF's and we'll be happy.

  • Cash (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wellington Grey ( 942717 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:44PM (#15692408) Homepage Journal
    Looks like they could use a bit more cash to keep their site up and running.

    -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

    • Re:Cash (Score:3, Funny)

      by eclectro ( 227083 )
      Looks like they could use a bit more cash to keep their site up and running.

      Actually their servers cashed out.

  • the official announcement (Score:5, Informative)

    by pintpusher ( 854001 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:52PM (#15692460) Journal
    from gnucash-users list:

        Accounting in Linux Leaps Forward

    */GnuCash 2.0.0 milestone released to public/*

    Personal and small business accounting in Linux will be easier and
    better after today's release of GnuCash 2.0.0.
    This milestone release of the free, open source accounting program
    includes generational advances over the last version. GnuCash 2.0.0 is
    based on state-of-the-art gtk2 GUI technology. Developers worked hard to
    integrate the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for a consistent
    behaviour and look-and-feel for the whole Desktop.
    Major changes in the milestone release include;
            * OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account
                statements over the Internet.
            * A "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current
                accounts tabbed window functionality.
            * The ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data.
            * Support for Accounting Periods.
            * The data file format has been improved with respect to
                international characters. Data files with international characters
                can be transferred to other countries flawlessly.
            * GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME
                Help system (Yelp).
    The GnuCash development team said these new features and changes will
    make GnuCash easier than ever for newcomers.
    GnuCash is the leading free, open source accounting program and the leap
    to gtk2 will enable users to be able to enjoy cutting edge functionality
    with the freedom of not being locked into proprietory file formats.

    *Playing With Others*
    As with other leading Linux software that is designed to replace
    proprietory programs, GnuCash is a functional replacement for expensive
    accounting programs. Like OpenOffice.org and The Gimp, GnuCash is also
    programmed to communicate and interact with as many existing programs,
    institutions and people as possible.
    The GnuCash development team has continued to improve file import
    filters, which allow users to import work from old programs like
    Microsoft Money and Quicken. GnuCash can load QIF and QFX files, which
    are used by both of those programs.
    Developers have also continued to incorporate support for online banking
    into the program. GnuCash 2.0.0 supports OFX DirectConnect which can
    directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet.
    The milestone release is available in 29 languages, including English,
    French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, so people from around the world will
    have no difficulty operating the program

    *Off on the Right Foot*
    Users of the GnuCash 2.0.0 will notice a few changes when they start the
    program. Improvements have been made on startup speed, scheduled
    transactions, currency support and currency quote retrievals.
    After they enter the program, users will find a double-ledger account
    system, exhaustive report options and account hierarchy tools. Also at
    their disposal is a full system of tutorials and documentation.

    *Getting GnuCash*
    GnuCash 2.0.0 can be downloaded from gnucash.org. It is available as
    source code.
    To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, slib and g-wrap.

    *http://www.gnucash.org *

    *http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash
    *

    *About the Program*
    GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU
    General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris
    and Mac OSX. It is collaboratively developed by 10 people from over 5
    countries.

    Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was
    in 1998.
  • Doesn't the KDE community have a competitive program yet?

    • Re:Where's KCash? (Score:4, Informative)

      by nonmaskable ( 452595 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:58PM (#15692515)
      http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html [sourceforge.net]
  • Does anyone know any info on a usable, native GTK2 port for OSX?
    • It is available in Fink, though it's not "native" (a-la NeoOffice for OpenOffice).

  • What about us Brits? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KingDaveRa ( 620784 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @12:58PM (#15692518) Homepage
    My major qualm with accounting apps has been the American slant they have. It's often trivial stuff, like the terminology, but some things are slightly different 'over here', and having played with a few other free and Open Source apps, I often found myself a little bit lost and confused. I've used Quicken for some time, and it does what I want, and doesn't confuse me, but it's been localised more I think. I can't pin down the exact things I wasn't happy with, but I know in the past I felt too much of a US-bias.

    • turbocash (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      i have quite a few clients running
      http://www.turbocashuk.com/ [turbocashuk.com]

      open source, windows (iam suprised this never gets much publicity)

      unless of course you want to mess about with horrible unix kludges on windows in which case gnuCash will suit you fine
    • Simple answer is you have the source so start localizing.
      The real answer is that any accounting program will tend to be biased towards the location of
      a. the majority of users
      b. the majority of developers
      c. all of the above.
      Odds are pretty good that the US developers don't know anything about accounting practises in the UK.

    • Re:What about us Brits? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TTop ( 160446 )
      I'm not sure what you're talking about here... GnuCash has built-in multiple currency support.

      In my opinion, an important issue with GnuCash is that development is fairly slow due to a good chunk of the codebase being LISP, which limits the universe of developers that can work on it. Unless they've changed that with this new version (which would be great!). So it seems like the pace of development compared to other open source products of its age is fairly slow.

      I'd like to see the reporting and graphing f

      • In my opinion, an important issue with GnuCash is that development is fairly slow due to a good chunk of the codebase being LISP, which limits the universe of developers that can work on it. Unless they've changed that with this new version (which would be great!). So it seems like the pace of development compared to other open source products of its age is fairly slow.

        A very small fraction of the codebase is lisp.

        Development is slow. More developers and/or corporate sponsorship would help. All ~7 active

    • GnuCash can use the double entry system. That is pretty universal.
    • The help files and FAQ are a bit US-Centric, but I use GnuCash in the UK and I just created 'Current Account' instead of 'Checking Account' and it seems to be working OK ;) All the accounts and features are user-definable by name, so you don't need to worry about 'Federal Taxes' and 'Purchase Tax' confusing you.

      I've not noticed anything in the application itself that's US biased - certainly not enough to be confusing...

      Although it seems that it might be able to calculate taxes for you, if you're a USian; ha

  • Does anyone know if there are binaries published? Gnucash site is down and google was of no help.

    Yes, I know it can be built with fink, but even on my macbook that'll probably mean at least 6 hours of compiling, since gnucash has so many dependencies, it's not even funny...a friend says the old 1.x versions had almost 200 dependencies...and it'll be a fairly sizeable waste of disk space to have the entire /sw tree for fink sitting on my drive just for one program. this [caltech.edu] says almost 1.2GB of wasted space.

    • Uhh that 1.2 GB includes things like xcode, the X11 sdk, and what not.

      If they were gonna bother to upgrade to gtk2, why not just switch to something like wxWidgets -- go cross platform on Windows, Unix, and OSX with native widgets.

      Oh well. And seriously if you're worried about 1.2 gigs these days, you probably don't need GnuCash anyway since you'll never have any expenditures to worry about :).

    • Unfortunately, you're out of luck on your MacBook for the time being...some of the libraries upon which Gnucash depends do not yet run on OS X/Intel. (see the Wiki entry on OS X installation [gnucash.org]). You may also notice the list of dependencies earlier in the wiki article, which is not short (and is the reason that using fink is the recommended course of action).

  • Moneydance (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10, 2006 @01:21PM (#15692674)
    I've tried gnucash a few times and alwasy found it lacking and was forced to use Quicken in Crossover Office. Finally sometime earlier this year I read a post that mentioned Moneydance (http://www.moneydance.com) and gave the trial version a try. Its not quite as feature rich as Quicken but has all the features I needed and I ended up buying a lic for it. I have used it now for about four months I think and have been very happy with it. It runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. I'm not trolling or really even promoting but I just figued with the lack of good accounting apps out there for linux (at least on the personal finances side) I would mention it. I do hope that gnucash has improved with this realease but for now I'll probably stick with Moneydance.

    Oh, and yes it is java but the install was quick and painless and it runs quick (for me at least).

    • ...but I just figued with the lack of good accounting apps out there for linux...

      There are plenty of good free personal finance apps for Linux without having to buy a licence for a proprietary java application.

      I personally use FruityBanking [sf.net], although I'm a little biased since I wrote it. It's modelled on GnuCash, but with a web interface, and written in Python so everyone can play and it's flexible, open, easy to build on and compatible with SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL.

  • OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet

    I've been using MoneyDance for a while now (www.moneydance.com), and recently the OFX DirectConnect support has stopped working for Bank of America. And, naturally, all they tell me is "we don't support Moneydance" or "we don't support Macs," even though the app is using what should be well-defined, open standards.

    So what've been people's experiences with the OFX features of GnuCash, and does anyone have any "magic
    • Bank of America doesn't support anything but MS. I can't even open my account in firefox using IE TABS. Terrible terrible layout, and very annoying habbit of crashing when i am about to pay bills. If i wasn't so lazy i'd consider switching banks.
  • It is wonderful to have a free software answer to Quicken.

    Is there a good OSS solution comparable to quickbooks?

    Microsoft looks like a saint or even Jesus compared to Intuit. I hate Intuit.

    • Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pintpusher ( 854001 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @01:39PM (#15692811) Journal
      just my limited experience here...

      depending on what you're doing, gnucash IS a good replacement for quickbooks. It handles a/p. a/r and a reasonable slew of business reports. It does NOT do payroll, which may be a killer for a lot of people, but in my experience, quickbooks payroll wasn't all that. Once you've built a decent spreadsheet for doing payroll, you can format it into a .qif type format and import into gnucash just fine. then you have control over your payroll... my biggest reasons for switching from quickbooks: 1. tired of forced upgrades when the software already did more than I wanted and 2. (the real killer) if you don't use their subscription payroll system, then the payroll calculations will be WRONG. I had some local payroll taxes implemented in my quickbooks. When I got tired of paying them for tax tables that I could get for free from the govt, I let that subscription lapse and guess what happened... the payroll deductions calculated by those taxes I had setup were suddenly wrong. Hours of research later, i determined that without the subscription, it dropped a couple points of precision on the other, custom numbers it was computing. WTF! so screw intuit. IMHO.

  • Why I'm switching from Microsoft Money (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was an Quicken user for many years despite their regular releases which seemed to
    add no new features, just fix existing bugs.
    Then the whole TurboTax 2002/C-Dilla copy protection debacle happened and I swore off Intuit forever.

    Last week I purchased Microsoft Money hoping to get something like Quicken. Hoo boy.
    In 3 days of usage so far, I've found:

    1) Registration is only allowed with a checkbox reading "I agree to let Microsoft
    contact me about updates and special offers." There is no way to uncouple bug
    fix

  • Even though gnucash.org is being crushed by Slashdot, the release is still available at SourceForge [sourceforge.net].

  • Porting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cookiepus ( 154655 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @04:15PM (#15693882) Homepage
    I don't know if anyone from the GnuCash dev comunity reads this, but for what it's worth here's my big problem to trying it or any OpenSource finance package.

    Even if these things start to be able to hold a candle to MS Money, there are lots of people (like me) who have years and years worth of data in Microsoft or Quicken. Unless we can port the data, we probably won't really give these things a proper try.

    I would imagine that this is HARD to do. At least based on the fact that Quicken tried to make a program to make the porting easier but it sucked (it failed to match up transactions properly - ie that the -500 that left my checking account is the same +500 that arrived in my brokerage)

    In my opinion, most people who would use these tools, are the kind of people who were using Quicken or MSM before GnuCash came along. To get us to switch, we need to be able to port our data in a simple and robust way.

    just a thoight...

  • Too much hassle to install (Score:3, Informative)

    by scarolan ( 644274 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @06:17PM (#15694578) Homepage
    I gave it my best shot but this software is way too much of a pain in the arse to get installed. This one of the main reasons people will not switch to Linux, and well, they're right!

    I attempted to install Gnucash 2.0 on a computer running CentOS 4.3, and after going through 30 minutes of dependency hell to get all the required programs installed so I could compile Gnucash, I finally got a fatal error stating that g-wrap wasn't working properly.

    Maybe I'll try again later if someone creates an RPM installer, because I don't have time to mess around with the C compiler and obscure config files.

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