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Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta Released
Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out.
We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let
more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal.
Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.
Why shouldn't PC's exist in the kitchen? I know my mother for the past ten years wanted to be able to order her groceries online, and store her recipies on the computer. Today, she does both. But to be useful, she has to print out the recipies and take them downstairs, a process she's wished to streamline for quite awhile. Who knows, maybe next year I'll get her a laptop for her kitchen for Christmas.
Here's an excerpt from my idea of a nicely wired geek house: Disclaimer: None of the following has any basis in fact.
Picture, if you will, a kitchen equipped with a slim laptop on the house's wireless lan. You feel like a change from your regular diet of ramen and Mt. Dew, so you head for your local online grocer (HomeGrocer in my area) and order up the makings for some seriously good pasta. It arrives the next day, you open your recipie database on the laptop in the kitchen, and begin preparing the meal. While you're waiting for the water to come to a boil, you decide to check your e-mail. (Yes, this is an extremely geeky thing to do, but isn't that sorta the point of a geek house?) This is simple, of course, because you have a laptop sitting next to the fridge which can get out to the Internet through your home lan's gateway (Which happens to have a DSL connection).
Food preparations are complete, so you alert your geek roommates throughout the house with a quick execution of the ever-useful wall program. Consoles on every computer on the home lan announce "Pasta ready in the kitchen", and dinner is served.
Perhaps a more modern twist on the above: You have a web pad, running a spiffy Crusoe processor, sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Its Bluetooth network adapter lets the pad access the home lan's Apache server, which has a recipie program written in PHP that stores the recipies (And URL's for all the ingredients that link to the online grocer) in a SQL database. Slick.
Oh, that's part of what I'm saying :) Word 5.1/Excel 4 are as far as I go in saying microsoft made anything useful. When the third hard drive on my powerbook went kaput (irony: an ibm part gave apple the worst reliability problem since the apple iii . . .), I actually went back to word 4/excel 3--I had about a 7 disk set that booted, unpacked onto the ramdisk, and still left me a few megs left.
:) it's patterned after the old (1.0-5.1) Word interface, but has the things it "should have" had--recursion, elseif, etc. RIght now it's just a source-code patch; when I either get some free time, or teach an interdisciplinary "Economics of Free Software" class, I (or the programming contingent in the class) will convert it to a library, and add the appropriate calls to LyX to use it. /end{plug} :)
these days, if you want mail merge, the best way to go is with my patch to lyx
I'd put word4/excel3 as the "minimum" usable wp/spreadsheet, and anything past word4/exce5 as overkill for most purposes.
As for powerpoint: It's an incredibly poor implementation of a half-way decent idea. I do better with slides from lyx . . .
I'm game to try another version [*shudder*], but for the moment, it needs to come precompiled. [But I file bug reports. Lots of them, and usually exotic stuff. Absoft asked me to betatest their now-current Fortran becasue of them]. Compiling is a bit beyond this current box at the office . . . in a few weeks, I'll have a larger box, but . . .[A
I don't need much from the borders; basically upper & lower lines, and a "lighter" line every five lines so they can trace across the whole sheet.
uh, no. If I hit the nail on the head, I apparently got your fingers while I was at it . . .
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that what is available now are toys compared to the windows equivalents. Lyx, for example, is miles ahead of word for anything vaguely technical.[B
More importantly, fifteen year old microsoft products are far ahead of MS Office. It takes significantly more work to perform the same task on Word 6+ as it did with Word 4.0 and 5.1 for the mac. If you're actually trying to get work done, a Mac (or mac emulator, I suppose) and the old MS products are a far better choice.
When Word 6 came out, MS was force by the market to put 5.1 back on the market. It's *really* that much of a step back.
The linux choices for spreadsheets and wordprocessors are pretty bad. THis does *not* mean that the current MS choices are reasonable; I'd insist on the old mac versions and a mac to use them with before the newer windows things. Once upon a time, MS made good software (applications, at least). Then came Word 6/Excel 5 . . .
I've never tried applixware, for the simple reason that when I chacked, it lacked features that I use on a daily basis. Maybe they've added more; I don't know. The same applies to Abiword. I never checked again, because lyx handles what I need in a wordprocessor more than adequately--in fact, for what I do, better than a classical model word processor *could* do. I didn't spend five full minutes bringing my dissertation into conformance with the university style guidelines. . .
When I tried WP/linux, it was to submit an abstract for a conference. We brought the file to a secretarial machine running the same version, and it turned out that it couldn't handle the included postscript images. The downloadable version also doesn't handle equations . .
Please don't try to turn what I wrote into any claim that office packages are useful, or that the quantity of features is in any way related to usefullnes. I didn't, can't, and won't say that. However, a spreadsheet should be able to include a line above a cell to show a sum (gnumeric fails here, as do most of the text spread sheet). It should be able to graph the data, or (better yet) it should be able to pipe arbitrary and noncontiguous blocks of data to something that can plot them. Word had useful graphs for miltplie variables in version 4; I think they were also in 3, but it's been a while. I believe that it is still the only one that can reliably handle noncontiguous data (leave out columns); I saw something else try, but it lost the information when it reloaded the file.
I don't want lots and lots of features. However, Word 4/Excel 3 hardly qualify as bloated, yet they're both more useful than anything I've seen on windows, and anything but lyx on *nix. Word 5.1/Excel 4 added some useful things, but introduced bloat. They're also the last MS products that I think were any good at all. I bought both of them.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I don't think it's likely to be ready for another year at best, and I think they need to step back and consider having a language formally made to represent tax rules rather than informally layering javascript and GLADE together in an XML file, but it's "under way."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The development of GnuCash has been pretty regular, with some minor improvements taking place almost every day.
(Aside: I've got a bunch of changes to the reporting code that I'm testing now, and preparing to commit...)
It is likely that there will continue to be lots of minor releases, in much the same way that Linux has a new experimental release every week.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
It's generally (IMO) a good idea to keep your own accounts so you can double-check the bank's. Even banks make mistakes from time to time, for various reasons. Not often perhaps, but noticing when they do is a Good Thing :) Not that I do it, but that's partly because I don't have a good accounting program (Quicken doesn't count for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'd have to reboot to use it, which makes it horrendously inconvenient) Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
You'd be better off with Word 4.0 or 5.1 for the mac than anything but LyX.
I think what you're saying is correct, but here's the flip side of it -- I'd rather have Word 5.1, Excel 4.0 and PowerPoint 3 than the current version of Office. Whatever additional productivity I gain from all the bells and whistles is lost every time I need to plow through the incomprehensible help system to figure out how to do something trivial. I realize that it is useful for somebody, but for my own purposes the last five years of office suite development have only made the software more difficult for me to use.
I would jump at a Linux suite that implemented 1995 MS Office functionality, especially with a modern integration system like KOffice will have.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Because:
Also, can I control into which categories the bank dumps transactions? No, I don't want their idea of which category or categories some particular credit card purchase belongs in, I want my idea.
(Also, my bank doesn't own my wallet, and I keep a record of cash transactions in Quicken 2000 - which, by the way, also implements that "dead desktop-centric model".)
I have a checking account at First Union and I'm also the author of Moneydance (a competitor to GnuCash). I've gotten online banking mostly working in my development version - downloading transactions and synchronization works, but I'm still working on bill-payment.
It should only be another couple of months before I release a beta version of Moneydance 3.0 which will include online banking as well as a bunch of other features.
Don't worry about the lack of Moneydance support. If I ever get sick of it, I'll just open source it myself (I'm the author). Also, don't worry about being "locked in" to using Moneydance - I will give the file read/write source code to anyone who asks.
It's not open source right now because I would like it to become something that can support me full time and there just doesn't seem to be any way to do that in the true open source model.
In the future I plan on providing the source code to registered users, but under a license that is less "free" than the GPL or BSD licenses.
FYI: Online banking and investment tracking are now working in the development version. I just have to clear up some crypto issues (and RSA licensing fees) before I can release it.
Erm... I know you can get .debs and .rpms containing GnuCash, but I'm unaware of the equivalent for Slackware. Slackware also doesn't appear to do dependency management (this package needs this other package, etc.), and GnuCash has a ton of dependencies.
I tried installing it from sources once. After diving three-deep in Perl module dependencies, I got frustrated and gave up.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not a Slackware basher. It's what's installed on my laptop and desktop, and I've used it for years. But I really appreciate letting the computer worry about what I have installed, and what depends on what.
In a lame attempt to bring this back on-topic, does anyone know how hard it would be to add a unified transaction entry method to GnuCash?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I actually like some software that has someone to be held accountable for things just like that. Who would I take to court if some loser added that 'functionality' to an open source program?
Yeah, this is the killer feature as far as I am concerned. I never used to keep my checkbook balanced before, but with Quicken able to nab my transaction info right from the bank itself, I was in nirvana. For once, I knew exactly how much money I had!
.QIF file... which means that maybe I could use GNUCash and import the .QIF to reconcile my bank balance... Then I could stop running Quicken under VMWare :)
/. and other web sites. It would just have to authenticate you in oreder to access the relevant pages.
For some reason, right after the 1st of January, this feature died on my in Quicken 98 (apparently, an error on the bank's side... I haven't tried calling them yet on it. I dread trying to explain an error message to some phone-based bank teller...).
I noticed, however, that my bank does offer web-based banking, with the ability to download transactions in a
I think, way back, I took a look at GNUCash right after the two preceding projects merged, and they did say something about online banking. Thing is, I'd figure that the protocols used in online banking are not a very open standard. It's something MS Money and Quicken can do, because they are Big Reputable Software Firms, and not a buncha guys writing software for the common good (in the eyes of bankers, anyhow).
Hm. I winder. Do banks use a small number of web-banking software, or does each roll their own? Seems to me that if it's the former, GNUCash could grab banking data similar to the way some scripts can rip stories out of
It is true that taxes vary state to state - but I'm just thinking of the normal federal taxes.
What I was thinking is that you could develop some way to parse the forms and simply provide an interface that would add columns for you and also do table lookups (such as look up adjusted income in tax table and fill in box b). If you had a decent parser, it might be possible to adjust for small changes in forms and update tables from the IRS site automatically - so mostly you wouldn't have to be working with REALLY dull business rules, just ultra-cool parsing technology. Besides, like I said, the vast majority of forms that people use never really change. Programs like TurboTax are great if you really need help understanding just what taxes you need to pay or forms you need, but if you're willing to take the time to know what forms you need on your own, a program that would simply help calculate thigns for you (and perhaps even provide context sensitive help right from the IRS instructions) would be really handy.
Unfortunatley as far as I know, you can only get the forms in PDF or postscript (or PCL, but would you want to parse that?) which makes for a difficult parsing task either way you go.
They do provide SGML formatted documents at the IRS website - but only for instructions! Oh well, at least the tables would be easy to get to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I actually like some software that has someone to be held accountable for things just like that. Who would I take to court if some loser added that 'functionality' to an open source program?
You'd have to hold yourself liable, since you have the source and can compile it yourself. You could find some lawyer to initiate a stock-holder lawsuit on behalf of your household and with yourself as chief stock holder: "Hey everyone! Watch me pay someone else to take money out of my left pocket and put it into my right pocket!"
If the market demands it, some company will spring up and charge people for GnuCash on the promise that they have audited it for bugs and assume the burden of any financial losses acrued owing to bugs. Don't you worry.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
And, of course I'm always trying to garner support for my own web-based accounting project, WebAccountant.
Better solution:
New story category - Software announcements
Note - This may be a little offtopic, but it does involve my desire to use GNUcash in conjunction with my bank. Maybe some of you share this same situation...
4 7.shtml">(refer to this slashdot article).</a>
I'm doing my best to switch over all of my home computing tasks to Linux from NT 4.0. So far I can do in Linux all I did in NT, except for downloading my daily banking transactions, which was done with Quicken. I've got an extra computer with an NT 4.0 install just to handle this.
So what I'd like to do is run GNUcash under Linux and go to First Union's (the bank I use) web site and simply *look* at what's cleared and then match it up with the transactions I enter in GNUcash. It's not as convenient as doing automatic downloads with Quicken, but it's good enough for my purposes.
However, First Union's web site will only let me go as far as looking at a summary of all my accounts using Netscape (w/128 bit crypto) under Linux. They won't let me access the "Interim Statement" page which tells me the specific transactions that cleared. I have a feeling this is similar to the problem Fox had with Linux users accessing their web site <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/10/22142
I was able to contact a guy in First Union's online banking department (Ken Stewart in Richmond) who might be able to do something about it. I explained how online banking and the web in general should be about open standards that do not depend on using one or two popular operating systems (you know which ones). I told Ken that a First Union cust. svc. rep. even told me that I'm not the first one with this problem and that other Linux users have been complaining (which is true). To bring the point home, I then explained how their web based bill pay system (which is handled by www.mybills.com, a third party) works perfectly under Linux.
Maybe this guy will get some wheels turning to fix this problem, maybe not. If there are any other First Union customers out there having this problem, be vocal and get your call escalated above front-line customer service. Thanks for your time.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Second, why do I need windows to use an office suite. More importantly, why do I need a bloated office suite in the first place. We use wordperfect suite here in my office and I don't use a tenth of the crap they pile in these things. All I really need is a decent word processor (which I beleive Wordperfect supplies) and a good spreadsheet. Packing uneeded, seldom used features into an application is what's wrong with many windows applications to begin with, why should linux applications be striving to emulate that?
Granted, there's alot of work to be done, but I think there's some good software out there already and its getting better all the time.
Check out AbiWord.
FreeMoney and Cratchit are two examples of attempts.
I spent time chatting with people at The Bazzar and LinuxWorld. Lo and behold, others are interested in such, but not enough to spend money.
LinuxFund.Org thinks no one wants an accounting package, enough to pay for one.
One group of CPA's turned programmers would be happy to code the inital GL/AP/AR /basic Invoicing if they could get enough money to pay food bills/basics for 30 days. They have spent 10+years writting accounting packages, and WANT to do an OpenSource package. They just want to get SOME money for the effort.
Me, I've offered $500 toward the project...assuming they do some documentation of what the $5000 they feel they need for 30 days of work will get them. PostgreSQL, Python, Zope and TCL/TK as the tools for the project.
Does any /.ers have suggestions for funding methods for these accountants?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Linux is best suited to other tasks (servers, high end number crunching, etc.)
I don't know about you, but I utilize my Linux box for much more than file serving on my network. MP3's, Quake, and even word processing are constantly used, and a personal financial manager like Gnucash is greatly appreciated around these parts. Another step towards the elimination of Microsoft is always welcome; after all, geeks have bank accounts too. Saying programs like Quicken and Gnucash are simply "glorified checkbooks" is to belittle their usefulness; it's sort of like calling Linux a "server".
[This blank intentionally left spaced]
Though I am not a banker nor a banking industry expert, my guess is that most banks have rolled their own web-banking software rather than go with any pre-packaged solutions that may exist. My main reason for saying this is that, in my experience, banking (and other financial institutions) seem to have the idea that the way they run their business and keep track of things is entirely different (and much more complicated) than any other bank (or equivalent financial inst.). By believing this (which isn't as true as they would like to believe) they continue to produce their own proprietary, back end software solutions. The result is an environment and a mess of custom code that would be difficult if not impossible to use pre-packaged solutions. But of course, if there were pre-packaged solutions that made this possible for a given bank, they likely would not go for it as their ways of doing business are "entirely different" from any other banks and so outside software could not do the job.
I think the problem with tax software is that it is not uniform over time or location.
If you can find a team of developers in every region where the tax is different (country to country -even US state to state AFAIK) that will be willing to do nothing except update the mundane aspects of the program (ie. business rules) on a regular basis, then you could be on to a winner.
Otherwise you will be left with a piece of software which is only usable to a small subset of the community, and even then, probably will be out of date for a good percentage of the time.
Why enter all of your money and handlings automatically when the bank can do it for you?
I do all my credit card, savings, checking, and money market through one bank (well fargo) that puts it all online securely so I can get it from anywhere, anytime.
Why on earth would you want to follow the dead desktop-centric model of Gnucash?
Some of us out there aren't satisfied with mediocore knock-offs.
I hope this comes about soon. I've become quite reliant upon online transactions, etc. I can't make the switch till they get OFX in (I even made a half hearted offer of help once, but received no response).
Let's get serious about what's out there in spreadsheets and word processors; we're not even comparable to the late 80's.
.5G of memory. I really haven't used swriter 3.1, so can't comment on it.
Word Processors:
WordPerfect. It works, except for the deleted features. You can't print a WP file with an embedded postscript on a non-linux machine (such as windows); it puts a warning message about unsupported features instead. Overall, though, this is a single functioning wordprocessor.
Lyx. But it's not really a wordprocessor. It flatly beats any word processor for what it does, and the use of lyx or raw latex for technical writing is really a preferences issue--my tendency would be raw latex, but lyx shows me my equations in a form I can edit directly from the keyboard, and tends to use far less
keystrokes than raw latex, so I prefer it. If you want to wrap text around a table or figure, or do certain things with table formatting, lyx inherits all of latex's warts. Unfortunately, these are part of what is expected of a word processor in common business use. ALso, to print on pre-printed forms, the micro-management that is antithetical to latex in necessary; lyx never will do such things (nor should it).
Staroffice. Let's be serious. If you can live with crashes, and have enough memory, you can get by with 5.1. It's probably no worse than the current versions of Word. And then there's the missing documentation and miscelanous quirks. Don't even think of running it with less than 48Mb--and memory doesn't make everything faster--it still takes forever to load with
The rest: let's face it; they're just plain not finished.
Word processor summary: unless latex is appropriate to your circumstances, the only choice is wordperfect. I preseme the commercial version interacts with other versions of wordperfect better than the downloadable one. You'd be better off with Word 4.0 or 5.1 for the mac than anything but LyX.
Spreadsheets:
even worse.
Gnumeric. Maybe someday it will be finished. There's more there than there used to be. Want a graph? A border on a cell? Forget it; you can't have it yet.
wingz. sure, it can be downloaded free, but its day seems to come and gone. And a single crash where it scrambles my data beyond recovery (messed with the original file rather than using a working copy, it appears) is one more than I tolerate from any application, ever. The graphing features aren't up to Excel 3.0 from the mid 80's.
Miscellaneous text-based sheets: OK, if visicalc did what you needed, I suppose.
staroffice 5.1. You better have a lot of horsepower again, and being willing to put up with the crashes. I've had files that would crash it *every* time the second time I tried to print to postscript, and sometimes the first print attempt as well. You also get the attempt to take over your entire computer with a new desktop, attempts to force you to it's own "work" folder--I have found no way to tell it to use ~ in a way it will remember; a popup box every time you try to use any format other than starcalc5, trying to get you to choose it instead (with that as the default), (did I mention lots of crashes yet?), limited graph choices, a scripting/macro facility that is presumabley documented *somewhere*. ANd you better have a minimum of 64M.
Staroffice 3.1. The closest thing to usable I have found. Isn't *as* aggressive in trying to take over your life, crashes less than 5.1, can sort of run on this 24M machine. ON the other hand, the time to paste once formula into a 200x15 region is measured in minutes (I launched lynx and was to about the end of the
word processor section and it was still trying to paste). Easier to configure and adjust than 5.1, but you can get wierd results printing. Screen writes seem to be bad even for motif (as in overdone and high overhead); forget using it remotely over a cable modem that can sustain 500kbit/second
Summary: None of the contenders match up to excel 3.0 in performance, usability, stability, or features.
Financial:
Gnucash sounds like a nice step, but it also sounds like it still hasn't
caught up to quicken 1.0--little things like electronic transfer still missing if I'm readng this correctly.
hawk
"...versus what?" I hear you cry.
PHASAR was a home financial package for DOS systems, later ported to the Amiga (where I've been using it for the last several years). Sadly, it looks like PHASAR can't handle the Y2K transition, and I was hoping GnuCash would be able to replace it (thereby allowing me to fully decommission my Amiga).
Alas, in a sense, I've been "spoiled" by PHASAR, as it seems to operate on a different philosophy, and I couldn't warm up to the last release of GnuCash.
Here's the issue: As near as I can determine, in GnuCash, you set up different accounts (checking, credit cards, etc.). When you want to record a transaction, you open the appropriate account in a window, enter the transaction(s), and close it. Perfectly straightforward.
With PHASAR, however, all accounts are open simultaneously. You specify the account with every transaction you enter. This may seem like a lot more typing, but it isn't; PHASAR has auto-complete, so you can type the first letter or two of the account and it will fill in the rest.
Now it just so happens that I keep all my receipts, so I can enter them into the computer. With PHASAR, I can just key in the receipts as I find them. With GnuCash, I'd have to separate them into their relevant accounts first. This is a bummer; the computer should be doing the sorting for me. It is the primary thing that has kept me from moving to GnuCash.
If GnuCash got a "unified" transaction entry window, I'd convert (extra credit: reading old PHASAR data files). I have no idea how hard it would be to add such a thing; I haven't looked at the code. From what I can tell, it's an unholy mixture of C, Perl, and GUILE/Scheme. (If you're using a distro that isn't package-based, like Slackware, it's an absolute b*tch to install.)
Comments welcome.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The software doesn't control your account, it merely downloads statements from your financial institution and reconciles these statements against the transactions you have entered into your computer...
But your just here to bash Microsoft rather than have a real conversation, so back away from the keyboard and get back to class kid-o.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
...interface with my bank and brokerages systems and automatically update my accounts and balances. This is one of the nicest features of Microsoft Money.
Anyone know if this sort of functionality is even planned?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I know this is a little unrelated, but it is at least topical - does anyone know of any OS projects to develop something like TurboTax? I'ts really handy having software to help fill out all of the forms I need, but it annoys me buying a new version every year just in case something should change!
I wouldn't mind putting more effort into verification of what results the software actually produced, as long as it could help just fill in forms initially, and knew how to generate a 1040PC formatted document for the printer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The sources and binaries are also available
via http
Not as fancy as Quicken but has worked well and reliably.
Last time I looked at gnucash it required a bunch (4?) libraries that I did not have and was not excited about getting. So has this improved?
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
Here's hoping GNUCash speeds on it's way past the functionality of existing commercial programs.
Here's why:
Last week, a client of ours started seeing fatal data corruption in their financial software. It had been a couple weeks since they had migrated to the new '2000' version of the software. The problem is so bad that they had to restore from backup and re-enter 1/2 day's transactions by hand. A quick check of the SIG on the ISV's website for the product showed at least one other user with the exact same problems, and at least one other consultant advising a freeze on '2000' installations for the forseeable future (he had seen the problem before, too).
It's Monday now and the client has been backing up his data files twice a day, running is single user mode, trying to avoid any more trouble while he waits for the vendor to issue a patch. This is bad enough, but his only other options are:
We've been trying to convince these folks to go to a free software solution for awhile, but this isn't the way we wanted to do it. Their entire business is locked up in the proprietary database of this (expensive) commercial software...If the ISV screws this up further, they'll have an easy court case to win and no business for the three years it takes to settle.
Happy Monday All!
adric<script>alert("I never liked JavaScript, really; it just seemed a bad idea.");</script>
This is the standard that was started by CheckFree, Intuit and Microsoft in early 1997 and seems to be what most banks are supporting for communication with financial software.
My bank lets me download a file in this format, while Discover Card seems to use some direct link from Quicken and MS Money. The latest version of the format seems to be XML.
The specifications are available (in .pdf) on the site, as well as information on certifying software that uses the standard. I don't know if GnuCash supports OFX, but it would be nice if it did.
Their ftp server is already having some trouble keeping up. Somebody, please mirror them quick or post a list of known mirror sites. They don't have a list on their site from what I could find.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I installed a Linux workstation (PC) and a Linux server (also a PC w/gnucash) in a small pizza shop that it local to the area not more than a few months ago.
Their previous application, "Pizza Shop," was DOS based program for accouting, etc, written in QuickBASIC of all things and was an utter piece of shit. They paid big bucks for this too.... and now GNUCash totally blows it away. It's great to see the free software community come through and deliver such good quality applications.
http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash
As a side note, I'd like to point out that this release is really big news because the GnuCash team finally realized that deploying on 3 GUI widget platforms simultaneously (Motif, GTK, and Qt) was sapping at their development time and just leading to breakage. The previous post-xacc releases were a huge pain to build, which lead to the emergence of other Quicken substitutes like Gnofin.
From my initial test run, it looks like GnuCash has a new customer. Congratulations!
- Richie
Managing your finances from your PC is good. Managing your financies with free software is better. Why? If you are like me, do you really trust a closed source program with all your important, confidential information? Sure, maybe a credit card number here and there to buy stuff over the web, but there is a level of protection there. If somebody steals your number your liability is limited. But if somebody manages to get ahold of your private finances, it's less like somebody stole your wallet and more like somebody broke into your house and looked at all your private letters.
It seems to me that there are two benefits to an open source financial program. First, you can be as sure of your security as you are willing to study the source code. This means that you are better protected both against attackers AND against the off chance of backdoors or other security problems that might (but probably wouldn't be) introduced by the programmers of a proprietary program.
The other benefit is one that is not yet realized. Why not integrate real GNUcash into the program GNUcash? A kind of "open source money" similar to Digicash or whatever. Not only would all the security concerns of the technical community be satisfied (untraceable, unforgeable, no key escrows or whatever) but while we're at it we can revolutionize the monetary systems. World domination with Linux? Try world domination by controlling (and freeing) the world's money supply!
Hey, it could happen.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
I can finally keep track of those 200,000 credit card numbers that I "received" last week.
*grin*
Now that that is working fairly well, it starts to make sense to try to automate the creation of transactions, which includes:
Surprisingly, a critical issue with all three of these things is that of creating a suitable user interface.
In particular, with QIF and OFX input, there needs to be a user interface to control the translation from the data file's set of accounts to those that the user has set up in GnuCash.
I've written a pretty slick QIF parser; deployment of that has been blocked due to the need to have a front end to let the user decide which account to use in GnuCash. The same will be true for OFX files.
Note that some financial institutions generate OFX/QIF files that omit entirely the account, thereby requiring that you manually set up a destination account for the expense.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.