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Ask Robert Merkel About GnuCash Development
GnuCash is probably the best-known Linux accounting program for home and small business users. GnuCash development is now sponsored by The Linux Developers Group, Inc., a company formed this May by the core GnuCash developers, including Robert Merkel, who originally got involved with GnuCash because, he says, "I was sick of my father nagging me about the dud accounting program he used." Please feel free to ask Robert about GnuCash, guile, shared libraries or almost anything else, even cricket. (He's Australian and a major cricket fan.) We'll send Robert 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.
Robert,
I'd love to convert my dad to a fulltime Linux user, but the biggest thing stopping him from changing over is Quicken. Why? Because of the functionality and accompanying ease of making online bill payments. It's pretty much just a matter of "I wanna pay this bill on this day. Please do that on that day when I dial up and retrieve my financial information (i.e., stock quotes, bank info, etc.)." Are there plans to add this kind of functionality to GnuCash and, if so, [I hate to ask this, but I will nevertheless] approximately when can I expect to see that kind of functionality? It would really increase the value of your software and, perhaps more than that, the value of Linux as a practical operating system.
Thanks.
w|f
I've never had trouble keeping my checkbook balanced, and most of my regular bills (utilities, mortgage, etc) are paid automatically by direct withdrawal. So when I do write checks I'm typically not at my desk. It looks to me like gnucash would simply add to the hassle, not subtract.
Perhaps it is useful for a small business, but it (and quicken-like software) seem to aim a big part of their sales pitch to checkbook balancers. Can someone explain to me why it is such a great labor-saving device for such people?
I use Quicken, and have never tried out GnuCash (hope to do so soon). My complaint about Quicken is that it is written at a very basic level, its logical model based around the checkbook and the bank statement. I understand a bit of double entry bookeeping, and have a hard time telling Quicken to handle, say, liabilities properly. I'd really love a personal finance product that allows one to use a debit-credit-ledger model in addition to the checkbook-statement model (so you can handle payables and receivables properly, etc.). I'd like the flexibility to set up arbitrary accounts as proper ledgers. Does GnuCash do this? If not, is it planned? Sorry about the AC post. Will find my /. password shortly...
Wouldn't you consider 'GNUCash' to be a contradiction?
Cheers
Congradulations on starting Linux Developers Group, Inc. Despite the nay-sayers, I've been increasingly interested in starting my own company around a product idea, and of course I want to GPL it. My question is, did you create a business plan and sales forcasts that so many books say to, or do you think that it doesn't really apply to new-style GPL based business since everything comes down to a user's choice? What did you identify as the main pitfalls? Have you identified marketing opportunities? Thx.
...did that post get moderated up???
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uhh... since "default=gnucash" you need to have an image with "label=gnucash". You just need to change "old_linux" to "gnucash", rerun /sbin/lilo, and it will start.
:-)
How far it will get is another story.
---
LWN had a feature on tax software on Linux a little while ago. There are a few projects out there.
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--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I saw in the gnucash source tree that there have been some attempts at OFX (XML-based Online Financial eXchange format), are they still alive and is anyone active on them? Is there any work being done on online banking and how important are they to the gnucash developers? What/When should we expect to see something come from these efforts and how far along are you?
Question: Did you build for multiboot compliance? :-)
Hmmm... you could use GRUB. GRUB can boot anything
How long before Shane or his teammates are using GNUCash?
This has actually already been done. You can print to either Quicken/Quickbook style checks or Microsoft money style checks (or you can create your own custom format).
Gnucash 1.6.0 really is getting to be a pretty full featured program. It's not much like the old X-Accountant program that you probably tried way back when.
If this feature will ever be implemented - make it extremely optional. You can't beleive how annoying it is getting tax tips that don't apply at all here in Sweden.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
UGH! I withdraw my question. That's what I get for just skimming the damn headlines.
-l
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Seeing as how Microsoft has purchased Great Plains and how Peachtree is an awful hack, our small business has a great interest in finding an affordable suite under a libre OS. We have looked into a few options, but honestly, I think GnuCash for small businesses is worth waiting for.
So, here are my questions:
. Do you guys have any timeframe on the small business release?
. Have you considered creating a startup to fund development of the small business suite? There is a *lot* of potential here for selling services unlike Nautilus... tax updates, training, dead-tree manuals, etc.
Thanks for all the good code!
-l
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Those are the support costs for the business software, not Moneydance. Moneydance comes with free support, currently straight from the developers (including myself). Moneydance also has support for OFX online banking, scheduled transactions, budgeting, check printing, and soon online bill payment.
:)
Compare that to GnuCash which can do none of these things but still takes several hours to download, resolve library conflicts/dependencies, and install. How much is your time worth?
No, that's not correct.
As an experiment, try this:
volatile float point_one, point_seven;
point_one = 0.1;
point_seven = point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one;
printf ("point_seven %s 0.7\n", point_seven == 0.7 ? "equal to" : "not equal to");
The program will print "not equal to", because of accumulated rounding errors in the LSBs of the float. This kind of miniscule inaccuracy is unavoidable when converting from base 10 to base 2, and it's absolutely unacceptable in heavyweight financial software. So the previous poster's question is quite valid.
What you really want for financial apps is string-based (bignum) or BCD (binary-coded decimal) math routines, where addition and subtraction always yield precise results. Intuit/Quicken has such math routines, refined and bullet-proofed over many years, which is one reason they have such a good reputation among financial institutions.
For personal finance, the requirements are less stringent. "Insignificant" rounding errors (are supposed to) get chopped before the user ever sees them. But bignum/BCD arithmetic prevents them from ever appearing in the first place, completely eliminating them as a possible source of error.
Actually, I may as well make that my interview question: Since the GnuCash engine is supposed to be general-purpose, what steps have been taken to assure potential big-ticket users that the unavoidable rounding errors present in binary floating point math will never have an unexpected effect on GnuCash's results?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
One thing it doesn't have,though, is the ability to print your checks directly onto blank check paper - you have to have a pre-printed (but un-filled-out) check.
I have a GPL'd program at http://lager.dyndns.org/freecheck/index.html that does this first part (make a blank check from REALLY blank check paper) - I'd love to see it integrated, but it's a perl/postscript mix, and GnuCash uses gnome-print, I believe...
I haven't used GnuCash but from the little I know it is about managing accounts and finances, might not be at the level of MYOB but it will get there. As the article says it is a accounting package, which Excel is not and does not intend to be. Sure you can do it in Excel but the average joe blow who runs his own business, such as my Dad would not have a foggist in setting up Excel and it is easy to stuff up an account in comparison to an accounts packages.
http://www.appgen.com/products/upgrades.html
Has anyone run both these packages on Linux to compare, and then compare against MYOB. My guess is MYOB has a lot more features, and is very stable on windows.
I have tried quicken for windows, but unfortunately it was always crashing. I have tried reinstalling windows and quicken, loading the most up to date patches, but to no avail. So we finally migrated to MYOB with no problems).
If it still fails, it would be good to submit some bug reports.. I know its a pain, but since it's a free package think of it as cost to using it. Or if you know a bit of programming do some constructive bug fixes.
I wish all open source packages the best, but I know a lot are still in development so I don't get as annoyed when it doesn't work, unlike when I pay a $100's of dollars for commercial software. I know this is not a good excuse, but I am sure with time GnuCash will be an excellent program. Such as DDD is excellent free debugger, GnuCash is will one day be an excellent account program (*we live in hope*).
I'm likely not alone in my need to be able to sync my finance software with my Visor. Are there any plans to link GnuCash to a Palm-based money manager program, a la Quicken and PocketQuicken? Or are there any plans to develop a new, GPLed "PocketGnuCash"?
No, you're thinking of Gnumeric. Gnucash would need a skin that looks like MS Money.
It already looks better than the last Windows financial software I used, MS Money 2.0, although I don't know what MS Money $LATEST looks like.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
1.6 is based on an integral type (gnc_numeric). This is one of the big changes since 1.4. I'm not sure if a round-off error was ever demonstrated to have occurred with the old code, though.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I know there has been expressed interest on the part of the GnuCash developers to have GnuCash be right there in Gnome Office with the other applications. What specific plans do you have along those lines? Any plans for integration with Gnumeric, e.g. to allow quick importing of financial data into a spreadsheet or vice-versa? Or being able to pull in GnuCash reports into an AbiWord or Open Office document?
Celebrate the finer things in life
As a Windy, I have my own opinion as to why the once-great West Indies have gone from an unstoppable force to an unforgiveable farce in just a handful of years. I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter, since the Aussies have made the same journey in the same timeframe -- albeit in the opposite direction
Care to voice an opinion?
Angus,
Barbados
Why would I ask about the sound the total number of GnuCash users make?
BilldaCat
Currently there are a number of XML billing initiatives such as XMLPay, VisaXML, etc... How do you see these trends influencing the design and development of GNUcash ... in particular do you think that your users are only looking for a simple view/format/verify client (think IMAP server + XML extensions) while GNUcash moves towards being the agent of record (aka a specialised ASP?) Of you do see GNUcash as a drop-in replacement for existing monolithic accounting packages? In summary, given that the market for electronic businesses and purchases (greater use of international currency, direct attachment to electronic settlement, near real-time risk management) is going to change, how do you think GNUcash should respond?
LL
A while ago I was hesitant to use GnuCash because I discovered that it uses floating-point numbers instead of integers to store currency values. What have you done to work around the round-off errors inherent in such a system, and do you plan to migrate to an integer based system? If so, when?
I assume you're asking this because of that little blurb the other day about it requiring around 60 different libs. That's actually misleading as that's the count of all the .so files it needs, and they are all available in about only 5 packages total. Sadly, the journalist that wrote that story was not very forthcoming about this fact, I assume he was mad because he was having trouble making it work.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I'd choose GnuCash over Excel if I wanted a PERSONAL FINANCE PROGRAM!
Dumb fuck. Do you even know what you are talking about?
Does anybody else here remember when the troll's had some sense? Even the astroturfers are more intelligent than this lamer.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
That's actually why I asked why it needed so many packages, as opposed to why it needed so many libraries. I read (sometimes) the gnucash mailing list, and have even successfully installed it. But in my installation, I found the five packages a bit difficult (though not impossible) to install. My biggest problems with installing the packages weren't from gnu-cash, but from the developers of the other packages.
So, anyway, I know that it was 'only' five packages that were required. It's just that those five packages were a bit of a pain.
(BTW, I figured someone was going to mention the package vs. library deal. Should have mentioned in my question that I recognized the difference.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
No, the libs are useless. The binaries aren't even linked to them. The package dependencies' sole purpose is to harass users.
So those libs should all be linked to
libanonymouscoward.so
or
libac.so
or perhaps
anonymouscoward.dll
(oops, anonym~d.dll)
?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Cry me a river. I'll never shut up. Can't happen, won't happen. I've been here longer than you, and I'll be here after you are gone.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Blah, blah, blah. Actually, I agree with you, and I dl'ed Progeny last week. I may wait and see what Debian-based distro gets GCC 3.x into it first, before reinstalling.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
A kike? Don't they teach you anything at the skinhead induction ceremony? Do you even know what that word means? Or did you just overhear your daddy use a bad word, so you thought it would be cool to use it yourself?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Again, do all of those libraries really do something? How did it get to require so many packages? Did you start out with a Gnome system with a few other odds and ends, and just picked up from there, or was there a concious decision?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What is the future of multi-user gnucash? Is there a working group or something similar? How much of a priority is this?
It would seem that a corporate offering would best be accomplished with this feature, and ensure some cash flow for your company.
On a similar vein, are the multiple dependencies meant to create a decision where there will be healthy installation contracts for you? (It's a joke, BTW)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It already looks better than the last Windows financial software I used, MS Money 2.0, although I don't know what MS Money $LATEST looks like.
r ted.htm
Oh, Money 2001? Try this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/money/dlxtour/gettingsta
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
GPLed programs come with - I quote - "ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY." Check out sections 11 and 12 of the the file COPYING in the GNUCash source distribution.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Is there any possiblity or chance that custom reporting mechnisms can be added into GNUCash? (I.E. A number of rules can be set up to group certain transactions into groups and generate different reports based on other sets of rules.) It is the one thing in the 1.4 release that I thought was needed. The reports that were there seemed limited and I resorted to copying data into gnumeric to generate the reports I wanted. Does 1.6 correct this, or am I still limited to a number of default reports? Is there currently work on this area, or if not where in the code can I best look to start to add this capablity.
It seems like a year ago when I asked a gnucash developer about scheduled transactions/recurring events. They responded (thank you) and told me that it was in the works. This has been reiterated several times in various forums over the last few months. My question is not about when this highly desired feature will be added, but have you ever thought about creating a process where users can vote on or prioritize their most highly desired features?
I would love to use gnucash for analyzing my investments, but the builtin reports don't provide the right sort of information for this task. So, for the moment, I use Xinvest (I know, I know...). What plans do you have, if any, for supporting stock analysis?
Best,
Rob
With libraries like SDL being built cross-platform, and now even seeing a Windows port of the GTK+ library, why not? How better to take customers from Intuit and Microsoft than to attack them on their own native platform?
I'm a Quicken user right now, but I would jump to a free (as in beer, speech, whatever) alternative for Windows if I had the chance (cause installing Linux is not my preferred course of action right now)
-ubermuffin
The specification can be downloaded here, bypassing the annoying requirement to provide information for their database before downloading.
I want to use GNUCash to replace Checkfree's old Windows software - that software is the only thing keeping me using a Windows box - in fact, this is very nearly the _only_ thing I boot my Windows box for (maybe the rarely occasional game).
I have the old Checkfree software (the have since switched to MSMoney as being the default application) for bill payment for several years now. It has everything I need - simple reports, a check register, and bill payment. I have tried to think of a different system to use, but all such systems come down to a double entry style affair (since most involve some web-based bill payment system), which can be fraught with errors during data entry.
I want a system where I can enter all my transactions, electronic bill payments, checks, deposits - and then at the end of the month reconcile my bank statement/balance - like I do with the Checkfree software. GNUCash comes close (it does most everything, except the electronic bill payment)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Then I roll around in piles of it, naked, while laughing maniacially.
Best Slashdot Co
I would love to see this work on most systems out of the box:
lynx -source http//whatever | tar -xzvf -;cd *;./configure&&make install&&gnucash
I've been building code from source since '81 and gnucash is the most messed up build I have ever seen.
Microsoft have done an excellent job, with Money>=99. I keep a small Windows PC for the sole purpose of running this software. It has excellent features such as budgeting, cash-flow reviews, etc. - much more than similar programs, and has saved me more than the $100 I paid for it. I am interested in using an open source solution, but I am not interested in losing functionality, no matter how noble a cause.
No that there will be corporate backing, will there ever be bank integration like we see from quickbooks? Will I be able to tell gnucash to login to my bank and allow me to make transactions? How about the ability to tie into online investment?
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Money Laundering through Casinos
How to Launder Money in the Futures Market
Money Laundering 101
Want Root?
Will the next major release feature some decent documentation? Extensive documentation is the only thing I miss from GNUCash. Having only recently come to live in the US, I have enough trouble understanding the local economics, so it would be good to have a nice tutorial for my personal finance management program as a starting point.
How well do the GnuCash developers know UK business (and tac) rules? ie is GnuCash suitable for small UK based businesses?
SF and Computing Book Reviews from : http://www.DiverseBooks.com
Why is a web browser included inthe product? Why can't one of the existing browsers that are not so simple handle this functionality.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Consultants could offer this service to banks using gnuCash to its customers via the VNC Java client by web browser.
So, how easy is it to interface with other applications? Delimited, fixed-width, or XML file?
--Matthew
I've rerun lilo, but now my computer won't boot. Is this a known bug, or should I post it to your World Wide Web site?
Thank you
XML causes global warming.
I'd like to chime in hear with a hear,hear. I'd love to be able to do taxes in linux. really alot i would. I'm certain I would pay a reasonable fee to have it done. even more than turbotax charges just so i could do my taxes in linux cause as it stands the only thing keeping me from full throttle linux use are my taxes. I'd even settle for jsut being able to fill out the forms on the computer I'm not as worried about e-filing butthat would be great. can i ask how much are you moving in that direction if at all. I would become a gnucash apostle if i could jsut do my taxes in linux. that is all i want. taxes done in linux. just repeat it like a mantra.
-
You will at least need a skin that makes it look like Excel. (Just like MS did to WP, etc.) Are there any plans for this?
I second this. It is the only missing feature that stops me using GnuCash, and keeps me using Quicken.
I've played with GNUCash a bit, but in the process of trying to convert all of my business operations to Linux, I've found that I can't find an invoicing program that I like. Any plans to create an invoicing module for GNUCash? I'd write it myself but I haven't done any programming in 15 years and just recently started slogging through Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in Linux so the resulting project would be rather scary. I would be willing to help with documentation, however, if someone else wants to write an invoicing/reporting add-in.
I'm a big England cricket fan. So for your chance to gloat, how much did you enjoy the Old Trafford ODI? And what will the score in Ashes be?
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
I once used Microsoft Money and quite liked it. Without whipping Microsoft I didn't like the most recent versions as they had, in my opinion, way too much eye candy and it made tasks to slow to do. But that was on a 486 a couple of years ago :~)
:- Great work
My question is can a fuctional, but lacking in eye candy product, compete effectivily against its commercial opposition? This question could equally be posed against, say, RedHat 7.1 Vs Windows XP. The thing is these company's have so much money they can lavish all sorts of cute (and sometime usefull) features that the free software movement would be hard pressed to match. I would guess that the best example of this is outlook. This is _very_ popular amoungst many of my users and the lack of a calandering client/server with equivilant features is a major obstacle is my quest to be NT free.
BTW
Currently I use Wine to run Quicken Deluxe on my RedHat box, and it almost works. I've never been able to get the printer to do anything from Wine, and although I've read floppies to generate backups, I can't get Quicken/Wine to write them.
I have looked at GnuCash several times in the past, and it has yet to impress me enough to change due to several features:
- Reporting facilities: perhaps it's changed in more recent releases, but I could not find any way to customize or organize reports. I prepare reports for session meetings, and it would be nice to be able to customize the reports.
- User Interface: GnuCash seems to treat each budget item as a seperate account from which transactions are made. While this is probably the "correct" way to do it, I find it extremely difficult to handle the mountian of split checks I write each month. I have come to enjoy Quicken's much simpler handling of split checks.
- Data Interoperability Although GnuCash can read QIF files, it can't write them. I can imagine that one day I'll hand over the checkbook to somebody else; I would be remiss in locking them into a particular checkbook manager. By giving GnuCash the ability to interoperate with other checkbook managers, it makes the data more available to everyone. Let's not forget: the data is always more important than the application that it was created/edited in.
I do understand and appreciate the effort that goes in to writing a full-strength application like GnuCash. I just have philosophical differences with the choices that the authors have made.The opposite development paradigm (championed by klunky kitchen-sink packages like Microsoft Office) tends to be less reliable, slower, more expensive, more difficult to maintain.... you know the rest.
Applications like GnuCash seem to follow the monolithic paradigm. Would it be easier (or otherwise benificial) to break GnuCash up into a number of smaller, simpler applications? For instance, a database and a set of GUIs, with data analysis tools implemented as console programs. That way, with a little knowledge of shell scripting, you could put together a tool to generate virtually any report you wanted.
Many of the previous questions asked questions about the possibility of adding certain features to GnuCash (PalmPilot integration, online banking, XML interfaces for finacial tools...). If GnuCash were more granular, it would be very easy to make the system work with Other applications - easy enough that most Linux users could probably hack together what they needed to make it work.
The problem, of course, is that more granular architechures are often harder to use and configure for new users. UNIX mail, X, and network configuration were all things I agonized over as a new user, mainly because they are hybrids cludged together from very different bits of software.
My question is this - can you have the best of both? Can you make a usable application as large and complex as GnuCash, but still preserve the UNIX "one-function-per-program" design that makes it so extensible?
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Bah there are two bug reports against it as of Friday. Both for the same thing and it looks like both are in the process of being fixed in ~8 days 1.6 will be in Woody. And of course if you look the bug had nothing to do with Gnucash. It was simply a matter of the maintainer fixing the depends and that is a Debian thing. Life on the bleeding edge and all that.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Cricket? But no one gets brutally beaten all to hell like in rugby!
Seriously, though, how do you think GnuCash really compares to Money and Quicken? How would you try and convert the Windoze fans away from those major programs?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I heard that GnuCash is the Accounting program of choice for the Mafia and Illuminati (the whole Trilateral Commission, I believe). My question is: Do you plan on adding features for efficent money laundering to help your best customers?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Cool, I haven't checked out GNUcash lately, I'll definately give it another look!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Is there any plans to integrate check printing support on standardized forms?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Can you give a brief synapsis about Cricket since it seems that only the Brittish and derivatives of British culture (India and Australia) understand the game?
---
In this litigious society, have you spent much time thinking about possible legal issues around GnuCash? A lot of people get weird when money's the issue, and I can imagine someone trying to sue because:
- A bug in GnuCash caused an incorrect balance and thus overdrafts on the account.
- A bug caused private information (such as a bank balance) to be exposed to people it shouldn't be.
- A bug in online banking caused money to be lost, mistransfered, etc.
Obviously, bugs are possible in all software, but it seems like the intended audience for GnuCash is slightly less technical and perhaps thus less tolerant of bugs.
These same problems are faced by the commercial venders too, but they have armies of lawyers to help them out. I don't know how an open-source project would handle a lawsuit against it, and I'm wondering what you guys have thought about on this issue.
Mod this up. On-line banking (checking, savings, credit card,401K) are the only things stopping me from giving up Quicken. When Gnu-Cash has the same functionality as Quicken, I'll make the switch.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
I am an accountant/consultant with a large accounting firm. Very rarely do we ever demand that a client use a particular accounting program. It isn't as though accounting firms want clients to use inflexible programs. We have more reasons to be frustrated with Quickbooks than non-accountants. The heart of the problem is that there are few accounting packages out there for small to mid-sized companies. At the firm I work for, I don't think we are closed-minded at all. I think that most people in the firm would welcome new accounting packages for small to mid-sized companies.
Doesn't this say more about the bank than the software? I won't mention specific banks since I work for one of them (and not in an area where I'd know anything about online banking and related topics), but I've seen where you can download account history as .qif or even .csv files, both of which I'd think would work to get bank account info into GnuCash (I haven't tried the software, finding the online account access to be sufficient). It looks to me like a lot of the convenience features in Quicken rely on cooperation from the financial institution.
.qif or .csv/.txt would be painful at best.
Of course this would require you to log in to your financial institution to grab the file, but if you can do it manually, then you can automate it. But I'm guessing building what amounts to a screenscraper for banks that don't provide account information downloads as
I do not have a signature
Moreso than simple home accounting software, I'm interested in electronic tax filing. Any plans to integrate GnuCash with any existing filing services, or to integrate tax features into the program (if there are any, I apologize for overlooking them)? As tax preparation and filing are services many of us are comfortable paying a fee for (especially online), I don't wonder if there isn't a revenue stream in there somewhere, as well.
I do not have a signature
I have noticed that the reoccurring transaction feature has been on the list of upcoming features for about a year. When can we expect to see this critical feature?
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
do you know of any plans for an os x port that uses quartz/aqua?
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Despite the rant above about how no one should use a graphical accounting package ala QuickBooks for running their business, that's reality bub. Mod up this comment because it's right on for what's necessary to gain more acceptance of free software in the office.
What do you think of the current allegations of match fixing and bribes that are sweeping the Sport:
For instance, here is a couple of BBC articles on match fixing: Exhibit A and Exhibit B
A number of players have been implicated and some even banned. How bad is it in Australia?
Is it as bad as this:
Lions Roar
Maybe its time to give GnuCash out to some soon to be poor Cricketer's?
StarTux
Nevermind, I made the mistake of assuming that all of the online banking had some form of file download option...I've only had experience with a couple banks (which both had it) so that didn't occur to me...
I can't believe somebody modded me down as a troll for that though...what a waste of moderator points (shouldn't be a big surprise I guess)
Though my question is about GnuCash specifically, I guess it does address the larger issue about how Open Source projects compete for market share and mind share with the products of well-capitalized corporations that can form strategic partnerships that (despite the shortcomings of Closed Source software generally) offer real value to consumers. Any thoughts?
Thanks for taking the time to respond,
- Brad Heintz
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
It takes effort to download a QIF file if you don't have a bank that has the option available. I know, I know, change banks right? The problem there, is that I am an employee of Regions Bank and get far too many benefits banking with them then I would elsewhere.
Wow. I didn't notice that you had been moderated down. Your suggestion seemed valid to me, just not valid for my circumstances.
Regions Bank does have a FORM of downloading information... but you have to directly connect to them using either MS Money or Quicken.
What I would really like to see with GnuCash is the integration of a flexible plugin system. That way, someone who is in your situation could have a script to automatically download your QIF files for you... and someone in my situation could have a script that would read the info from the website and integrate that (much the way tvguide.pl goes out to tvguide.com and extracts television listing for your area.)
Online banking is a great feature that I would love to see incorporated into GnuCash. I realize that there are probably a ton of obsticles to making this a reality, so here is my question:
Would it be possible to incorporate some sort of perl plugin to GnuCash that would go out to a bank's web site, access the banking account information on the site, access the relevant data and then format it in a way that could be pasted into the existing GnuCash data?
My bank, Region Bank, allows customers to access their checking account via a web browser. I hate to see this resource going to waste.
In unstable, gnucash 1.6 does not install at all, some fcking package needed has 'vanished' :-)...
I suppose it was too broken even for unstable !
Compiling from source IS hard (I suppose impossible for poor newbie Mandrake Users !): the number of libs required, while certainly not 60 was quite impressive (NO, the gnome dev libs are not enough)
Whatever, the pretty reports (arghh are they slow to render... fsck scheme !) did ease my GFs transition from money
G'day Robert!!
(aka Robertspionage**)
I would like to say that the name GnuCash sounds really cool for a finance program! It sounds so much better than OldCash!
Unfortunately I have no money, therefore I have no real questions to ask you and any questions I did ask would make me look stupid.
However, I feel that I need a question to avoid being moderated offtopic so - "Does GnuCash have turbo and come with a subwoofer?"
Okay there, now onto the important stuff, being a cricket type guru/tragic yourself, I thought I would pass on my helpful tips learnt over the years when explaining cricket to Americans:
I call it the "5 Easy Steps to Learning Cricket and Changing your Life". The movie is due out later this year.
1) Use fuzzy abstract concepts like "ball" and "bat". Explain that two people from one team have the "bat" at any time and there are 11 people on the field from the *other* team who are allowed have the "ball". These people with the "ball" want to eliminate the people with the "bat".
2) In normal play, the "ball" is thrown at the "bat", similar to this game you may have heard of called baseball - except in cricket you are allowed to hit the person - in fact it is encourage and looked upon as *good tactics* ;-).
The people with the "bat" try to hit the ball to the edge of the ground (a 4) or out of the ground (a 6).
3) Then explain the nitty gritty, that "silly mid on" is actually a fielding position etc, the importance of the box ;-)
4) Emphasise the fact that England are the worst cricket team on the planet, just to dramatise it. Emphasise the fact that New Zealand are the second worst team on the planet, just to add humour.
5) Finally, explain the joys of a cricket game that lasts 5 days and still gets no result, the joys of no more than 30 seconds for ad breaks while a cricket game is on, the joys of waking up a 2am to watch international cricket cause no other country in the world is in your damn time zone, the joys of spending a whole day watching cricket and feeling like your doing something, the joys of trying to drink one beer for each 4 or 6 hit in a limited overs match......
Well, gotta cruise, good luck with that cash thingy I've been hearing so many good things about!
Cheers,
Benspionage
** Aussies have found a glitch in the english language where you can add "spionage" to any name in the world and it still makes sense, try it at home kids!! Bobspionage, Davespionage, Brittany Spearspionage)
I have heard of it before and seen some tv coverage of games of cricket, but can you send me to a site that tells me how to play?
Do you know of any accounting firms who support this system? I used to consult for a few companies, and one of the most frequent complaints I'd hear around the office was that their accountants were forcing them to use Quickbooks/Great Plains/Peachtree/whatever and they didn't like it/it didn't have flexibility to work with their business model/etc. From the quick glance I've given GnuCash, it seems to be a dream to setup for most small to mid-size businesses, but if their accountants are stuck in the closed-minded "use my software or I won't help you" mentality, this would keep a substantial user-base down.
There may be no purchasing price, but there is a pretty hefty cost when it comes to trying to get all of the dependency issues resolved and get it to compile right. Until then, I'm content to shell out cash for something that will actually install that I can use anywhere I need to.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
What are the five packages GnuCash needs?
Well, MS Excel is a spreadsheet, GnuCash is an accounting program. They are both diferent beasts, although you can peform similiar tasks with Excel, it just might take longer to set Excel up that way. Another reason that you would probably choose GnuCash over Excel is that GnuCash runs natively in Linux, if you use that OS. Of course, by you stating Excel or GnuCash you probably just use Windows. From what I know about GnuCash, there isn't a Windows port at this time. So, to answer your question keep paying for Excel. Unless you want to use something Free,as in Beer, like StarOffice 5.2 from Sun.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
GNU Cash is written in a language where a slight error in one part of the program can change data structures in a completely unrelated part of the program without ever being detected. A poorly written plug-in might alter my on-line transactions or mess up my register balance. This isn't theoretical: even after years of development, Quicken actually has such bugs, as do most other Gnome programs. Why isn't GNU Cash written in a safer, higher-level language?
The comparison you want is "to_digits(point_seven,2)==to_digits(0.7,2)", where "to_digits" is defined as float to_digits(float x,int digits) { return float(pow(10.0,-digits) * rint(x * pow(10.0,digits))); } . If you run that, you will find that it gives you the expected answer.
BCD is actually less accurate than using floating point numbers with equivalent numbers of bits. People use it because it's easy to define and understand.
Non-muslims ?
Heh, somebody should remain them that this game was invented by non-muslims. In fact, if it weren't for English soldiers you wouldn't even know such thing existed.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
What differentiates The Linux Developers Group from Eazel? Eazel's only product of value was given away for free, as is GnuCash, which from the LDG's website seems to be its only product. I absolutely applaud your efforts for Free Software, but what is your plan to be profitable?
-Brendan
-- Azaroth
As a curious Pakistani, I wanna ask you a question I'm sure many other Pakistanis are interested in hearing the answer to as well: what the heck happened in the 1999 Cricket World Cup final? Was it the Foster's? If so, maybe Pakistan should start letting non-Muslim players on their cricket team...
Looking at your development roadmap, I see you've got support for OFX and online banking described as something to look into "as the user interface gets slicker". I sincerly hope that's not the case--there really is very little reason to care what the interface to your program looks like if it doesn't perform the fundamentals. Is there anything keeping at least OFX transaction download from happening Real Soon Now? I do believe that's the only thing keeping a whole lot of people from dumping their current financial package for GnuCash.