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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?
sc.
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/269/
Open Financial Exchange
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...
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.
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
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?!
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
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 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.