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I jettisoned Quicken and TurboTax several years ago after they started forcing upgrades to keep up with my investments. I moved to MoneyDance (no affiliation), and it doesn't do everything as well, but it's faster and more than sufficient for my needs. It's not OSS, but you never have to upgrade (yet!).

Because I have a wife whose card hits the same account and I don't go through my back statements each month. I put EVERY transaction on my credit card, from buying a coffee to parking to supermarket and everything else in between. That means my credit card statement is LONG. Yeah I know I should keep every receipt and check it against the statement at the end of the month but no.

We also put virtually everything onto the card, but fortunately my wife doesn't do that much purchasing so her items are not too difficult to figure out.

I use MoneyDance for our accounting, and it has a mobile app that syncs with the desktop software. I try to enter transactions on my phone as they occur (and often take a photo of the recipt at the same time) which makes reconciling against the data file downloaded from the card's website and the montly statement much easier.

http://moneydance.com/

Considering that this is one of those things that are virtually perfect for computer automation

You would think that but I've personally seen Turbotax screw up my taxes in years where I had a somewhat but not really complicated (by American standards) tax return. I can't speak for the rest of the World but in the United States your taxes are not a simple matter of mathematics. There's a logic flow involved, "Is X true? Proceed to Y." and at the end of the day if you can read the instructions you can do a better job of following the logic flow than Turbotax's programmers. It's my opinion that Turbotax is useless for anything more than 1040-EZ and if your taxes are so simplistic that you can file 1040-EZ why the hell would you pay someone else to do them for you?!

The year that Turbotax screwed up my return to the tune of $2,800 was the year that I stopped using it and started doing my taxes the "hard" way. It's not all that difficult, the hardest part is collecting the relevant information for your return and if you're enough of a geek to be reading Slashdot I assume you're enough of a geek to use some sort of financial management software. Moneydance is my personal favorite but even a well kept spreadsheet would work in a pinch. Once you have the data is simply a matter of knowing which form to file and going through it line by line. My Federal taxes take no more than two hours, my New York State taxes about three. The former can be electronically filed through Free Fillable Forms, the latter has to be done by mail, unfortunately, but most States are ahead of NYS here and provide an e-filing option for people who roll their own taxes.

Even if you outsource your taxes you're still on the hook for any errors or omissions, so what's the benefit to paying someone else to do them for you? Do them yourself, you'll save some money, learn a little bit about our tax system (and the absurdities therein) and be ultimately responsible for your own actions rather than trusting some other idiot's software to do the job for you. Of course, Americans aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer when it comes to taxes; how many people do you know that live paycheck-to-paycheck all year but get four digit refunds? A $2,000 refund is $38.46 per week that you could have had in your pocket if had bothered to fill out your W-4 properly.

NOTHING on linux even close to a real business accounting package

Try Moneydance, which is close to QuickBooks for a small business, depending on your needs:
http://moneydance.com/

In my limited experience it's well-designed, well-supported, and geek-friendly (extensible with Python, open API, etc.). It appears to be multi-user but I've never tried that feature.

If you're writing an app that doesn't fit in the simple CRUD model best for webapps, and you want a large dev base plus a huge amount of pre-written cross-platform libraries, Java is probably your best bet.

http://netbeans.org/features/platform/showcase.html

Moneydance is a nice cross-platform Java app. Sun blew a huge opportunity to encourage more like that.

They now (after 2 decades) have a Java app store beta for download as opposed to 1) having a web-based app store as well, and 2) just including the app store program in Java Runtime Edition like Apple would have done.

A solid money managing app: Moneydance

Ah, I seem to recall a lot of people vowing that the changes from Win2k to Windows XP would push them into switching to Linux. Most people always seem to wind up back on Uncle Gates' products though. More's the pity.

I just need to see what's holding me back from just moving to Linux. Ah MS Money. I wonder if I can import years worth of financial data into a F/OSS version.

I have this same problem although I'm tied into Quicken and not MS Money. I've never found GNUCash to be worthwhile. You might look into Moneydance. It's not FOSS but it runs on anything (Java) and is lightweight enough to put on a thumb drive for extreme portability. I'm still married to Quicken because I like the attachments feature but a buddy of mine swears by Moneydance. He keeps it on a thumb drive within a Truecrypt container and uses it everywhere he goes.

Dual boot? I don't know. I have had issues in the past with GRUB locking up machines and no being able to rescue my system. I had to reinstall everything.

I've thought about going back to dual boot and just keeping Windows around for Quicken and games. Strange that GRUB has corrupted your whole system though -- how does such a thing happen? I've always stuck with LILO (and Slackware... yes, I'm a purist) and never had any issue with it that would have caused me to lose data. I've had LILO itself get corrupted a few times but it never took my data with it.

...and try MoneyDance.

It has online functions, will run on any desktop platform, and (unlike Quicken) its file formats are fully documented/open which will help prevent your data from being held captive by that program.

Also your sensitive data stays on your computer, not sitting on the software vendor's server waiting for god-knows-what to happen.

When I moved from Windows to Mac three or four years ago, one big sticking point was losing Quicken (because the Mac version, even to a relative naive person such as myself, was so very obviously sub-par). I ended up going with MoneyDance -- and because it's cross-platform compatible, as I slowly switch from Mac to Linux, I won't be stuck out in the cold again.

And they do respond to bug reports. It isn't free (as in beer or as in open source), but it was less expensive and have gotten numerous upgrades without having to buy a new license.

Intuit is dead to me. I use Moneydance. It's cross-platform (try the demo) and works great. Imports wonderfully from Quicken. Aside from that, there are many many many many options for mac. And quite a number of good ones for Linux too. There's even GPL'd GnuCash for more sophisticated accounting.

And because I don't like Intuit, here's an offtopic tip-- did you know that thanks to a certain pre-Bush president, any company who wants to sell tax efiling software also has to provide free tax filing to the general public? Because if you think about it, why the hell are IRS tax filing servers (paid for by the public) not made available to the public? Rather, only certain corporations who then SELL their services to the public to use them? Seems a little unfairly tilted towards big business, doesn't it? Wouldn't you think the government would provide software to the public directly?

Well the Clinton administration thought so too, but negotiated with Intuit and others to let them keep their oily grip on the tax filing software in exchange for this "free filing software" deal. Never heard of it? Well, they certainly don't advertise it widely. And I've noticed that in years past they've lowered the maximum income to qualify. Currently it's an adjusted gross income of $54,000.

According to the web site, more info for this year becomes available January 16th.

Pass it on. The more you know...

I moved from Quicken 2000 to Moneydance with no issues. It has full support for importing the Quicken files or Quicken backup files. I know this is off topic, but as you stated that it is so difficult I thought I might trow you a simple solution. Moneydance is well worth the $40, and it works on Lin/Win/OSX nativly. :)

http://moneydance.com/

Try Money Dance and let me know. I wasn't happy with the first verison, but the crappiness of Quicken Mac is driving me nuts... Very annoyed that my up to date version lacks the basic stuff that I took for granted with Quicken Windows.

Have you tried Turbo Tax with WINE ( http://www.winehq.org/ ) or CrossOver Office ( http://www.codeweavers.com/ ) which is based on WINE? Also you could use Parallels ( http://www.parallels.com/ ), VMware ( http://www.vmware.com/ ), or QEMU (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) to run windows as a guest system so you could have Turbo Tax. Also if you use Quicken you could run it in one of those as well, or move to a software like Moneydance ( http://www.moneydance.com/ ). I moved from Quicken to Moneydance and it transfered all my data quite nicely and works on Win/Lin/OSX natively.

Just some Ideas,

May I humbly suggest you try Moneydance? It will import Quicken files, isn't loaded with bloatware, adware, and spyware, and the developer listens to his customers. It only costs $30. Not only that, but he hasn't charged an upgrade fee since 2004, through three different full-version upgrades! It also runs on almost any platform, including OS/2(!).

I switched from Quicken in 2005 when I dumped Winders for good. It's really very good, even if it is written in Java...

People want to go the web site download a program and run it.

That's what they've been trained to do because with Windows, that's their only option. In my experience, a package manager is a much easier way to install the best software.

But for the sake of argument I'll assume you're right. I still don't see the problem. One can download Linux versions for Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Google Earth, Softmaker, and Moneydance, to name a few. Run the Windows-like installer, and the app is installed and ready to use.

Or at the very least pop up an icon for that device.

KDE and GNOME have done this for awhile now.

Menus need to be in a familiar order.

I agree wholeheartedly. I wish Windows devs would take that advice too. Often they jumble menus around or, in an attempt to be cutesy or innovative, they dump the menus altogether. But that's no excuse for the Linux apps.

Give programs names that anyone know what they are.

A valid point, though diminished somewhat by my GNOME menu. My editor is called gEdit (which actually is a clear name) but my menu says "Text Editor". Bizarre names haven't stopped adoption of apps like Skype, or Quicken. That said, I do think the name of the GIMP should be changed because people waste time arguing about it. NuImage would be nice.

most people know how to use Windows so Windows is easy

No way. If Windows were so easy, there wouldn't be rows of books about it. QVC wouldn't be selling DVDs to teach Windows use. Computers are complex things, and it takes effort to learn how to use them. If people don't want something complex, then they can buy a CD player instead of downloading music off the Net; they can use a typewriter instead of a word processor; they can send a letter rather than email. Combining all these functions into a single box makes it complex, whether it's Windows, Mac or Linux.

Pure java application. Stable. Runs on Linux, Windows, OSX, UNIX, etc. http://www.moneydance.com./ Built to replace Quicken. Integrates with your bank, payment service like paytrust and credit cards. Not as refined as Quicken and a couple of things I like better about quicken, but it's only $30.00. And if you continuously upgrade to the beta versions, you don't have to pay an upgrade fee from what I've seen. If you run Lin/Freespire it's available in CNR.

This week we're taking a look at personal and small-business accounting software like GnuCash, SQL-Ledger, Ledger, KMyMoney.

I'd love to see a review of moneydance -- which is actually cross-platform being java, including linux.

Tell them you use Quicken or MS Money :)

http://moneydance.com/pipermail/moneydance-info/20 06-June/008033.html

User experience thus far is that you should be able to use moneydance just fine, as long as you get them to allow you OFX access. I have no personal experience with this issue though, so good luck. - DaftShadow

I may have missed it but what about http://www.moneydance.com?

Design the application cross-platform Check
Write it with an acceptable look anywhere Check (my opinion)
Care for acceptable feel anywhere Check (once again my opinion)

Oh, and it does all those nice things like automatically import bank statements, brokerage statements, tracks stock portfolios. It isn't FOSS but it's there and from my limited experience has everything Quicken or Money can offer.

>>Accounting: Quickbooks? There IS no replacement.

Please look at MoneyDance for personal finance a la Quicken Pro and Quasar for business accounting.

Quasar - http://www.linuxcanada.com/quasar.shtml
Moneydance - http://www.moneydance.com/

by the way, moneydance platform support is Win/Lin/Mac ;)

That gets filed under "not ready for the desktop".

No, technically speaking, that gets filed under "not ready for the laptop."

But seriously, if the measure of "desktop readiness" is being able to support every conceivable piece of hardware without tweaking some obscure setting somewhere, then even Windows falls down. Many times, I've had to fiddle with the Registry on my wife's Windows box to add or change a setting, and that's no more straightforward (less in my opinion) then using a text editor.

You can't get Quicken for Linux

You're right, and I used to keep an old Win95 box on a KVM switch for exactly that purpose (I don't like to dual boot). Just over a year ago, though, I discovered and bought Moneydance. It's a cross-platform personal finance manager implemented in Java (I was skeptical that it might be sluggish because of that, but it seems to be more responsive than Quicken). The program isn't really "pretty", but it does everything I need it to do, including the "killer feature" of being able to download transactions from all my banks.

I was then able to kick the KVM "habit" and go Linux full-time.

-a.d.-

I have been using MoneyDance. Its proprietary software, but it seems to work as well as quicken for me. Plus it works on all the major operating systems.

I recommend MoneyDance in place of Quicken.

It runs on the Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix and imports Quicken files cleanly. You can write your own extensions (using python) and it is easy enough to use that my (non-techy) significant other happily uses it. I migrated from a Quicken a few years ago - and am thrilled with the application, and the support.

It's worth at least considering before beating your head against the wall again dealing with another Quicken upgrade.

My only association with this company is as a happy customer. - Robert

I recommend MoneyDance in place of Quicken.

It runs on the Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix and imports Quicken files cleanly. You can write your own extensions (using python) and it is easy enough to use that my (non-techy) significant other happily uses it. I migrated from a Quicken a few years ago - and am thrilled with the application, and the support.

It's worth at least considering before beating your head against the wall again dealing with another Quicken upgrade.

My only association with this company is as a happy customer. - Robert

I recommend MoneyDance in place of Quicken.

It runs on the Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and Unix and imports Quicken files cleanly. You can write your own extensions (using python) and it is easy enough to use that my (non-techy) significant other happily uses it. I migrated from a Quicken a few years ago - and am thrilled with the application, and the support.

It's worth at least considering before beating your head against the wall again dealing with another Quicken upgrade.

My only association with this company is as a happy customer. - Robert

The only people impressed with these games are rabid Java zealots.
...and anyone who appreciates clever programming.

The overhead of the virtual machine is ridiculous and all of these games could or already have been written in other programming languages at a fraction of the size. Most of these games resemble old Commodore64 games except that they're 4K in size and require a virtual machine that allocates roughly 40MB of RAM for a 4K program....

First, though top or other tools might report 40mb, that does not mean that the JVM uses this because of memory paging and the rt.jar, there are many other threads about this so I won't rehash it. Secondly, J2ME devices do not use that much memory.

After seeing these Java games, I decided to go and try some of the other Java games that were mentioned in the previous thread, such as Wurm online and Jake. Both ran pathetically slow compared to an equivalent game written in other languages. I'm sitting here on a machine that can run Quake 4 at a high frame rate with no problems and yet in Wurm online and Jake I get random pauses due to garbage collection and about 5 frames per second. And yes, I'm using Java 1.5 and I've also tried with the 1.6 beta.

Odd, they work fine for me.

I know some rabid Java zealots will come out and say that bad programs can be written in any language but I challenge you to show me a Java program that's used outside the enterprise environment, that isn't a web application that isn't a slow memory hog.

Limewire, Moneydance, Sitebuilder...

Yeah, I read the JEdit guys blog. He seems like quite a jerk. Big Microsoft lover too these days.

Hopefully there's a way to convert all my current data (about 50 hours of entry worth) into GnuCash's format. I'm definitely willing to give it a try..

I wouldn't be in a hurry if I were you. I'm sure GnuCash can import your QIF file from Quicken, but you don't want to use this version of GnuCash since it's an unstable development version. Also, you don't explicitly mention what operating system you're using, but just in case do you realize GnuCash only runs on Linux? As far as I know, anyway. And I get a funny feeling you aren't using Linux and probably aren't ready to switch just to use GnuCash.

Several people have mentioned Moneydance so far in this discussion and I'm taking a close look at it myself. I would be much more interested in seeing how well a person like you and your finances get along with Moneydance. Personally I hate all platform-specific software no matter what platform it's on (especially for important things like finances). For that main reason I have never really given GnuCash much attention and Moneydance is looking good to me since it supports Mac OS X along with Windows and Linux. And it can import your Quicken QIF data, of course. On top of that it also seems to support a lot of the online features that make people stick with Quicken. So you really might want to check it out. And if you find a bug, get on the phone with them and see how they respond. That would be interesting to hear about as well.

This may sound like a plug but I don't work for them and haven't even used the software (yet). It just looks to me like a much better option especially if you are running Windows or Mac OS X. If I had a household with mixed Win/Mac/Linux computers (I do) I can't imagine using anything that isn't cross-platform for something this important. Quicken may run on Mac and Windows but have you ever tried migrating Quicken data from one platform to the other? It's a joke. Hopefully Moneydance can handle such situatiosn better.

...and haven't missed GnuCash one bit. As a personal finance manager, GnuCash sucks. Moneydance is easy to use and comes with a decent default account to get a new user started. Moneydance is well worth the minimal price tag if you need to keep track of your personal finances. If I needed to manage a small business I might re-consider GnuCash, but I'm not sure. I might look at other alternatives based on my prior experience with GnuCash.

http://www.moneydance.com/ if you are interested.

I've been waiting for this FOREVER. Another alternative for Linux is Moneydance, a java app that apparently spoofs Windows quicken online banking on Macs (or Linux)..

It would be nice for someone to do a mini-review or comparison of the different FOSS or FOSS-friendly financial packages, because frankly, I'm ready to leave Intuit.

Oh, and speaking of which--y'all know that you can file your taxes for free, right? Or at least 70% of Americans can. Down from 100% last year, but still something.

W

Finance program or tax calculator?

A finance program would be most welcome. Quicken for Mac is awful. Most others I've tried out have been severly lacking in features. Lately I've been using Moneydance, which isn't terrible, but it's pretty simplistic. I'd like to see what Apple could produce in this area.

When I tried to switch over to Linux as my primary desktop, I found that there are options out there, but they're just not as polished *looking* as Quicken is for the average finance/budget tracking user like myself. So, let me offer up what I've tried, and you can figure something out for yourself:

• jGnash - A weird name for a finance program, but I used it for a short time and it did an alright job... and that was approximately a year ago. The project looks to be in active development still, so you may want to at least give it a try. It did QIF imports alright as well, and although it's written in Java it seemed to be coded pretty well.
• GnuCash - Well known in the Linux world with a long history. I tried it out but never really got the hang of it due to the somewhat clunky and difficult to understand UI. The engine behind this program seems to work great, but much like Gnome, it takes some getting used to the UI.
• Moneydance - Also has a long history, is coded in Java, and tries to compete with Quicken, but I didn't like the reports in this program. Also seemed a bit sluggish on Windows because it was coded in Java, but that was a pre-2005 release version, so the new one might be better. Unfortunately, from the look of their webpage the reports haven't changed at all, which was my biggest beef with this program.
• Or try Wine because it appears that Quicken and QuickBooks run under it OK. Haven't tried this out personally, and this would mean keeping around your dual-boot setup most likely, but it might solve your dilemma.

P.S. Using Linux as my primary workstation taught me that Linux based desktop software is HIGHLY "tweakable", and as such is also highly prone to disaster. (I'm the type that never reads the manual: disaster then ensues.) If you're going to do your finances on a Linux desktop setup, buy a DVD burner and MAKE SYSTEM BACKUPS nightly!!

1. Forgive me for the obvious links:

http://www.moneydance.com/
http://www.linuxcanada.com/
http://www.linuxledgers.com/

I know nothing about Accounting and do not know if these may help you or not.

2. Fedora has excellent ATI drivers, Livna Repository I believe. Very good stuff but only works with Fedora.

Give MoneyDance a look as an alternative to Quicken. (You should be able to migrate fairly easily.) It's nothing particularly fancy but it's stable, the feature-set is pretty good, it's cross-platform (Window/Mac/Linux) and the support is excellent:

http://moneydance.com/

(Just a happy customer.)

What this means for me is that pretty soon Quicken will be the only reason for me to use Windows if the games are gone. Then at the rate that Intuit sunsets Quicken versions, my use for Windows will go away completely when I switch to Moneydance on Linux.

Thank you, Xbox & company!

GnuCash is free, but does not run on MS Windows. It also uses the more-complex double entry system bookkeepers use. This may be ok for you though.

The problem with Quicken (and perhaps Quickbooks) is Quicken charges a "tax" on banks for each transaction (check) written in Quicken and uploaded to the bank. They also discontinued support for the open QIF exchange format most banks use.

My mother uses MoneyDance to do her accounting schtuff. She loves it. Plus, it's available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. She switched to it from Quicken's software a while back.

MoneyDance

I've had mine for 2 weeks now and I absolutely love it. This is my first Mac but it doesn't take long to fall in love with OS X. I did upgrade to 512 megs of RAM but it really wasn't bad with 256 for basic stuff. It's plenty fast enough for general use (email, web surfing, iTunes, etc). iPhoto can cause brief delays, but it's not enough to be annoying.

I bought a KVM switch but I'm not switching over to XP much anymore. Once I finish Half-Life 2 I'm not sure if I'll have any reason to go back to XP.

I didn't care for Quicken 2005 for the Mac. It doesn't do direct downloads from Bank of America. I've been using Moneydance for a few days now though (http://www.moneydance.com/) and it works great with BoA.

This is the perfect computer for parents, grandparents, etc. too. It's very easy to use as everything just makes sense. On the other hand, it's also a lot of fun to tinker with. I installed Oracle 10g this weekend along with the Perl DBI. Best of both worlds IMO.

I've been using Moneydance on my Mac for over a year now. It doesn't have *all* the features of quicken but it has 95% of the features you actually did use. http://www.moneydance.com/

Check out Moneydance at http://www.moneydance.com/. Its not open source but it does run on every platform because its a Java application. And the best part is that it already works with your bank! I switched from Quicken over a year ago now and I've never looked back.

Moneydance is better than GNUCash, IMO. It's written in Java, so it runs on Windows, Linux, and UNIX (performance is just fine, folks). Also, you don't have to rely on your Linux distribution to figure out how to compile the damned thing.

I've been using Moneydance for a while and it is just fine for personal finance and can replace Quicken for people who want to do finances on Linux or UNIX.

I got fed up with Intuit's bug-ridden software and abysmal tech. support in 2003 and switched to MoneyDance. The GUI isn't as slick, but I ended up spending way less time on finances because the program's well-written and well supported. Instead of talking to tech. support people on the other side of the world who are just reading from a support database you can get email back from one of the developer's in a couple of hours and your questions are answered quickly, accurately, and for free.

I looked at some open source programs at the time, but the big draw for me to MoneyDance initially was it will automatically download transactions from my bank, and there's a great matching algorithm to stick the transactions in the right budget category.

I use MoneyDance. Although its pay for, its Java so cross-platform to an extent, and is good for basic money management. I wish the Gnucash people would at least make some steps to become cross-platform, but nobody seems to be interested in taking the challenge.

Which really makes me wish that GNUCash was in that group.

Go to here. Problem solved. And if you want it to look like your other Gnome/GTK apps, just pass it the GTKLookAndFeel when starting it up. With j2se1.5 coming out soon, it will even have a skinnable look and feel for Gnome. Just add jre!

No, MoneyDance is still around. See http://www.moneydance.com. It seems Sean managed to reacquire the rights to his software. Which is A Good Thing(TM). I've talked with Sean on several occasions and I think it would be a real shame if MoneyDance were to disappear. Or where you referring to MyBooks?

Well, we have GnuCash here that is in danger here and it has no way of exporting your data. Now there is a scary thought.

One thing I have to say is that the most important feature for me in a financial app is cross platform use. Because of that, I chose to spend money on Moneydance. It's written in Java and has great support. I run it on my Mac at home on both my Windows and Linux partitions on my laptop.

If you prefer to go the free software route, there is jGnash, whch will also run on various OSes, becuase it's also written in Java.

GnuCash is good product, but it has way too many dependancies and relies way to heavily on Gnome. Because of that, it can't be ported to Windows of MacOS X, even though there are native GTK libraries for both those environments. Perhaps the GnuCash team should focus on making a really good accounting engine and allow others to wrap GUIs of any kind around them.

A personal financial app is very important to the Linux desktop. I think it's far too important for the application to be in jeapordy of disappearing. Perhaps someone like Ximian should add this to their list of software, or the FSF should turn around and get some people coding full time on this with a grant.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like building stuff from source as much as the next Slashdotter, but these guys just use way too many external libraries.

There current "Software Requirements" page lists these dependencies (some or all of which may be required):

• Gtk+, Gnome, Glade -- I have no problem with these as they're pretty much standard issue now
• Guile -- This is a complete bitch to build and install, in my experience. I understand the need for scripting in an application like this, but why not pick a good language like Perl :)
• G-wrap, slib -- some more Scheme stuff that just seems like crap they needed because they were too lazy to write some of their own code
• GtkHTML -- do you really need a HTML parser in an accounting program? Why not just use Mozilla to display your HTML?
• libghttp -- same thing here. HTTP isn't THAT complicated, especially for what they're using it for. Write it yourself and save us a download.
• Gnome XML -- No one NEEDS to save their accounting data in some XML file format? What's wrong with the standard Quicken format that everyone is used to or even a nice, simple text file that I can munge with vi?

I've actually been using Moneydance for the last few months to manage my finances. I know that it is Satan's accounting program, being written in Java and all, but you have to admit that its quite easy to download and install, especially if all you're interested in is balancing your checkbook a couple of times a year.

There's no Linux equivalent to Microsoft Money, for example -- not something that can connect to my bank automatically and get statements and process transfers without having to import and export qif files. Same with Microsoft Streets&Trips -- there's simply no equivalent.

Actually there is a great equivalent to Microsoft Mondey, it's called Moneydance. It does all the that MM does and it runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Solaris and many other platforms. Not only that, but the data files are transfurable between platforms (Quicken doesn't do that). Take a look, I recommend it.

http://www.moneydance.com/

(BTW, I do not work for, nor do I have a personal stake in the company that makes Mondeydance, I just like the product.)

You're pretty new here, relatively speaking, but that's not really important.

You're pretty new here yourself, Mr. 6869. :) Isn't everything relative?

On the other hand, relying on a proprietary product means that features you want or require depend upon the developer. If it doesn't meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it ever will. If your needs change over time, you don't have the ability to adapt the software to your new requirements.

Although in the case of Moneydance, there's an open API and plugin mechanism that lets you add the features yourself. Apparently the only remaining advantage of GnuCash in this case is that it is free-as-in-beer. Although as the saying goes, for some people, it's only free if your time has no value.

You're pretty new here, relatively speaking, but that's not really important.

You're pretty new here yourself, Mr. 6869. :) Isn't everything relative?

On the other hand, relying on a proprietary product means that features you want or require depend upon the developer. If it doesn't meet your needs today, you have no way to ensure it ever will. If your needs change over time, you don't have the ability to adapt the software to your new requirements.

Although in the case of Moneydance, there's an open API and plugin mechanism that lets you add the features yourself. Apparently the only remaining advantage of GnuCash in this case is that it is free-as-in-beer. Although as the saying goes, for some people, it's only free if your time has no value.