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Personal Finance Software for Unix?
pstreck asks: "I'm trying to find the best personal finance software for Unix. I've been using Quicken for a while, but unfortuantlly it won't run under Wine. I've tried gnucash but it just isn't up to par with what Quicken offers. What do you guys use?" While the free software versions may not quite be up to par with the current commercial offerings, it won't always be the case. The turning point can start now, of course. What finance software are you using now, what features do you like and what features do you think these software packages need?
a piece of paper, and my trusty TI-89. Do you really need anything more?
sc.
Would somebody please cleanly reverse engineer Quicken's online banking??? Bank of America's online banking is Quicken based, instead of the more logical choice secure html.
most people and businesses are using finance applications where a simple paper record or a digital one would MORE than suffice. you have a number of records, they are stored, once every year / quarter or whenever u do your finances you tally them up, and sit down for a day or so and calculate everything. the thing about finance applications is that in general, it takes more time for people to USE them then to just do it by hand. people have forgotten how to do simple maths :-(
now not only do they not know how to use a pencil and paper, they cant even use a CALCULATOR! they need special software to do EVERYTHING for them
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
It's no wonder the submitter posits the question, "Are there any personal finance tools for Linux" -- he's obviously involved in fundraising efforts for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. He mungs his e-mail address (got something to hide ``pstreck''), uses Linux (free downloadable from the 'net, no audit trail or software license with personal contact information).
I urge the Right Honourable President George Washington Bush to pass a bill outlawing the use of Linux as tools of terror.
Thank you for your support.
Once I moved over to linux I missed Quicken but then I found GnuCash which is very easy to use but also has a very different view on how to track money. GnuCash tracks money the way businesses track money. It is always a matter of where money came from and goes to. It makes you think about where your money is going.
I cant recommened it enought, check it out at
www.gnucash.org
In short, you can use it from home checking to runing your office, which is what I do!
Sigs are dangerous coy things
perhaps you didn't read what the user was asking...he said that "gnucash just wasn't up to par."
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
\\:^)
Seriously though, Quicken is one of the oldest and most mature consumer software products available. It will be a long time before anything comparable is available on Linux.
Didn't even read the summary, did you? Pretty sad.
Not everyone wants a double-entry system, but as I do I'm using SQL-Ledger. Perl + PostgreSQL + Apache.
While the free software versions may not quite be up to par with the current commercial offerings, it won't always be the case.
I've heard this for years. Is there a projected date by which Open Source will beat commercial software?
if you would have specified what it is that Gnucash won't do that Quicken does. "Isn't up to par..." doesn't really cut it. I've used Gnucash a little bit, and it seems to have everything that I would want - but my personal finances aren't so complicated that I can't manage them in my check register and savings book. I'm not really disciplined enough to enter every little thing into Gnucash often enough to make it worthwhile. My personal theory of finance is to earn way more money than I spend and always have enough in the bank to cover purchases, and not to have to rely on credit cards.
If there are specific features you're looking for, you should have mentioned them. Right now this is just another in a series of useless "Ask Slashdot" questions that indicate the poster didn't do any footwork on their own or even think very hard about the question.
I tried Quicken and thought that it was a little overkill for what I wanted to use it for. I only need to keep a register of what my account ballances are and want to be able to quickly and easily look up how much money I have and enter new transactions with the same ease. So, I ditched the personal finance software and fired up my favorite spreadsheet application. All I needed to do was to set up the worksheet so that the first collumn was the check number, the second was the date, the third the payee, the fourth the amount of the transaction, and the fifth my ending balance. The balance is taken from adding (or subtracting) the amount of the transaction from the ending balance of the line from above. Very simple and I don't need to wade through the excess features that I don't want or need.
Personal finance software brings several tool together into one package. But most of those you can easily recreate with other software.
>but also has a very different view on how to
>track money. GnuCash tracks money the way
>businesses track money. It is always a matter of
>where money came from and goes to. It makes you
>think about where your money is going.
Golly, I wonder if that's because Quicken isn't business software.
If you want to use a Quick[something] product for a business, use Quickbooks. That's what it's there for.
http://www.matrica.de/
:) :-(
I don't do big things with it.
Just online banking, but I think it is quite nice.
But it costs a bit of money and is not open source...
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/269/
I'd feel better if I were running a bootleg copy. But I stupidly paid retail for it.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
We already have the capability to import Quicken data in BeOS. Go look it up and you might just find the specs you need to grab thast data to import it.
I'm sure there is one available.. so I'll go looking again.. anyone have a linux program that will file your taxes electronically like Turbotax or whatever? a lil late this year for it.. but plenty of time for next year.
I'll second Moneydance
I've found it to be fairly easy to use. It does what I want it to do.
I've been using ChecFree's old DOS program under dosemu for a number of years. Its even is happy calling the old compuserve data network to transfer payments.
I've been using the program since about '92 or so and its quite happy except for a few stupid questions about thinking the date is set very far ahead and a few y2k sorting bugs.
I looked into the data format of the file and it looks very easy so if someone is looking at writing a program that talks to chcekfree, I might be able to dig up the code that decodes their packets. They build a small file and then xmodem it off to some connecion on the old CIS network so its not big on security but at least it works unlike my banks payment system (which uses some new shiny interface to the same backend and might just use the same CIS interface)
This is a recurring theme on Ask Slashdot - people who don't take the .01 second to do a simple google search! begging for answers to their questions. Can we have a pulldown menu that has a stock "RTFM" response?!
"a quote" -me
I did ask Quicken. Their response, "Not in the near future will we be creating a Linux version."
What do you guys use?
A Pilot fine point pen and my checkbook.
Hah! Finally being poor is advantageous and saves me hassle!
--saint
I was holding onto Windows because I used CheckFree's client. Well Yahoo offers the same service for half the price through a web interface, and here's the kicker - it's in cooperation with CheckFree!
No, I can't make direct payments using GnuCash but all I'm looking for is an electronic check register. I have no need for all the bells & whistles of Quicken.
If I wasn't too lazy to keep it up, I'd probably just use Gnumeric.:)
There are two seasons in my world - Hockey and Construction
I've been using CBB for a while now. It's small, run on Linux and MacOS, and mature enough to suit my little needs. Check cbb.sf.net.
And when the debt collectors call I say I'm not in but I will take a message. My suggestion for the pman is that he make a healthy contribution to the GNUCASH project, this will both simplify his financial situation and encourage improvements to the source code.
Are you more interested in the platform or the applications? You've mentioned UNIX (not Linux), but also WINE. This would suggest an uncommon desktop environment, one with less than the small fraction of a % that even Linux owns. It would be difficult to imagine that you could find financial apps for your working environment.
However, there are now several fine commercial financial applications that run on BSD UNIX via OS X. Quicken and MYOB accounting are two that I've used.
I'm sure that switching platforms now just for the application mentioned is not a particularly viable option, but if you aren't opposed to using commercial apps and want UNIX, you may consider looking into OS X at some point in the future.
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
most linux software is not up to par with what Windows offers.. Answer: use windows
Here is a link to some great Linux packages, among them a great personal finance tool: Software Packages for Linux
Though not officially supported, Quicken 2001/02 will run on Crossover Office. At least, I'm able to run it. YMMV.
An open source alternative would be better. But this at leasts saves you the reboot...
In fact I can. With PostgreSQL and python.
*Dons asbestos kit*
;-)
In an unrelated note, I think gnucash 1.6.x has support for MySQL and PostgreSQL, in case flat files don't cut it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Personally, and I know I'll probably get flamed to hell and back, I use Microsoft Money and find it workes quite well for managing my many investments, mortgage, 401K, and my checking account. I've never used Quicken, but I bet the two are comparable in features if not in performance or asthetics. I also have never tried wine (sounds like a lot of hassle, plus I dual-boot with Win2K), and thus have never tried Money under wine.
When I first tried GnuCash, I found it was able to do the majority of the things I do in Money, though not necessarially quite as user-friendly. Two major things that I found I was unable to do in GnuCash, however, were internet updates for my various investments (Mutual Funds, 401K, etc). I also tend to use a lot of the reports and graphing features in Money. GnuCash's capabilities in this respect were limited.
One thing that Money doesn't do, though, which I find to be a pain and would like GnuCash to be able to do is updating the prices (value) of US Savings Bonds using interest rate info from the 'Net.
And, just because I'm just in a flame-fishing mood today, I have to say that I tend to be very resistant to moving to a new program in general. Moving to a new program and losing any functionality (that I use at all) is not going to happen. Moving to a new program whose asthetics are (IMHO) much less pleasing and whose functionality is less is definitely not going to happen. UNLESS, that is, the new program has some additional functionality which weighs in more heavily, of course.
Just my $0.02...
--- Standard disclaimer applies.
I've been using quicken 4 via wine for quite some time without any problems.
The real problem is that I can't get programs such a turbotax running under wine. My solution was to run quicken under vmware. This allows me the flexibility to keep my linux box running 24/7 and still run the latest version of quicken/turbotax, etc without the need to dual boot.
It's not an open source solution but it is a fully workable one.
I agree. I started using gnucash and decided I spent too much time entering data into the computer. I had already done so in my checkbook as I wrote the check the first time. If you need to have charts and such, reenter data quaterly in a spreadsheet program and view from there.
I run Quicken on Unix. I use Mac OS X.
Uh oh. I shit my diapers...
Can I get someone here to change them for me?
What a lamer. Can't do a simple search.
I use GnuCash, and it has the ability to import QIF files (Quicken). I don't use it, so I can't comment on how well it works.
But it sounds to me like you are looking for a convenience. If the only reason you aren't using GnuCash is because you can't directly link to all those sources (401k, bank, CC), then it would seem that you are just a little lazy. Can't you just manually enter it? Yeah, I know, computers make things easier, and once you get used to them (lazy) then it is harder to do things for yourself. But I suppose that is why Windows is so popular.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Written in Java - the data files are the same on any platform - Use JDK 1.4 for your Java - http://www.moneydance.com The cost is minimal ($25 or so).
- David
Ha!!! Postgres is TOO SLOW to compute my AWESOME WEALTH!
Python? The CONSTANT INSERTION OF "L" BEHIND MY DOLLARS OFFENDS!
Fie!
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
This is really the only weak link in the chain of software for Linux. Personal Finance is one of the main reasons for your average home user to own a computer. Without a good, comprehensive personal finance software package, no one who has no other interest in computers (i.e., most average home users) will care to use Linux.
Kapital seems like the best bet to me. It's Linux-native, open source, though it's not free as in beer, and it looks nice. GnuCash is ugly. These things matter.
Moneydance is also a good bet, though it's not open source. But most people don't really care about that, even if they should.
Still, they both need to beef up on the features, especially Kapital. Sometimes I wonder if Linux developers ever use competing products. The people who write Kapital need to study Quicken and see what they do right.
The best features of Quicken, for me and my acquaintances, are the budgeting and scheduling features. Quicken used to schedule payments in an archaic, counter-intuitive "calendar," but now, at least in Quicken 2002, you can have on the front screen a simple summary of your scheduled payments. It shows you what bills you have upcoming, and really helps in planning.
All I really need is a register interface for entering my transactions, just like Quicken, a budgeting system like the latest Quicken, and an easy way to schedule payments and list my upcoming payments on the startup screen. The first and last are most important; the budgeting features are secondary.
Now GnuCash may have since improved, but it is expensive for me to try it again (effort and chance of losing data) so I will wait another while.
I have Quicken running just fine on my Mac OS X system. I guess the title should be "Personal Finance Software for Unix*? (*not including Mac OS X)". ;-)
Anyway, google found these...
Good summary page...
http://vip.hex.net/~cbbrowne/finances.html
Various packages...
http://www.moneydance.com/
http://cbb.sourceforge.net/
http://www.thekompany.com/products/kapital/
I use it to track my credit card debt. Which every red-blooded American college student should have piles of. Or at least student loans.
Slow maybe (then again -- maybe not), but it'll guarentee that you don't lose track of your funds when making transfers from one account to another asumming you use it right ;)
Rod Taylor
is what the bank typically gives you at the end of each month. Thats right. I use my credit card for almost everything.
When tax time, submissions for refunds from my employer, etc. come around I simply photocopy my statement, black out the lines they shouldn't see. For the truely paranoid photocopy it again (so you can read through the page).
The only item that doesn't appear on that statement is rent. But if I could, I'd do that too.
Rod Taylor
If he can't figure out his finances without software, what makes you think he could figure out perl?
do not read this line twice.
somebody would mod this up.
Oracle Small Business Suite, powered by NetLedger, works well from Linux based browsers.
They provide a complete small business package which includes accounting, sfa, cms, employee expenses, time and billing, scheduling and clandars, online file cabinets, payroll, online bill payment, web store/site, and customer care features in their product.
See them @ Oracle Small Business Suite
If the only reason you aren't using GnuCash is because you can't directly link to all those sources (401k, bank, CC), then it would seem that you are just a little lazy. Can't you just manually enter it?
Why use GnuCash at all? Why not just manually write down your finances in in your checkbook and do the math in your head? This is exactly the type of thing that Quicken is good for, eliminating worthless "grunt work" like manually entering numbers.
Yeah, I know, computers make things easier, and once you get used to them (lazy) then it is harder to do things for yourself.
I have no fear that I will someday forget how to manually enter numbers into a computer.
You use GnuCash, I use Quicken. Both of us use a computer to do our math and bookeeping for us, the only difference is I don't have to type it in. I completly fail to see the point of your arguement unless you are against both GnuCash and Quicken...
Finkployd
If you've got a set of tools that might help here, my not make them available?
I found this a couple of weeks ago in the Debian package archives. If your not running Debian, it can be downloaded from sourceforge. Overall the program is looking to be real solid. Its still in development in a lot of ways, but from my brief experiements, it looks like it has lots of nifty features and a very good ledger system.
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
Apparantly, Quicken runs well under wine, but does anyone know if they are thinking about making a *nix native version of Quicken anytime soon?
If the only reason you aren't using GnuCash is because you can't directly link to all those sources (401k, bank, CC), then it would seem that you are just a little lazy. Can't you just manually enter it?
Why use GnuCash at all? Why not just manually write down your finances in in your checkbook and do the math in your head? This is exactly the type of thing that Quicken is good for, eliminating worthless "grunt work" like manually entering numbers.
Yeah, I know, computers make things easier, and once you get used to them (lazy) then it is harder to do things for yourself.
I have no fear that I will someday forget how to manually enter numbers into a computer.
You use GnuCash, I use Quicken. Both of us use a computer to do our math and bookeeping for us, the only difference is I don't have to type it in. I completly fail to see the point of your arguement unless you are against both GnuCash and Quicken...
Finkployd
This feature is under active development right now. There are several GNUCash developers using it in the 1.7 (development) release. Look for it in GNUCash 1.8.
In general I have found this not to be the case. If you simply want a category breakdown, your credit card should already provide it - mine does. Otherwise, a simple check of your accounts once a week should give you a simple idea of how your spending is going.
Simply put, the only way to reduce expenditures is to not buy things. Also, watch for monthly fees you start incurring for this service or that - these monthly fees constitute a huge drain on most people's cash, and our economy is moving more and more to a rental model where it will be hugely important to control recurring service fees.
Added to which, most banks charge for the pleasure of automagically syncing Quicken with your account (although you can still manually update Quicken with a download file for free with most banks). So you could be losing money while trying to save it.
But they won't port to Linux and it supposedly doesn't run under Wine....
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yes, I suppose, but I guess a "build your own damn money-handling application" isn't an option for most end-users.
(Besides, Perl is all good and well, but I wouldn't trust my money on MySQL. PostgreSQL, maybe, but not MySQL... =)
"I've been using Quicken for a while, but unfortuantlly it won't run under Wine."
For decades now I have used /usr/bin/bc as my personal finance software. Give it just one try and you'll never go back to GUIs again. (I'm currently using v1.06 from GNU.)
Even students need to keep track of money to make sure they don't fall too deep into debt.
Video Game cheats, hints a
But that would stop the hundreds of
"Do you really care to do a little research, before Ask:Slashdot?!"
comments.
Kidding aside, I tried Money 2002 for about a month and immediately loved it-I used it and Quicken 2002 side by side and all the pretty eye candy almost convinced me to trash quicken and go with Money, but the more I used Money the more I realized that like most MS products on the surface it is prettier and appears more feature laden, the more you delve into it you realize it's the same old product done up in a fancier covering. I went back to quicken because it's faster and easier to use and has much more features, especially for investments (just try changing your investment type in Money). Money is prettier but Quicken is so much more.
Any Linux financial software needs to import files from Quicken accurately.
Use just a text file like everyone else. That also makes it easier to encrypt if you don't have PGPDisk (it's all in the one file).
Use Gnumeric to do your calculations (and always have a worksheet open when you're on the phone to your bank to write notes in) but it's a lot easier to find things if you put the results back into the text file when you're finished.
The alternative (one spreadsheet for each thing) looks pretty for a while, until the next time you change software and find that copies of OpenOffice or Excel at university or on your windows partition can't read them.
This sort of data is what the "platform independance" argument is all about (c.f. Peru). It's stuff you'll still need to access long after your current software, computer, and operating system no longer exist. Need I even say that proprietry accounting software is out of the question.
Has anybody tried to run Quicken with WINE? How does it work?
Adding Quicken support to CrossOver Office could make it more interessant since there's no equivalent in Linux. Anybody from CodeWeavers here?
Andrea
gnucash can import quicken files and most online statements are in this format
"I want the ability to link up to my bank, credit card companies, morgage companies, retirement fund, etc. and download the latest data like I can with Quicken"
Some things to think about
* Eggs and baskets. Theft of your main PC. People on Kazza searching for *.gnuCash files (or whatever)
* Can you say proprietry? What are the chances that your bank will let you authenticate with anything other than a MS Internet Explorer certificate?
* Liability. For remote access, bank passwords and PIN numbers may be stored on your PC (either intentionally, or by paging memory, or by keylogging viruses) -- if any of the above apply, you've broken the bank's T&C regarding keeping your password safe, and hence gained liability for anything that fails.
* Security, again. I assume that accounting software doesn't have the level of security you expect for financial data? (I may be wrong, I'd be pleased to see *.xml.gz.gpg files used)
I use NetAssets. It's web-based, secure, and a great reporting and tracking tool.
It's a shame the same isn't always true of Java. Is it still leaking memory? Still changing radically every 6-8 months? What a pain...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
The code was big ? LOL!
I've been meaning to get organized and look at putting my finances, mortgage, bills, etc online - I keep them all for years so I'd be able to see where my money goes
After reading this I decided to download GNUCash - imagine my suprize: 15Mb!
root@hell:/home/skx# apt-get install gnucash
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
bonobo defoma dialog gs gs-common gsfonts guile-common guile1.4
guile1.4-slib libbonobo2 libdate-manip-perl libdigest-md5-perl libefs1
libfinance-quote-perl libgal19 libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 libghttp1 libgimpprint1
libgnomeprint-bin libgnomeprint-data libgnomeprint15 libgtkhtml20 libguile9
libguppi16 libgwrapguile1 libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tableextract-perl
libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libltdl3 libmime-base64-perl liboaf0
liburi-perl libwww-perl libzvt2 oaf slib
The following NEW packages will be installed:
bonobo defoma dialog gnucash gs gs-common gsfonts guile-common guile1.4
guile1.4-slib libbonobo2 libdate-manip-perl libdigest-md5-perl libefs1
libfinance-quote-perl libgal19 libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 libghttp1 libgimpprint1
libgnomeprint-bin libgnomeprint-data libgnomeprint15 libgtkhtml20 libguile9
libguppi16 libgwrapguile1 libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tableextract-perl
libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libltdl3 libmime-base64-perl liboaf0
liburi-perl libwww-perl libzvt2 oaf slib
0 packages upgraded, 38 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 15.7MB of archives. After unpacking 47.2MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
I invite you to mod this offtopic. Dumbasses.
The superior linux finance app I was referring to is/was/will be
sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc
sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc
Try typing it in and hitting enter, at that weird dos like thingy called the console, or alternately at a Kterm window, or whatever the crap it's called (wmaker user myself). Again, it is...
sc
sc
sc
sc
Why? Well, because when I typed it in, in a non-halfassed fashion, the blind/dyslexic/illiterate moderator modded me offtopic. Quite possibly because he was too fucking retarded to tell when my post ended, and my sig began. If you don't like sigs, or are confused by them, turn the damn things off. Or at least abstain from from moderation until you have a brain.
And the worst part? In close to 12 months that I've had an account (been posting as AC for 3 years) I've never once been m2'd. I won't now. Because if anything, the IQ limit for metamoderation is even lower than that for moderation, if possible. Retards.
VVVV-------- This is my sig, not an
"advertisement". It happens to be somethign you
can opt out of, if you like. It's a personal statement.
Others get to make them, why can't I?
Hmmm . . . from the screenshot it says that a car is an asset. Not so good.
I got hooked on MS Money 3 about twelve years ago, upgraded to MS Money 4 when Microsoft offered it for free download, and have used it ever since. I've never used Quicken, the main reason being that I didn't want to go through the hassle of converting all my existing finance records, and potentially lose some data.
I tried using GnuCash last month so that I'd have one less reason to use a Windows emulator. (VMware; MS Money won't run under wine.) Transferring my existing accounts, though a two-step process (export from Money, import to GnuCash), wasn't hard. And I did like several of GnuCash's features, like the arbitrary hierarchy of categories and being able to view a payee as an expense account.
After using both MS Money and GnuCash concurrently for about a week, I decided to stick with MS Money. The primary reason was that I discovered that GnuCash did *not* import my transaction memos! (Well, actually it looks like it did keep memos for split transactions, but not for normal transactions.)
Another feature I rely on heavily in MS Money is the payment calendar -- reminders of what bills or statements I should be expecting in the mail. This became a critical feature for me a few years back when the post office mysteriously 'lost' some of my bills repeatedly over several months. GnuCash doesn't have anything similar.
The charts that GnuCash offers are cute, but not useful. MS Money offers several _dozen_ report and chart types, each of which can be customized (I have 6 custom charts which I use more frequently than the built-in charts). And moreover, each report can be displayed either as text or a graph. To be specific, here are the reports/graphs that I frequently use:
* Cash History: a sum of my liquid assets (cash, checking, and savings accounts) shown in a line graph over time. GnuCash has an Assets over Time bar chart, but it includes all other assets.
* Liquid Net Worth: a simple summary report of my liquid assets vs. liabilities (credit cards). Again, GnuCash has a Balance Sheet, but it includes all other assets.
* Monthly Cash Flow: a report showing my transactions by category (rows) and month (columns). I think GnuCash's Transaction Report is supposed to do something like this, but I couldn't get it to work ("No matching transactions found").
* Spending (after taxes): a bar chart showing my expenses, excluding taxes taken out of my paycheck. Similar to GnuCash's Expenses over Time bar chart (except that GnuCash includes tax expenses).
I also have a minor complaint about GnuCash's charts: they don't size well. MS Money fits the chart nicely to the size of the window, and you can customize sich things as whether to show a legend, what type of graph to use, B/W vs. color, etc. GnuCash appears to use a fixed chart size that I can't change.
Also, when you right-click on certain chart elements in MS Money (such as a slice of a pie chart), you have the option to view the transactions related to that element. In GnuCash, clicking on most charts does nothing, but in some charts it will distort the image. Cute, but not useful.
Hmm. Yes, I have been using Quicken 2001 successfully under wine for quite a while now. I track my loans, my credit card, and checking account and have a budget sheet worked out so I can see what I should be spending and where. Works well. I cannot use the online features of Quicken however because it uses IE and I've had only minimal success installing IE under wine. But everything I really needed Quicken for works great. Even the little sound effects. :)
It is unfortunate the original poster has been unable to get it working under wine. For me, I just popped the CD in and ran the InstallShield setup program. Easy, peasy.
- Nathan
OK - replying to myself here.
The GNUCash website has a big warning about the size and depencies upon it's front page - so I guess this is a known issue.
I spent a while looking around the site, and from the screenshot page I see they're using the word 'Druid' instead of 'Wizard' for lots of things - eg. "QIF Data Import Druid" that's great! :)
moneydance works for me! http://www.moneydance.com
If you don't know where you're going --- any road will take you there!
I'm with you. You can find anything in the world via google, as the first few posts in an Ask Slashdot usually tell everyone, but that doesn't always help. Discussion, experiences, insights. Getting the feel of the /. attitude on something. It makes it a little more of a community.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
It was probably posted on comp.sources.unix or some such place back in the mid-80s.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Have you tried a spreadsheet? I find personal finance software kludgy and inconvienient. It seems like a pain in the ass to enter in your transactions into your software. Spreadsheets can view different file formats, so it doesn't matter if you use gnumeric, Excel, OpenOffice, or whatever. Simple and efficient!
Yes it will. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but writing software like that is BORING. Take a look at the best open source software out there and you'll see that it is "interesting" software: operating systems, window managers, development tools. Financial software is the kind of boring crud that nobody writes for fun, and so something like GNU cash will progress until the easy features are done, and then the authors will realize they don't want to spend any more time on such an uninteresting piece of software, and they will move on to something more interesting. Some software is just so utterly uninteresting or unprestigious that nobody works on it for fun, you have to PAY them to work on it.
I wouldn't say tht 15Mb (unpacked) is that big for a package these days.
Video Game cheats, hints a
i remember this same article from about 2 or 3 years ago.
gnucash has improved, err, how much?
Are you some poor mofo from bangladesh? Jesus christ, that 47MB of uncrompressed space is just too damned much!!
Wait.
I know.
I'll erase that Chumbawumba album I got and then hated.
# du -s Chumbawamba\ -\ Tubthumper/
61589 Chumbawamba - Tubthumper
Come on. And it has to be free and completely opensource.
I've never used finance software before, but when I started my business I knew I needed some way to keep track of finances. I've been using gnucash and it seems to fit the bill. Although I don't know if I'm missing anything by not using Quicken or whatever.
I think people need an actual understanding of accounting to use gnucash, whereas with Quicken you can just answer all of the pretty questions. I've talked to some people who use Quicken to manage their finances and they really don't get accounting at all.
What am I missing by only using gnucash?
I've used GNUCash, it was lacking a lot of features that i would consider a neccessity in personal finance app. Like the ability to add a description to a transaction, and the stock tracking features were buggy as heck i could never get my mutual funds to track right.
Later,
Phil
But I second that MoneyDance has been a good product up until this point, with the notable exception of the Java headache it imposes. I'm still looking for a decent way to take my data from MoneyDance and input it into something like GnuCash, but haven't had much luck with it.
Intergration of all those features making it all so easy to use makes it fun for those script kiddies to have a go at your money. Those companys selling your personal information for $$$. Well at least you do not have MS$FT Money. Geez now I know how BILL GATES know when to buy hold or sell he just scans M$FT Money users information via the .NET must be why Redmond is always pretending to send your another instant update. Did you graduate from one of those ivory league schools where Bill Gates donates a lot of software only to go back later and extort googles of $$$ out of them. What are your going to do if Quicken goes out of business have you allowed them to store your personal financial data because you trust them just like Hotmail members trusted Bill Gates and Micro$oft. Shit kinda got to wonder if Bill Gates is raiding M$FT Money Users Accts to keep his Criminal Enterprise Up and Runninig. Oh heres your answer http://rpmfind.net search finacial software. You can also use all those search engines out there like http://www.google.com. You could also go to http://sourceforge.net and http://freshmeat.net. Do you need someone to type this in for you do you think you can do this we know its hard for Windoze users to start to use their brain but keep trying because it does get better you may just get to bash someday.
I would .. but I guess I'm running on older, and smaller hardward than you people.
The biggest thing I have on this box is Mozilla - but that was worth it...
In MS Money 2002, under Tools / Options, there is a checkbox in the "Display" set of options on the default options page called "Turn off sponsorship and shopping links." If you do go onto some of the MSN services, such as the home finder, you will see some ads, but if you wait 5 seconds, they go away. Checking "Turn off sponsorship and shopping links" removes all ads and special offers from the core program, as far as I can tell.
Troll Like a Champion Today
Well i did do research before a posted the question. and i never ran across Chritopher Browne's page in my searches. I went through the typical routes, google, freshmeat, sf. And i didnt find anything that was up to par. I had been using GNUCash for about 3 months and found it seriously lacking. So stop your grumbling, and thanks for the link.
Later,
Phil
Reporting is what makes these programs useful. I've used Quicken in the past to generate reports to see where money is going and whatnot and then compare between months and years.
The real problem is entering the data, and not all banks record enough information about the transaction. When you download the data, the transactions might report the company processing the transaction for the company you actually purchased from.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
Um... a car is an asset.
I run Quicken on Unix. I use Mac OS X.
So you use Mac OS X. That operating system may implement most of the Single UNIX Spec, but I don't see it listed as a UNIX system.
Either way, I don't see "go out and buy a Mac" as a cost-effective solution to the personal finance software problem. The original poster (pstreck) mentioned Wine, implying that (s)he used an x86 computer. For the price of Mac OS X (and its $799 hardware key), pstreck could just go out and buy a hard drive and a copy of Windows XP Professional and install Quicken on that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
see they're using the word 'Druid' instead of 'Wizard'
And that is why free software is failing on the desktop; if each package uses different terms for the same functionality is it any wonder that users are put off.
Bitch about Microsoft, logo-requirements and usability guidelines all you like, but if software written to those standards is usable by people without much computer knowledge then it is going to be used.
The defining point for desktop acceptance of
Linux may be when you can run TurboTax for
Linux(tm).
You're practically guaranteed a huge amount of $.
A company called Linux Canada (I think) makes a business-level accounting package called Quasar. It's like Quickbooks, runs on Linux and possibly Unix with a client-server model. It's proprietary, but they offer a trial version that works really well and is reasonably small (~20MB). It even includes some nice management tools, and seems very suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. The full version features additional modules like inventory and sales tracking.
You probably know or maybe have heard about Kuro5hin. I personally joined that community a while ago for the reason you just mentioned - the format of the discussion there is immencely more suitable for information sharing in contrast to Slashdot, where topics are kept visible for a very limited time, hence the latter is just a news site.
You may want to open a discussion that is of interest to you there, and you wil be able to return to it weeks from the beginning to add to or to get something from the ongoing discussion.
With all the security alerts about shit coding by Microsoft they still use them why why why would you take a chance risking your real money with a bug ridden piece of software named Microsoft Money. Perhaps you were playing to much Monopoly the game and forgot that Money is Real. Do you encrypt your information or is it just there for the taking by some script kiddie. How do you know that the transaction you are conducting is secure do you use ssl and are you sure your connection is not spoofed and you are being redirected to a script kiddies site and told to conduct your transaction as he collects all your personal information. Do you trust Microsofts Security to keep your data secure and not to sell your personal information to the highest bidder like they are doing with Hotmail users. Do you need a .NET passport and is that information safe from script kiddie eyes such as Bill Gates and the gang at Microsoft. Have you patched your Internet Exposure Broswer Six Bugs Squashed One Million More To Go. Listen up you do not need Microsoft.
Yeah, this guy must be one of those "rich dad poor dad" people or something -- that guy says cars aren't assets because you've got to pay for upkeep, etc.
It's an interesting point, but in finance, a car is asset.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
I work for an online brokerage firm, and a new feature slated to me rolled out is a "trading wizard". That's a generic enough term, you'd guess. Guess again.
We had to figure out a different name for it as the term has been trademarked/copywritten by another firm.
I don't know if this is the case here, but in addition to product differentiation, it's a good strategy to call a feature something other than the generic term that might first come to mind -- an open source project really can't afford lawsuits.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
> I've been using Quicken for a while, but unfortuantlly it won't run under Wine.
Are you so devoid of a life that you care what your karma is, and how you are moderated?
Find a fucking life.
You can run Quicken; you just need the right shell.
Have a few screen shots:
http://www.gnucash.org/images/gnome-1.6/savings-jo urnal.gif
http://www.gnucash.org/images/gnome-1.6/savings-do uble.gif
Or am I somehow completely misunderstanding what you mean by "add a description to a transaction" ?
My objections to gnucash are that it requires too many librarys for functions that I never use due to in the integration with gnome, and that it doesn't have a text-only mode of interfacing with it.
Fact Microsoft FlightSimulator was used by Osama as the platform to train his gang and it does not run on Linux. Osama loves Windows and we all know they use Microsoft Instant Messenger. Osama your a fucking idiot, moran and a pussy. Still hiding out from the world you threatened to destroy. Osama has a Bill Gates complex and wants to rule the world thats why he loves Microsoft Software and Microsoft FlightSimulator. Osama your gang are lousy piliots they always end up crashing........oh thats right its not a bug its a feature just like Microsoft Windows.
I used the latest version of Quicken that came with TurboTax. I was amazed at how undeveloped the software was. There were numerous ways that it could have been improved. Maybe the company is preserving some shortcomings so that it can make money on later upgrades.
Plus, the company believes that you are a fair target for numerous money-making schemes.
That's why I like open source software. It's not adversarial. I don't want to play games with stupid people who believe that I am stupider than they are.
Can you prove that it was Osama?
I like to use Unix old style. You know, console
only. (I can't stand X) But I can't find a single
console financial program.
Any ideas?
Linux is not only ready for the desktop its ready for the enterprise. Microsoft has through the years mad a bunch of fucking Monkeys tapping at the computer keyboard thinking they where oh so cool and smart as shit "Really a link a picture of the Microsoft Windows Programming Team http://www.ihatewindowsxp.com." Sorry but there are real reasons why things are not done the Microsoft way and its for the better. This crap that theres no software for Linux is bogus there is more software for Linux then there is Windows and it is coded the right way and you have the source if you want to check it to make sure. System Admins take the plunge and just fdisk all that Windows crap at once and install Linux, KOffice and Mozilla. Watch them jump up and down like a bunch of apes at first but you only have to hear the groans once and tell them theres no turning back learn it or your fired. KOffice is not hard to use and Mozilla is easy whats the problem. If your employees cannot use a search engine why the hell did your boss employ them to work with computers. Believe me the pain of the Monkey Dance is Better then the call of the BSA. Some of those Windozers will moan moan moan give them the link to the Man Page, HowTo, READme and let them excercise their brain.
Sage does accounting and payroll software. This is more company financial software than personal but still its a step in the right direction:
- From the press release:-
Sage said it would start to offer the Linux platform globally in three months
time for its most comprehensive product Line 500, which lets medium-sized
businesses run their finance, distribution, manufacturing and service
operations.
"Linux is becoming very important to the business community, which is why
we've taken the decision to support it," said Sage's UK managing director
Graham Wylie in a statement.
News story is linked from linuxtoday.com
I use version 0.4 of KMyMoney2. It can just do easy checkbook and reconciling stuff. But that's all I really need.
Is it still leaking memory? Still changing radically every 6-8 months?
No, it isn't still leaking memory; and the changes have all been backwards-compatible for a while.
Who the hell needs to track their money by hand when the bank does it for you?
Most banks have this now, and it's usually free.
Just use your debit card or direct withdrawl instead of checks (checks can take days to clear...this is bad if you want an up-to-date statement), and you should have no problems.
:wq
One ring to rule them all. The (_O_) in Goatse.cx
I use SQL-Ledger :)
I use GnuCash, and it has the ability to import QIF files (Quicken). I don't use it, so I can't comment on how well it works.
Blech. It doesn't. I tried downloading my bank statement in QIF and read it into GnuCash. A $46.23 deposit showed up as (something like) a -46230000 deposit. No thank you.
Thank God I'm an atheist!
Thanks for pointing out the redundant, captain redundant.
Ceci n'est pas un post
PostgreSQL is only slow if you keep it (as per default) configured for reliability above performance. Tell it that it no longer needs to sync the disk between commits (MySQL doesn't!) and it's speedy. After all... who cares if the records of that $120 million transaction you just made disappear if your system is turned off at just the wrong time?
8 901234567890
As for Python, you can format out that 'L'... heck:
>>> print 123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567
so it doesn't seem to be a problem even right now (python 2.2.1).
The only problem I can see with Python is that it's too easy to read -- the IRS auditors could figure out your evil laundering scheme with ease!
Quickbooks runs under WINE. At least, it has before (over a year ago!).
What about web-based services, like Netledger, Quicken online, or e-Peachtree? The downside is the cost, starting at $10/month. But you can access them from any net-connected computer with a decent web browser.
>The amount of money is irrelevant. I'm a college student and I have a
>part-time job, tuition payments, an investment fund, a bank account,
>car insurance payments and taxes to keep track of.
>
>
>
What makes you think you need to use Personal Finance Software to keep track of of this? Did your grandparents and parents use Personal Finance Software to keep track of their finances? Most likely not. I don't bother with Personal Finance Software,because I can manage my finances in half the time using pencil,paper and a calculator than I could using most of the commerical Personal Finance Software packages on the market.
It got modded down anyway - so someone out there agrees with you (unless it was you doing the moderating).
Video Game cheats, hints a
Althogh I use GNUCash for my personal finances I did file my taxes this year (and last) using Turbo Tax running in VMware. As a matter of fact I run Office 2000, Visio and many other Windows apps that I need all within VMware. Vmware is definately one of the best software purchases I have ever made. It's truely a "killer app" for Linux (and yes I know there's a windows version)
give me a call. I'll be rather impressed that you can remember a financial equation. Not to mention the fact you can do it in your head.
How can this be insightful? It's a stupid question that's been answered a zillion times.
(repeat after me dollface) The current versions of Quicken/Quickbooks are no longer self contained applications. They are merely a collection of VB scripts that run in an IE window. To run they must connect with the mothership every 45 days for the payroll updates.
You must relax the security restrictions to "promiscuous" to contact Intuit, download, and install your new scripts. That means your accounting computer must not only be connected to the internet, it must be able to run every stupid virus in the world. Sane people do their accounting on a stand alone, non-networked box, at least those that care about identity theft.
So, in these specs, where would you get the idea that Wine will ever run QB again. I do know people who run QB on the Mac, mostly printing and graphics shops, with whatever emulator is available, that seems to be OK.
I disagree, knowing that I spent $400 last month on junk food DOES help me save money.
Knowing where/how you spend your money is the first step on spending less.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I've been reading over some of the posts to this question, and have seen responses that range from a napkin to spreadsheet software to GnuCash and MoneyDance. However, my experience has been that from the software products that I have seen in action, there is nothing like Quicken available to Linux users (I have not tried Kapital.). It may be true that the majority of /. readers only want to track their checking/savings accounts. However, there are a large number of people who want to also track Mutual Funds, Stocks, 401Ks, etc. Also, they want financial planning tools to help them achieve financial goals for long term financial stability. GnuCash does not even offer a budgeting tool at this point, although I have heard that this is in the works. What I want in a financial app is the ability to do all of the above mentioned items, sync via the Internet with banks, brokerages, and credit card companies, and personal financial analysis tools. I love Linux, but one of the reasons why I still have a Windows partition around is Quicken.
Quicken + Win4Lin. It's not too expensive and you get tons of other stuff available too. Plus, you can still sync with Pocket Quicken for your Palm!
Find me in ~/.sig
Note that your current sig (defend to the death) was said by Voltaire if you would like to quote the source.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I was using the description field as a payee field, so technically it's lacking a payee field.
Later,
Phil
I also use it. Its a very nice program. Install is OK, doesn't cost too much. I lkie the reminder features.
Hope this helps.
Actually, there is an open OFX implementation in active developpement that is hopefully simple to use. http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/libofx/
It is almost feature complete as far as statement downloads are concerned. However, without a relationship with a financial institution wich support direct ofx communication, it would be very hard to implement the the more interactive parts of OFX, such as bill payment.
I am currently working on writing support for the library in GnuCash.
I use QHacc. It doesn't have much functionality beyond simple account tabulation, but if you want an easy, straightforward program, it's the way to go.
He didn't say President George Washington Bush. Being one of the founders of Washington state, George Washington Bush would do doubt be a supporter of the state's savior, Bill Gates, against communist Linux and BSD and the pinko hippie Apple regime, who are supporting the Axis of Evil, refusing to let the MPAA and RIAA help our children by deciding what they get to witness and in what order.
P.S.: Washington state is the new postal home to the true Catholic Church, reigning gloriously from a post office box in Springdale. You may think that has nothing to do with financial software, but it's just that kind of thinking that aids terrorism.
Try QHacc. It uses plain text files to store everything. It's not too shabby, if I do say so myself. (I'm the author, of course.)
moneydance was looking VERY good until Sean left appgen .... now they have desupported it .... it even had online transactions working (OFX) ... it's a bummer, I'd REALLY like to see this given to opensource instead of just letting it waste away.
I am starting to use mySQL and perl too.
I was thinking of making what I had done available when it is finished. It is along these lines:
Database:
- Transactions table (downloaded from bank).
- payee categorisation table.
Perl:
- Translation from downloaded bank statement.
- Translation from MS Money data.
I'll then write some report SQL and perhaps use some open source graphical software to display the results.
Why am I changing from MS Money?
- It is too complex (read cumbersome) for my needs.
- It takes too long to import a statement each month (each transaction must be categorised at import time).
- It asks me all sorts of annoying questions.
...is a cunt.
I want the ability to link up to my bank, credit card companies, morgage companies, retirement fund, etc. and download the latest data like I can with Quicken. This is the only reason I keep windows (and quicken) around, and it is hard to live without once you get used to it.
Quicken is also available for Mac OS X (and the light version comes with IIRC all Macs). Obviously, this isn't a reason to go out and buy a Mac for everyone, but if you were thinking about OS X and you need Quicken, it's there.
Shouldn't the payee be the other account on the other side of the transaction ? In other words, the 4th field in their standard layout.
Transactions have to go from one account to another. It's that double entry accounting bullshit . . . you have to kind of buy into it, and it's probably overhyped as a solution, but it definitely is not just a line in a spreadsheet indicating a person or company's name.
While checking out what apps I can move over to linux at my workplace, peachtree accounting classic (old dos version they sorta made work in windows), will work with wine/winex. Maybe that will help you out. I don't think I found a single thing that I couldn't map with either a samba share or the like that didn't work.
I've been using Quicken with WINE for a long time now. I don't do very much with it so I'm not sure if it has full functionality under WINE, but it does everything I need. I have Quicken 2001, and a very old version of WINE.
1 07
Not sure why it didn't work for you, but I've had no problems using Quicken in Linux.
You can look here for a bit more info:
http://appdb.codeweavers.com/appview.php?appId=
I came to Linux directly from the MS-DOS world, where Quicken 7.0 for DOS handled all my account tracking and balancing needs. I found Check Book Balancer (CBB) to be the equivalent Linux program. Simple. Straightforward. Keeps all your accounts balanced. Reads QIF and writes a simple text output that's great for grepping.
If you need features along the lines of online banking, mortgage finance calculators, etc. -- then go to the web. If you need the features of a business bookkeeping package, cbb won't fit the bill. But otherwise, do yourself a favor and keep it simple. Use CBB.
This shouldn't take too long: Quicken already works with Codeweaver's Crossover Office - except for the Internet connectivity bit. I have been told this is on their priority list, since so many people have been asking for it...
Reminder: find a new sig
Why don't you use an abacus, some parchment with an ink well and quill. Well because people usually don't have the hours to spend doing such things anymore! Thats why they use computers. Sheesh.
And another thing. No wonder Linux isn't making it in the desktop world when everytime somebody asks a question the answer is something like "sc" which then requires 15 more questions to beat the f'n information about it out of these "geniuses". Besides that when people who are new to something and aren't very secure about thier knowledge get answers like that it make them feel stupid. Typically the types that answer like that then seem miffed at having to explain themselves to "this moron". Who would want to feel like that when you can just come to the Windows dark side and everything is easy? Well ok not everything, but I hope you get my point.
Look up your definition of an asset. If it's a car you drive yourself, it's not an asset.
If you own a car rental place, it could be an asset.
Try this Canadian software companies product called Quasar:
http://www.linuxcanada.com/quasar.html
I've installed on my Mandrake box but haven't really used it much yet.
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
The person who posed the original question couldn't even do a simple web search to find out about Linux finance products; do you think he really tried very hard to get it to run under Wine?
At one point I tried to install and use GNUCash as my personal finance manager. The first problem that I ran in to was dependency hell. The program relies on tens of libraries. I went through quite a few ./configure --> download dependency --> install dependency --> ./configure until I was able to finally produce a build.
./configure dependency hell.
Now, GNUCash works on a double entry accounting system. That means every time you take money away from one account it goes into another, and vice versa. In some sense, it depends upon the idea that money just can appear out of nowhere, and it just can't disappear into the void. Supposedly it is a very powerful system of accounting. However, the problem that I ran in to was setting my accounts up. I have several different debts (student loans), and several different investments (401K, personal investments), as well as the balances in my checking and savings accounts. I just couldn't figure out how to reasonably set up my initial finances, let alone creating special accounts for things like payroll and taxes. I have a degree in Mathematics, but GNUCash tries to be a serious accounting program. Quicken and the like are different, and single entry accounting is much easier for a beginner to use. Apparently it is much easier to lie, cheat, and make mistakes with single accounting systems.
I finally settled on just keeping a sort of ledger. Pen and paper. I track spending in my budget with it, my current checking account levels, and I update the value of my savings and investments from time to time. It serves me well and keeps my finances on track, which is all I really need. It is also very portable, which makes it easier to account for things like grocery bills and ATM withdrawls.
What GNUCash really needs is a _good_ step by step tutorial on how to set the software up, and I'm not refering to the
The middle mind speaks!
I'm not a financier, but I think you are confusing business assets and personal assets. A persons car should be a personal asset. Of course I could be wrong.
OFX seems like a good offering, but problematic. Why not offer users a choice of how to sync their data with financial institutions?
It wouldn't be too difficult to simulate a user logging in and screen scape the needed data. It's be pretty easy to do in Perl actually, where there are already a ton of moudules doing some similiar. Granted it's a bit hackey, but for cases where the FI won't cooperate with the Gnucash project and set up OFX, it's preferable to having nothing.
The Gnucash project is also in a good position to define an abstract class for how the interface to each institution should work. Then different programmers could go about implementing that class for different institutions. (Much like how DBI or ODBC establishes an generic database interface each database drivers handles the specific for each type of db.)
Anyway, my two cents.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
I recently purchased Crossover Office from Codeweavers...the crossover app allows you to install any windows app. Quicken works quite nicely with the tweaked wine codeweavers has put together :)
(I was even able to download my account activity from my Bank's homepage, and import it in)
Appgen's Mybooks is better than Quickbooks. Quickbooks Y2K scare mailings on warnings to upgrade Quickbooks packages really left a sour taste in my mouth, considering that the old package ran fine after 2000.
n al . tml
No BSOD's, runs with rock stable OS, and cheaper than Quickbooks. This is a true accounting software package. Multi-user out of the box, audit trail, scalable, etc.
http://www.appgen.com/products/mybooks.html
Links will give you comparisons to Quickbooks/Pro
http://www.appgen.com/products/mybooksprofessio
Um... I can SELL my car, therefore its an asset. Granted a person's car may be a piece of sh*t, with an asset value of zero, but its still an asset.
In personal finance packages you usually group assets against the corresponding loan for that asset.
There is also Quicken for Home & Business, which I think is adequate for a sole proprietership. It does estimates and invoices. If I understand what you mean by "double-entry" accounting, I think it does that, too.
Since you felt the need to reply to an obvious troll/joke, how about if I just invoke Godwin's Law so we can end this silly thread?
The Nazi's run Microsoft.
There. Done.
If you have WINE that indicates that you have a Windows license. Why not just use a dual boot with Windoze? Agreed, Micro$oft is highly evil and Linux should be used in most cases, but this is just one case where it makes more sense to use Windows than Linux. When you have specialty software that is high quality and the vendors aren't informed enough to port their programs to real OS's, if you want the software you should use the OS.
Better yet, vote with your money. Don't buy Quicken, because it only works on a crappy OS.
I got Quicken 2002 to run with Wine.
First, downloaded the most recent wine from WineHQ. Compiled it. Don't use the rpm's, they won't work. Then, installed Windows 98 on my FAT32 partition.
Then, this is the tricky part. Boot in windows, open up Quicken and make your connections and so forth. Make sure you can download from the bank under Windows, make sure you can save your file, etc. Then BACKUP your file. Try firing up your browser and eliminate the Internet Connection Blizzard, although I didn't do it (my installed win98 is broke).
It should run...mine does. I'm running mandrake 8.2 Download edition...
MS Money works via Wine also. It is not the best, but it does work. GnuCash still needs refinement. You'd think Intuit would release a Linux version of Quicken.
I download all of my financial data and import it into Gnucash without any problems, using that broken Quicken format (QIF). Granted, it takes *two whole steps*: 1) download, 2) import.
Maybe I'm just lucky, though.
-Paul Komarek
Quickbooks does corporate/business accounting. If you want double-entry accounting, buy Quickbooks. You don't need the Pro version for real estate and most small businesses.
Has that changed in the last few years? ISTR my CPA sister ranting about people who used Quickbooks (not merely Quicken, definitely Quickbooks) instead of a real double-entry system like Peachtree.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
...and the company clearly has good taste, too. They had one of the most gorgeous creatures on the planet promoting their software at their New York Linuxworld booth.
The real expertise in a program like quicken is not on the programming end. Balancing books is a pretty trivial algorithm.
Where the real value of Quicken lies in the financial and legal expertise that it describes. For this they need the expertise of accountants and lawyers and economists etc..
If you want to develop a good open-source personal finance program, you need to find some good accountants (and tax lawyers, and financial advisers, etc) to help out in distilling their expertise, working with the programmers.
And because laws and finance are such ever-changing areas, especially at the margins, constant updating is necessary.
One big hurdle with open-source financial programs (please keep responding flames articulate) is a lack of accountability as well. When I buy turbotax, I know there is a company behind it that must take some responsibility with the program. Just for that reason, a good lawyer or accountant may be hesitant to contribute on open-source. If the software fucks up, he may be professionally liable.
I do wish at least a polished proprietary financial and tax software were available on Linux. My guess is that Linux just doesn't have the market penetration yet to justify the port.
Because of the need for updates, I even think that proprietary software might have some viability on a limited, non-transfereable, open source basis.
I haven't tried gnucash, but if intuit came out with quicken and turbotax for Linux, I would be one step closer to wiping my windows partition. Incidentally, I still wouldn't buy the linux version right away, because I still need the windows partition for other things, and my windows quicken works fine.
evanchik.net
However, I'd be hesitant about using an online version of Quicken. One of the biggies: I would feel like I no longer would have control of _my_ laboriously entered data. Add in shifting privacy statements, server availability, advertising overload, and simply different usage patterns for a personal finance package, and you get a less appealing online product.
I guess there is a reason one is free and the other is $20.00 a year.
On the other hand, if I had a business, and wanted to provide access to several people, an online accounting package might look attractive ...
See the problem I have with calling a car an asset is the fact that you lose money on it every month. It doesn't generate money. That's why I call it a liability and not an asset.
As for selling the car, you are correct. If you sell the car for more than you paid for it, including all you paid for it (gas, maintanence, etc.) then it's an asset for that period. I was thinking more along the lines of a month. Do you classify your car as an asset for any given month? That depends on if it put money in your pocket. This is the same reason I don't call a house that you live in an asset.
Just because some computer program calls something an asset doesn't mean it is. This is where people get into trouble. Calling something an asset that really isn't.
So all in all, whether it's an asset or not depends on the period you talk about and whether it put money in your pocket or not.
Sounds like the same argument people use concerning Linux documentation. Well some people enjoy writing and Linux does have good documentation. A bit uneven. I bet that there are people who enjoy writing financial software as well as people who enjoy designing good GUI's.
If you're going to go the rich dad - poor dad route of accounting, you'll probably have to go single-entry cash basis accounting.
On the bright side, get an accounting package worked up that will handle stuff the same way, and Kiosaki would probably be willing to cross license their name and marketing power with your program.
Matter of fact, shouldn't be too hard to tweak double entry book keeping to do the same. Have to think about it some more.
hanzie
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Has anybody tried to run Quicken with WINE?
Sorry to state the obvious, but see this.
echo
cat
grep
I went the route of trying Gnucash. I tried other alternatives ( dual partition, etc. ). Everything I tried was less than optimal.
When I finally decided to break down and purchase a PDA last year, I found my answer: PDA based financial software.
I use BankBook and Quik Budget. Both of these are for the Palm OS.
I simply download transactions from my bank to my desktop (.QIF format ) and hotsync them to the PDA.
Quik Budget works with Bankbook to keep the finances (more or less) under control.
The cost for the two pieces of software added up to around 30 USD. And the PDA was around 150.
Now, if you're wanting to do your taxes using Quicken, my suggestion is: Don't.
Hire an accountant. It's so much easier to drag a (semi) human being in front of an IRS auditor than it is to blame errors on the software.
Palm based personal finance software has the advantage of always being available.
You can do reconcile your accounts during those boring departmental meetings or while sitting in front of the tube.
The downside is that the Palm ( at least my Visor Deluxe ) lacks pretty graphics
and of course some of the budgetary things that quicken would do for you aren't included. But, it's simple and it works.
Just a thought!
Sitt
Xibalba: My hell. Your hell. Our hell!
because it's not really said by Voltaire. I put his name regardlessly but I got bashed, so I took it out. I don't have the link for this piece of information for the moment, but you can do a google search for it. You'll be amazed how many words has been put on Voltaire's mouth by someone else. :)
Well, that makes it an asset that depreciates. You may also have related, recurring costs like gas and insurance, but they don't change the fact that a car is:
[dictionary]
2.A valuable item that is owned.
4.assets
a.Accounting. The entries on a balance sheet showing all properties, both tangible and intangible, and claims against others that may be applied to cover the liabilities of a person or business. Assets can include cash, stock, inventories, property rights, and goodwill.
b.The entire property owned by a person, especially a bankrupt, that can be used to settle debts.
I think the word you're really looking for is "income." A car isn't income, but it is an asset.
But a house IS an asset. Just like a car.
Yes, I do call my car(s) assets in my personal finance software. Why? So I can calculate my net worth appropriately. What is my net worth? The amount of money that I would get if I could theoretically "sell everything" and go live in a tree. The real value of seeing your net worth value is with tracking it over time.
Am I spending more money than I'm making? Thats easy to tell if you only have wages as income and you only write checks to outgo. But add 401(k), stock purchases, interest, dividends, appreciation on a house, etc., and it can get complicated.
Houses, cars, etc are assets. Lets take something a little different and see if you'll agree its an asset. Lets say I buy a painting for $1000. After I spent that money, did it just go down the toilet? No, assuming the painting is worth $1000, its an asset valued at $1000. If next year, someone wants to buy the painting for $10,000, then the asset has appreciated in value, and is now a $10k valued asset. 'Course the painting could have been damaged by a two year old with some finger paints. The asset would now be worth zero. But its still an asset. Just a zero valued asset. Its "on the books" but doesnt' change the "bottom line".
Now your argument is that because you have to do maintenance on a car (i.e. it costs you something to have that asset), its not an asset. Lets take the painting example. Lets say the painting was worth $1million, instead of a measly $1k. In that case I might have to spend a monthly fee to keep it secure, either a bank vault or a security guard or something. Its still an asset of a million dollars right?
In reality, the cost you pay for maintenance on a car doesn't make it a non-asset. Thats the cost you pay to travel, or to live if its maintenance on a house. I'd have to pay money to travel if I didn't have a car (train, taxi, whatever). But if I bought a car and kept it in the garage for 5 years and then sold it, I wouldn't have spent any money on it for maintenance. So in your argument is it an asset then?
Don't confuse if something is an asset with whether it appreciates in value or depreciates. Assets can do both.
hawk
If his friend agreed to pay $10,000 for the car in the near future, the car is a $10,000 asset.
Excellent...
</montgomery burns>
I don't like it because it's got too many effing features! I was ok with the early versions, when it was just a register, some bill paying and the ability to reconcile. And it was rock solid. Now it has got a zillion features, most of whose existence I don't even know, and it fails every now and then.
I wish it was possible to get a UNIX-style program, that would do only one thing (manage a register), and do it well, and would then hook up easily with other programs, each of which would also do only one thing and do it well.
Grumble. I hate bloatware.
Is it possible to use GnuCash for most things and
somehow link or cross export to Quicken when necessary?
Excellent! I will definitely be looking for that, as it's the one major reason I haven't switched from Quicken yet. I don't need something that can just keep track of balances and add and subtract. That's the easy part. I need something that can help me plan!
My relationship with Quicken goes back to 1991. No QuickBooks then. Despite the occasional problem, I'd still be using it if our other machine could keep Windoze going for more than half an hour, probably. Switching over took a bit of work, but I now have no reason to go back to it. When my kids outgrow their W98-required games, there'll be two entirely Linux boxen in this house. :-)
Actually, I'm looking for the word "liability." OK, since you guys think everything that you own is an asset, what do you put in the liability column.
OK, but it's still hard for me to call it an asset if it has lots of debt associated with it and it taking money from you pocket every month. For this reason, when I do my balance sheet every month, it goes in the liability column. I agree that when you sell it and you make money off of it you'd call it an asset. At this point, I'd like to point out that objects can move from the asset to the liability column all the time. When I talk about whether it's an asset or not, that is per period (week, month, year). For me it's not permanently one or the other.
As for your car in garage example, how much money did you spend storing it? How much money did you spend making it work again? If a car sits in a garage for 5 years, you're going to have problems. I know, when I went to school, I use to let my car sit in the garage for 9 months and it had problems. I don't think the cost associated with owning anything is ever zero unless somebody else pays for it.
As for the painting example, we were not talking about something that you fully paid for. We were talking about something that had a debt associated with it. Now maybe when I looked at that picture, I didn't take that into consideration. Maybe the person fully paid for it. I still have a problem calling it an asset if your money if flowing from it right out the expense column.
As a side note, I know how the government wants you the classify it and for their records do it like that, but for your own, I don't believe you should do that.
There seems to be more to this than I thought. After this conversation, I'm going to have to reevalutate how I place things on a balance sheet. Meanwhile, I've got a question for you. What do you put on the liability side of your balance sheet.
The near future tells me nothing. Is that 1 month from now? Does that make it an asset this month or does that make it an asset next month?
That classification stuff can be difficult.
I had a discussion with someone who had a class on this stuff and it looks like we all may be incorrect here. It seems that it may go on both sides of the balance sheet depending on what it is, what you owe, and what you can get for it. Nobody here has said that yet.
Interesting idea. Maybe we should get together and start designing it.
I run Quicken 2000 under Wine. I do not use the Internet features. They require installation of real IE and the install program for that doesn't work under Wine. I run Quicken on a wine-only (no real Windows software installed at all) setup. There a problems with some dialog boxes because of font mapping problems. You can set fonts in the wine config file, but I haven't bothered. An AC seemed to think you were asking about QuickBooks (QB), but QB is not Quicken.
Quicken 2000 probably runs perfectly under Wine if you have real Windows DLLs. Since real Windows DLLs means you really have Windows, you may as well run it under Windows instead of making yourself crazy.
Wine is getting better and more solid literally every day. I use anonymous CVS and update it every few days.
So, if you must have Quicken and must not have Windows, you can run it under wine, but it doesn't run everything, and it doesn't run perfectly. If you really need it all, you're stuck with Windows.
I actually uninstalled the most recent version of Quicken. Up until this last year they had my business as I would purchase a copy of Quicken Deluxe with Turbotax Deluxe so I could do my taxes. I was burned on the fact that I *had* to register for a Quicken.com account so that I could download stockquotes etc, to keep my 401(k) and investments up to date, despite the fact that I didn't need to in the previous years version. I sent a couple bitchy emails to Quicken, but am certain that I got ignored. I'm tempted to backtrack to Quicken 98 or 99 because that was before they integrated IE, which does seem to have slowed it does seriously.
Liabilities are your debts, the things you owe.
For example, while your car is an asset, the loan that you got to buy that car is a liability; likewise with a house: the house is an asset, the mortgage is a liability. Assets and liabilies balance against one another. If your assets are greater than your liabilities, you have a positive net worth (otherwise, you have a negative net worth, which is... um... bad.)
The other things you mention: gas, maintenance, etc., those are expenses, they balance against income, such as salary, etc.. If you have more income in a month than you do expenses, then you are left with "spare money" (an asset, actually...)
I cannot personally vouch for the accuracy of anything I just said... I just woke up.
I use Quicken 99 on Wine. It is a little quirky and crashes occasioanlly, but it is worth it since I have years worth of data that I didn't want to lose. I tried GNUCash, but import of data from Quicken wasn't totally correct.
Only stupid or lazy people pay for Quicken.
I picked it up (and TurboTax and TurboTax State version and Norton AntiVirus 2002 and a nice shredder) for $0 after all of the rebates.
Who pays (after rebates) for software anymore?
I use Quicken Deluxe 99 every week with Wine. It works fine (except for printing; I've not got that working yet).
I use the CodeWeavers Red Carpet release on my RedHat 7.1 machine (obviously, uses the Ximian Gnome desktop). I *have* had problems in the past with it not working well, but since I got the Red Carpet build it's been excellent, not a single crash.
Unfortunately, I don't know if anything other than very basic forecasting [read: computing the defined Scheduled Transactions for N months into the future] will make it into 1.8. I have a lot of ideas for how I want to do budgeting, but I don't have a lot of time.
Help [even just testing or usage feedback] is much appreciated.
If you're curious as to my thoughts about how budgeting may work in GnuCash -- perhaps in the future [2.0?] -- check out the mailing list archives as far back as November 2000.
It would be nice to have /. and Kuro5hin wiki-wikis, or maybe topic pages at everything2.
You prefer a good spreadsheet to your girlfriend?
Since I just did an accounting course, allow me to (hopefully) clarify:
There are five types of items that can appear in your accounts. Everything on your books will be one of these five things.
Revenue: This is your income. (Salary, money from selling books, etc.)
Expenses: This is money you expend without getting anything lasting in exchange. (eg. petrol costs, electricity bills, ).
Assets: This is anything that you have that you can gain a benefit from. Cash is an asset, for example, as is your CD collection. If you expect the asset to last 12 months or more, it is called a "Fixed Asset".
Assets are often prone to deterioration - being 'used up'. In business this is modelled via 'depreciation'.
Effectively this means that every year, you transform some of the value of the asset into an expense. eg. If you have a car worth $5000 that you expect to last 10 years, you might write off $500 of its value every year. So after 4 years it would be worth $3000 on your books, for example.
A car is something you derive benefit from, so it is an asset. The costs of running it are expenses, and every year the value of the asset depreciates until it is all expensed.
Liabilities: This is everything you owe. So, for example, if you purchase a fridge for $500 and don't have to pay until the end of the month, you add a $500 liability to your books until you've paid. (You also add the $500 asset "Fridge" onto your books). When you pay for the fridge you decrease your "cash" asset by $500). So until the fridge depreciates, you have had no change in your net value (equity). You've just traded cash assets worth $500 for a fridge asset worth $500)
Equity: This is your net value. It equals your assets minus your liabilities.
And, for completeness sake:
Net Profit: This is your revenue minus your expenses for a period. It will be marked by an equal rise in your equity. eg. if you made $8,000 net profit over a year, this might take the form of your "loan" liability decreasing by $2500, an asset "Car" valued at $5000 appearing and the asset "CD Collection" increasing by $500 in value.
P.S. Note that "CD Collection" is one asset. This is a matter of personal preference. It's equally valid to treat each CD as a separate asset - and the books would come out the same in the end...
The only liabilities that I have listed are loans, typically for an offsetting asset. Basically things where I owe money to someone.
A good example: I have a loan on my house. I also have my house listed as an asset. Every year at around the anniversary of the purchase of the house I add an appreciation amount to the Asset account, that covers basically what I think the house has grown in value (typically conservative for my neighborhood, around 1-2%). There is a corresponding Loan account that represents the loan and payments I make to the bank for the mortgage. They are tied together because if I sell the house, I also have to pay off the mortgage. I could even use the proceeds from the sale to pay off all or part of the mortgage. They represent the same thing. Yes, I have to pay upkeep on the house, etc. But I don't put that into the asset account, and I don't put that into the liabilities account, rather I put it into the Expenses account. The Expenses account offsets my Income account (wages, salary, etc).
One liability I have that doesn't have a corresponding asset is a personal loan my wife took with her parents when going through school. Obviously the asset in this case was her education (thats why she took the loan in the first place) but I don't put an asset in for her education because its not something I can transfer, and personally I think its covered under her income. If she hadn't have gone to school she wouldn't have had the income.
Another liability: Loan on my car. In this case its 0% thanks to the sales specials after September 11th. And I have a corresponding asset covering the physical value of the car itself. Now in the case of a car, I yearly put an adjustment in for the deprecation of the car (gotten from Kelly Blue Book). This offsets the loan. Basically if I wanted to sell the car, whatever I got for the car, I would use as part of the money to pay off the loan. In the case of the car, I'd probably have to add money, since a car depreciates. In the case of the house, Id probably get money back, since a house typically appreciates.
I don't put maintenance numbers in my assets though, as those are just expenses. Yes, I wouldn't have the expenses if I didn't have the assets, but then I'd have the expenses on something else (rent in the case of the mortgage, I have to live somewhere). Taxis/Bus fare in the case of the car, etc.
As to comparing the cost of a given asset to an alternative, you're right you do need to keep in mind the maintenance fee's, e.g. If I lived in New York, I would definetely do a cost benefit analyses on whether it was truly cheaper to have a car, vs. taking the subway, considering maintenance and parking fees, etc. But that has nothing to do with the nature of the asset itself.
Let me ask you a question, how would you calculate your net worth, if you didn't have corresponding assets for any of your liabilities? If you have a $100k house (round number) and an $80k mortgage, your net worth (everything else being zero) is $20K. Or are you saying your net worth would be -$180k? Or $-80k -(cost of maintenance)? Or $20k-(cost of maintenance)? If the latter, how do you calculate the cost of maintenance (1 year? 30 years?). And why factor the cost of maintenace in at all? In that if you sell the house, you don't have to maintain it anymore. In reality, your cost of maintenance is a liability drain on your INCOME, not on the asset.
I was like you at first too, back when I didn't have many assets, and didn't calculate my net worth. But as I said in a previous posting, calcultating your net worth is a worth exercise, especially if you track it over a period of time. It truly gives a picture of your financial well-being.
Oh My Lord, they charge for software? whatm next, cats and dogs sleeping together?! ahhhh.
sheesh.
But hey, you got to stick to your principles.
Or do you?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
registering it (no requirement to register having been agreed to at point of sale)
and
having to be nagged with advertisements for Intuit's "value added" services.
But I guess you needed some old post to try out your precious +1 bonus on. Congratulations on having achieved that milestone.
And your reference to my seething hatred for the DMCA wielding pig-fuckers at Blizzard has nothing whatsoever to do with advocating copyright infringement. I only want to hurt their sales, not copy their product.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
I have been using gnucash for 3 years or so, and I love it.
I've had mixed success with importing information from financual institutions (QIF). Sometimes it seems to put things in the wrong account (could be user error, though, also that was a few versions back). But I've had a great experience with it otherwise.
The current stock price grabber works great for me.
It's also handy because I can share a single account with my SO, and either of us can enter in information from our own computers (running it from our linux boxes, or X under windows).