GnuCash 2.0.0 Released

tashanna writes "After a very welcome GTK2 conversion and some additional feature hacking, GnuCash has released version 2.0.0. Other notable changes include: 'OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet, a "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current accounts tabbed window functionality, the ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data, support for Accounting Periods, the data file format has been improved with respect to international characters data files with international characters can be transferred to other countries flawlessly, GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME Help system (Yelp).'"

Comments

Great for...

[andrewman327]

This is a great program for calculating all of the money you saved by not using Windows!

Oh, and has TFA been /.ed already?

Re:Great for...

[baadger]

...unless of course you plan to use it on Windows.

Most of, and all of the best, 'Linux software' is available on Win32. Ports are made much more likely by open sourced code. So I think you made a bad assumption there :P

Re:Great for...

[pintpusher]

You can calculate all of the money you saved compared to buying Quicken!

which, with rapid sunsetting, subscription features and more, is not an insignificant amount.

Re:Great for...

[stefanlasiewski]

So I think you made a bad assumption there :P

GnuCash is NOT available for Windows yet. It may be available in the future, or it may be possible to compile your own.

According to the wiki: "FAQ: Is it possible to compile GnuCash on Windows? A: Currently, no".

Re:Great for...

[generic-man]

$40 every three years is a significant amount of money? I've been using Quicken since version 1 (back when Linux was in its infancy) and I've never had to pay for any subscription features. Upgrading every few years is pretty inexpensive especially when you buy Quicken along with TurboTax. (Speaking of which, where's the open source USA tax program I've heard so much about?)

Re:Great for...

[Don853]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought he was making a joke about it being a free product.

Re:Great for...

[jsled]

Budgets: yes (new in 2.0)
Scheduled/recurring transactions: yes (since 1.8)

No, it doesn't have the polish of Commercial Software, but it's improving.

Re:Great for...

[nharmon]

For many of us, the cost of using Quicken also involves switching to financial institutions who pay Intuit's .QFX ransom. You do know what .QFX is, right? It is .OFX (an XML-based transactions format) with a couple of Quicken-specific tags that tells quicken that the bank is paid up. It used to be not a big deal since you could use .QIF files to import transactions. But starting in 2005, that is no longer an option.

Try and call up Quicken and ask them why...both as a financial institution and as a customer. You will get all sorts of laughable excuses like ".QFX makes the files you get from your bank more secure", or "we don't use OFX because it isn't secure". As if their additions to the file makes it secure (it doesn't, not even from a integrity standpoint because every customer gets the same, or similiar tags).

Re:Great for...

[OctaneZ]

Yes, with Cygwin and X it should be possible to forward this or any other X application. Just make sure your server (your /etc/ssh/sshd_config or equivalent file) has X Forwarding turned on, it should have "X11Forwarding yes" in the file. And that at the client end you are requesting X forwarding, by either making it the default action for ssh or by using the "-X" flag.
-OZ

Re:Great for...

[ichimunki]

Not only is it possible to use GnuCash on Windows using Cygwin's X Server. That's how I've been doing it for some time now with very good results. The only problem I've ever had is with default window sizes for non-maximized windows--probably from having a much larger screen resolution on the Windows system than the Linux system that gets X forwarded.

As far as I'm concerned GnuCash is one of the big reasons I've managed to avoid bankruptcy in the past. It's standard approach to accounting and reports was very helpful for me when I got into financial trouble in the past. Seeing this announcement for 2.0 is heartening, and a good reminder that it's time to donate to the developers' beer fund (or whatever they spend donations on).

Any sarge backports available?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to try this out. GnuCash seems like a good foundation for keeping track of finances, but past versions haven't been user friendly enough for non-accountants like myself.

Re:Any sarge backports available?

[pedalman]

I'd like to try this out. GnuCash seems like a good foundation for keeping track of finances, but past versions haven't been user friendly enough for non-accountants like myself.

Even if you are a non-accountant, you really should take a course in accounting fundamentals. After I did that, GnuCash makes much more sense to me (now that I understand basics in accounting).

Any software app is just a tool. You really need to understand what the tool is doing. If this is too much trouble, then you should go ahead and pay an accountant or bookkeeper to do this job for you.

Re:Any sarge backports available?

[skiflyer]

I'm a non-accountant too and I found GnuCash the perfect tool... so much more up my alley than the pay to play alternatives I had mucked with in the past. Unfortunately once finances got to a point where I needed a real accountant, he used QuickBooks so now I do too... and since the new version of QuickBooks won't run on Wine it was the straw that broke the camel's back and brought me back to a Windows desktop.

I'd love to see GnuCash get to a point where real life accountants used it, or maybe if it could just output to a QuickBooks format or something... is there a standard in the accounting world? I have no idea. I'm just rambling the "killer" features that I'd love to see so I could use the program which I prefer anyway.

Cool!

[Kuxman]

Interesting.. I just discovered an older version of GNUCash this morning and had some complaints (enough to keep me from using it), but according to the change log, my largest complaints are fixed. It'll be interesting to see how well the DirectConnect works... and more importantly... is it secure enough to trust?

Port for MS Windows is possible with GTK2

[stefanlasiewski]

With the adaptation to GTK2 , GNUcash may someday be available for Microsoft Windows according to the GNUcash wiki at http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Windows/

With GTK1, a port of GNUcash for Windows was only a dream.

GnuCash is pretty popular in the Linux world. It would be great to see this OSS project available to Windows users as well.

GNUcash

[joe 155]

I wasn't too sure what GNUCash was from the summery and the article seems to have gone down, if you're wondering:

GnuCash is an application to keep track of your finances. GnuCash is a personal finance manager. A check-book like register GUI allows you to enter and track bank accounts, stocks, income and even currency trades. The interface is designed to be simple and easy to use, but is backed with double-entry accounting principles to ensure balanced books.

That's from yum, although 2.0.0 isn't in the fedora repositories yet (well, not; livna, core, extras or updates)

Re:GNUcash

[gnuman99]

Double-entry accounting is the only way to fly in the money world. It is the only way to make sure you balance you transactions. For example, instead of having

Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00

You have,

Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00
                Liabilities:Visa              $200.00

Or even better,

Dentist         Expenses:Health     $200.00
                Expenses:Taxes       $15.00
                Liabilities:Visa              $180.00
                Assets:Cash                    $35.00

Then when your Visa comes in, you reconcile your transactions. This is much, much better than a checkbook register or other back of the napkin accounting methods. The point is that ALL transactions are balanced. Money in = Money out.

Re:GNUcash

[timeOday]

Sounds good, but who is going to enter all their transactions manually... TWICE!

In the days of cash and checkbooks, I could see it. But in these days of debit cards, credit card, and automated bill payments, a fairly detailed itemized statement is prepared for you automatically. I suppose there is some margial benefit in manually duplicating all those database updates yourself, but I wager the time you spend hunting down your data entry mistakes will more than negate the benefit.

Re:GNUcash

[ceswiedler]

You don't have to enter anything twice. Everything is a single transaction which refers to two accounts. So as soon as you enter something saying "$200 from Checking into Expenses" there is automatically a "$200 into Expenses from Checking". It's just two ways of looking at the same transaction.

Re:GNUcash

[Liam]

The old version could not do a double split as in your last example. Have they added this feature?

Re:GNUcash

[Liam]

Splitting one side of the transaction several ways, yes. I do this all the time. I'm talking about splitting both the input and the output; in the example there are two sources of money and two places that it went, all in a single transaction. When I asked on #gnucash about it a few months ago, I was told it was not possible.

Re:GNUcash

[benoitg]

Not many, that's what QIF, OFX and OFC downloads, as well as OFX Direct Connect and HBCI are for. Gnucash will simply ask you what each of your transaction was spent on, as it already knows what account it's from. It will even do bayesian filtering the next time you import to try and guess it for you.

Gnome Office?

[baadger]

Gnumeric (spreadsheets), Abiword (word processing) and GnuCash (financing) are all excellent programs that the Gnome project collectively call Gnome Office. Anyone know if this is co-operative in any manner? ..good 'competition' to Open Office, even if they are not in the same class. It'd be great if these apps had a certain level of integration, although I can't think in what way off the top of my head.

Re:Gnome Office?

[iburrell]

All three of them use the goffice libraries. They have a lot of interface similarities because they are Gnome applications. They are pretty much independent projects.

kmymoney

[Wh_TiGER]

I've been evaluating OSS solution and I found this one pretty interesting. Polished and yet, powerful.

http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/

I'll certainly give a try to Gnucash 2.0 anyway.

Re:kmymoney

[jeddak]

For a really excellent, lightweight, and easy-to-use alternative to Quicken, GnuCash, MoneyDance, et al, I can heartily recommend Ledger. It kicks!!

It's a command-line program that implements double-entry accounting, without the clunky GUI/WIMPy frills.

And you thought physicists were boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Accountantzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..............

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[eno2001]

Hear hear!! My method of accounting is simple:

1. Only one bank account (with a debit card) into which everything I make is direct deposited
2. No credit cards (they are EVIL)
3. Mentally remember how much you generally have in the account ($9786, OK, so I've got about $10,000 in the bank)
4. Confirm what you mentally think you have with your bank's automated phone system so that you have a fresh guess as to how much you've got
5. Never spend more than %50 of what you think you have in the account unless you have a REALLY GOOD reason
6. DO NOT bank online. Evar
7. Memorize the general amounts of your monthly charges, which should all be automatic withdrawals. ($54.99 for cable? OK so assume $60 a month)

In general it's all based on assumptions with a mental attitude that you have less than you actually do. So far it's worked wonders for my money situation in that I really don't have to think about it unless it matters at the moment. Because if there's one thing people like us HATE to do, it's thinking about money. Money is a nuisance in every way just as non-techs feel computers are a nuisance in every way. For those of you that have a strong interest in money, well... get help.

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[reed]

Um, get some loans! Then you will find it very useful to know what you owe, what you can pay off, how much interest you are paying, etc. You will be able to make much better decisions about what to pay off and how quickly.

However everyone should keep track of expenses though, even if just for a few months. Once you realize how seemingly small things add up (do you go out to lunch every weekday? do you only pay the minimum on your car/home/college loan?), when you could be savinig for whatever your higher priority goals are.

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[Bushwuly]

Good luck buying a car, or a house.

Unfortunately today, the costs of purchasing such major items necessitate the usage of credit. My mother at 49 is unable to get a loan to fix her house, because she's paid in cash her entire life and has no credit history. She'll just have to save up until she has enough, right?

While I appreciate the simpleness and ease of what you're promoting, fact is unless you are independently wealthy or have no interest in having a family (how are you paying for the kids' college?), you have to have some form of credit.

People like us? Sounds rather elitist...

(By the way, I gave up a career in IT to work with kids, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a strong interest in money.)

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[szrachen]

Good morning,

I am a representative of Prince Mojumbiquo Atolulu. He is currently in your country and is having troubles transferring money to buy a palace because identity got h4x0r3d. We trust you so much that we would like you to help us get his money to him. He is currently try to buy a palace for $100,000,000.00 and we would like to give you 10% of that for help us. It will just require j00 to transfer $10,000 to us to cover our costs and then you will have your money shortly.

Please respond quickly. He will only be able to stay at Motel 6 for 5 more days before you luck run out and you get hit by bus.

Reginald Escobar

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[cookiepus]

Sorry but you're silly. For... well.. many reasons.

Ok you have one account. Into which everything is deposited. With a debit card. So it sounds like you have a checking account. How much interest do you earn on that?

You spend less than you have. Great! But you have a 50% margin, which you could definately keep at a higher interest. Oh wait, no you can't because you only have one account.

Then, you don't believe in credit cards and online banking, but you do automatic withdrawals? IE you allow your utilities to take whatever they want from your account? Nice...

Here's a better system.

I have a checking account, a high-yield online money market, and a credit card. Everything that I spend during the month goes on the credit card, including utilities (cell, landline, DSL, etc.) My paycheck gets direct deposited into the checking account at the beginning of the month. My credit card is due on the 15h. That means:

In the beginning of the month, I have my credit card statement. I schedule a transfer from the checking account into the credit card. I pay whatever other things I need to pay, by check. The balance of the checking account (minus a few hundred bucks) goes into the high yield savings.

What's the benefit of this system?

1. Since intra-month spending goes on a credit card, I don't have to worry about leaving enough cash in the low-interest checking account.

2. Establishes good credit history. I have had a credit card for years, never missed a payment (and never paid it off in anything less than full). You?

3. It makes me money. In two ways: First, I earn higher interest on the balance of my savings, and second, my credit card pays me 1.25% back on everything I spend. So if I spend $1,000 a month (including all utilities, not unreasonable), I get 12 bucks back.

There's a few other things that my systems kicks ass about. But really, it doesn't take more effort than yours (infact it takes less, I don't have to keep phoning my bank to check my balance), it avoids worrying about overdrafting (the credit card limit is high enough), it allows my money to earn higher interest, it allows me to get cash back on my purchases, etc.

I like it better!

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[cookiepus]

Both HSBC Direct and EmigrantDirect are paying slightly over 5% currently. INGDirect which used to offer higher yields, is lower, at about 4.25% or so. Your bank is probably half that.

In general, Emigrant has been higher than Emigrant in the past. Now that HSBC is in the picture, they have consistently been at the top of the payoff, with Emigrant catching up quickly.

Either way, much better than your local bank. The first 100k of each account is FDIC insured. Transfers between any of these accounts and your bank take about 3 days. HSBC also gives you and ATM card.

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[embo]

1. Only one bank account (with a debit card) into which everything I make is direct deposited

You have no retirement or other investments? No money market accounts? No savings accounts? Nothing which pays any interest? Why not? Are you married? Do you trust your wife or girlfriend? No kids with bank accounts to keep track of?

Mandating having only one bank account is taking a woefully simplistic approach to finances.


2. No credit cards (they are EVIL)

Credit cards are not evil. Interest rates on credit cards are evil. As long as you pay on time and don't charge more than you can afford (yes, it IS possible to do this while maintaining one or more credit cards in good standing and not paying a dime of interest), you will have no problems.

Last year I charged $5000 worth of home improvment supplies to my credit card in one fell swoop. They gave me 12 months no interest to pay it off. So I took the $5000 I would have spent on paying it off the next month, and stuck it into a 12 month CD (a poor investment, but fairly safe). A couple weeks before I was about to get socked for several hundred dollars in back interest PLUS the balance owed, I cashed in the CD and kept the additional money it had earned, and paid off the card.

No interest paid, and someone ELSE carried the debt for a year while I used the money to sit in an account and earn interest.

Credit cards are not bad. You just need to know how to use them responsibly.

Re:And you thought physicists were boring

[fishybell]

Well, I don't know why all parents that pay for education do what they do, but I do know that you answered much of your question yourself.

Anyone with a pulse can find sufficient loans and scholarships to attend a state school; the federal government will give you that much, and interest-free if you meet income guidelines.

A problem with modern eduction is that it has become very expensive. My first two years of school were at 18,000 a year, at what was called a good bang-for-buck school. I'm still paying off roughly 10k in loans from there. Had my parent's decided to pay for my college, I would have done all four years there, as it was loans finally got the best of me. Sure, anyone can get the loans, but do you really want (you or your kid) to have to be paying them off for the next ten to twenty years?

If you want your kids to succeed, they pretty much need to have a good education, and as might not be able to afford it without a loan, you have the option of helping.

Want a Windows Version

[greenegg77]

We all clamor for Linux versions of Windows software, so where's the Windows version of GnuCash? Just program in some random GPF's and we'll be happy.

Cash

[Wellington Grey]

Looks like they could use a bit more cash to keep their site up and running.

-Grey

the official announcement

[pintpusher]

from gnucash-users list:

    Accounting in Linux Leaps Forward

*/GnuCash 2.0.0 milestone released to public/*

Personal and small business accounting in Linux will be easier and
better after today's release of GnuCash 2.0.0.
This milestone release of the free, open source accounting program
includes generational advances over the last version. GnuCash 2.0.0 is
based on state-of-the-art gtk2 GUI technology. Developers worked hard to
integrate the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for a consistent
behaviour and look-and-feel for the whole Desktop.
Major changes in the milestone release include;
        * OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account
            statements over the Internet.
        * A "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current
            accounts tabbed window functionality.
        * The ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data.
        * Support for Accounting Periods.
        * The data file format has been improved with respect to
            international characters. Data files with international characters
            can be transferred to other countries flawlessly.
        * GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME
            Help system (Yelp).
The GnuCash development team said these new features and changes will
make GnuCash easier than ever for newcomers.
GnuCash is the leading free, open source accounting program and the leap
to gtk2 will enable users to be able to enjoy cutting edge functionality
with the freedom of not being locked into proprietory file formats.

*Playing With Others*
As with other leading Linux software that is designed to replace
proprietory programs, GnuCash is a functional replacement for expensive
accounting programs. Like OpenOffice.org and The Gimp, GnuCash is also
programmed to communicate and interact with as many existing programs,
institutions and people as possible.
The GnuCash development team has continued to improve file import
filters, which allow users to import work from old programs like
Microsoft Money and Quicken. GnuCash can load QIF and QFX files, which
are used by both of those programs.
Developers have also continued to incorporate support for online banking
into the program. GnuCash 2.0.0 supports OFX DirectConnect which can
directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet.
The milestone release is available in 29 languages, including English,
French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, so people from around the world will
have no difficulty operating the program

*Off on the Right Foot*
Users of the GnuCash 2.0.0 will notice a few changes when they start the
program. Improvements have been made on startup speed, scheduled
transactions, currency support and currency quote retrievals.
After they enter the program, users will find a double-ledger account
system, exhaustive report options and account hierarchy tools. Also at
their disposal is a full system of tutorials and documentation.

*Getting GnuCash*
GnuCash 2.0.0 can be downloaded from gnucash.org. It is available as
source code.
To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, slib and g-wrap.

*http://www.gnucash.org *

*http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash
*

*About the Program*
GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris
and Mac OSX. It is collaboratively developed by 10 people from over 5
countries.

Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was
in 1998.

Where's KCash?

[crystalattice]

Doesn't the KDE community have a competitive program yet?

Re:Where's KCash?

[nonmaskable]

http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html

What about us Brits?

[KingDaveRa]

My major qualm with accounting apps has been the American slant they have. It's often trivial stuff, like the terminology, but some things are slightly different 'over here', and having played with a few other free and Open Source apps, I often found myself a little bit lost and confused. I've used Quicken for some time, and it does what I want, and doesn't confuse me, but it's been localised more I think. I can't pin down the exact things I wasn't happy with, but I know in the past I felt too much of a US-bias.

Re:What about us Brits?

[TTop]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here... GnuCash has built-in multiple currency support.

In my opinion, an important issue with GnuCash is that development is fairly slow due to a good chunk of the codebase being LISP, which limits the universe of developers that can work on it. Unless they've changed that with this new version (which would be great!). So it seems like the pace of development compared to other open source products of its age is fairly slow.

I'd like to see the reporting and graphing features fleshed out a bit more, these seem somewhat limited. All in all, though, it's a pretty nice program.

Re:What about us Brits?

[BovineSpirit]

Brits are well represented in GNUcash development, and there's a en_GB translation. The wonderfully named Nigel Titley has been using it for VAT invoices and submitting bugs, while Neil Williams is a major contributer. The developers and testers are from an array of countries, so any US bias tends to be dealt with quickley.

turbocash

[Anonymous Coward]

i have quite a few clients running
http://www.turbocashuk.com/

open source, windows (iam suprised this never gets much publicity)

unless of course you want to mess about with horrible unix kludges on windows in which case gnuCash will suit you fine

Moneydance

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried gnucash a few times and alwasy found it lacking and was forced to use Quicken in Crossover Office. Finally sometime earlier this year I read a post that mentioned Moneydance (http://www.moneydance.com) and gave the trial version a try. Its not quite as feature rich as Quicken but has all the features I needed and I ended up buying a lic for it. I have used it now for about four months I think and have been very happy with it. It runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. I'm not trolling or really even promoting but I just figued with the lack of good accounting apps out there for linux (at least on the personal finances side) I would mention it. I do hope that gnucash has improved with this realease but for now I'll probably stick with Moneydance.

Oh, and yes it is java but the install was quick and painless and it runs quick (for me at least).

No online banking? Why not?

[pestie]

6. DO NOT bank online. Evar

Uh... why not? I've been banking online for years and never once had a single incidence of fraud. Of course, I switched to running Linux full-time a year or so ago, but even when I was running WinXP I had no problems. Of course, I also somehow avoided getting spyware or viruses, too (probably due to the fact that I was a devotee of Mozilla/Firefox). It's surprising to me to hear this kind of attitude on Slashdot, since most people here are clueful enough about security to know how to avoid getting burned.

Why I'm switching from Microsoft Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I was an Quicken user for many years despite their regular releases which seemed to
add no new features, just fix existing bugs.
Then the whole TurboTax 2002/C-Dilla copy protection debacle happened and I swore off Intuit forever.

Last week I purchased Microsoft Money hoping to get something like Quicken. Hoo boy.
In 3 days of usage so far, I've found:

1) Registration is only allowed with a checkbox reading "I agree to let Microsoft
contact me about updates and special offers." There is no way to uncouple bug
fix updates from Microsoft spam.

2) Money requires you to use Passport in conjunction with their online features and
in fact this is the default mode for Money 2006, resulting in:
a) Money storing your personal banking details (not passwords, but balances and transactions)
on Microsoft's servers by default,
b) Money "protecting" this information using Passport, a system that has been hacked
before and will be hacked again and which limits the length and therefore strength of your passwords,
c) Money insisting on turning the "store my things on MS servers" mode *every time* you try to
add another on-line service (i.e. a new bank or credit-card) resulting in
numerous repitions of the "add a bank", restore some semblance of privacy dance.

3) If Money has a way to automatically propogate changes for transaction categorization,
it isn't obvious or offered by default. If I drink a Starbucks coffee 6 times a month,
categorizing the first means nothing for the rest; you have to do every one by hand.
Quicken would forever remember these sorts of associations.

4) Despite apparently using Yodlee under the covers, MS Money doesn't offer
either a) a way to synchronize or import your data using Yodlee, or b) access to systems
available in Yodlee.

Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement?

[pintpusher]

just my limited experience here...

depending on what you're doing, gnucash IS a good replacement for quickbooks. It handles a/p. a/r and a reasonable slew of business reports. It does NOT do payroll, which may be a killer for a lot of people, but in my experience, quickbooks payroll wasn't all that. Once you've built a decent spreadsheet for doing payroll, you can format it into a .qif type format and import into gnucash just fine. then you have control over your payroll... my biggest reasons for switching from quickbooks: 1. tired of forced upgrades when the software already did more than I wanted and 2. (the real killer) if you don't use their subscription payroll system, then the payroll calculations will be WRONG. I had some local payroll taxes implemented in my quickbooks. When I got tired of paying them for tax tables that I could get for free from the govt, I let that subscription lapse and guess what happened... the payroll deductions calculated by those taxes I had setup were suddenly wrong. Hours of research later, i determined that without the subscription, it dropped a couple points of precision on the other, custom numbers it was computing. WTF! so screw intuit. IMHO.

Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement?

[pintpusher]

1.) Import my existing Quickbooks data from the last 2-3 years.

hopeless. That's the only reason I maintain my stupid winxp dualboot setup -- for access to 4 years of business transactions that are forever locked up in quickbooks. bleh.

Not quite hopeless.. here is what I did

[Xehn]

1.) Import my existing Quickbooks data from the last 2-3 years.

hopeless. That's the only reason I maintain my stupid winxp dualboot setup -- for access to 4 years of business transactions that are forever locked up in quickbooks. bleh.

Not hopeless, at my office I used a (windows) program by a company called 'Digital Cows' to export all of my QB data into a 'plays nice with others' format. (I used CSV and imported to mysql, I think it supports xls, but I've never used it). It's not free, I had to have my employer cover it, but it's a nice simple option.

There is also the quickbooks SDK, which IS free. With a little work, you can export all of your data.

Intuit sure doesn't make it easy, but it is certinally not hopeless.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the above programs or companies.

Re:How well supported by banks?

[devilsbrigade]

Bank of America doesn't support anything but MS. I can't even open my account in firefox using IE TABS. Terrible terrible layout, and very annoying habbit of crashing when i am about to pay bills. If i wasn't so lazy i'd consider switching banks.

Re:Cash

[eclectro]

Looks like they could use a bit more cash to keep their site up and running.

Actually their servers cashed out.

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see what this does to my bandwidth.

http://lynema.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Scree nshot-gnucase2%20-%20Unspecified.png
http://lynema.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Scree nshot-gnucase2%20-%20Register.png
http://lynema.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Scree nshot-gnucase2%20-%20Gas.png
http://lynema.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Scree nshot-gnucase2%20-%20Expense%20Accounts.png

I have used both; I prefer GnuCash over KMyMoney

[KWTm]

I've been using GnuCash for about a year now, and have also tried out KMyMoney. I have no financial training background and use it for personal finances only.

Although I am a KDE fan and prefer KDE apps on my Kubuntu desktop, I went back to GnuCash because their double-entry accounting system is more rigourous and more powerful. The equivalent in KMyMoney is categories for each transaction, but not only are the categories not well implemented (you have to drill down into the transactions to display the category of each), but it is less flexible. In the same way that Unix treating non-files just like files (e.g. devices, processes, etc.) makes it more powerful, GnuCash's double-entry system lets you treat categories as actual accounts.

However, KMyMoney's interface is quite polished. I think KMyMoney (v0.8) is where GnuCash v0.8 would be, and over time it will catch up to GnuCash. The two convert files between them quite easily, so I plan to easily switch to KMyMoney if/when it overtakes GnuCash.

Note: As someone else has pointed out, "double-entry" does NOT mean you have to type it in twice. It means each transaction answers two questions: 1. where did the money come FROM? 2. where did the money go TO?

I am looking forward to GnuCash v2 appearing in the Ubuntu repositories.

One thing I wish GnuCash had is a redefinable keyboard interface and configurable fonts.

I mentioned some other things in a previous comment of mine about GnuCash, here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189954&cid=156 34117
I talk about how I use GnuCash in a lazy way, and how they have an excellent tutorial that teaches accounting basics as well as specifics of using the program. Never realized accounting could be that interesting. I won't repeat all that, since you can just go back and read my comment.

too many libs

[joschm0]

When I last tried GnuCase (3 years ago), the biggest complaint about gnucash was that it depended on approximately 50 external libraries. It seemed to be a conglomeration of parts written in every existing language and toolkit. That reason alone sometimes made for an unstable application crashing at unexpected times. I hope they've cleaned it since then.

Re:too many libs

[jsled]

To mutilate a famous phrase, "Reports of gnucash's dependency problems are greatly exaggerated".

In any case, it's better than before, but you just can't get away from writing desktop software without using other libs to accomplish things like HTML rendering, printing, graphing, xml parsing, &c.

In any case, here's the dependency list from my gentoo install with optional OFX, HBCI support and quotes-fetching turned on; note that most of the packages are standard (zlib, popt) or just "part of gnome" (gtk, glib, gnome*).

=app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.1.2* app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.1.2-r6
>=app-text/scrollkeeper-0.3 app-text/scrollkeeper-0.3.14-r2
>=dev-libs/g-wrap-1.3.4 dev-libs/g-wrap-1.9.6
>=dev-libs/glib-2.4.0 dev-libs/glib-2.8.6
>=dev-libs/libxml2-2.5.10 dev-libs/libxml2-2.6.23
>=dev-libs/popt-1.5 dev-libs/popt-1.7-r1
>=dev-libs/slib-2.3.8 dev-libs/slib-2.4.3
>=dev-util/guile-1.6 dev-util/guile-1.6.7
>=gnome-base/gconf-2 gnome-base/gconf-2.12.1
>=gnome-base/libglade-2.4 gnome-base/libglade-2.5.1
>=gnome-base/libgnomeprint-2.10 gnome-base/libgnomeprint-2.12.1
>=gnome-base/libgnomeprintui-2.10 gnome-base/libgnomeprintui-2.12.1
>=gnome-base/libgnomeui-2.4 gnome-base/libgnomeui-2.12.0
>=gnome-extra/gtkhtml-3.6 gnome-extra/gtkhtml-3.8.2
>=sys-apps/sed-4 sys-apps/sed-4.1.4-r1
>=sys-libs/zlib-1.1.4 sys-libs/zlib-1.2.3
>=x11-libs/goffice-0.0.4 x11-libs/goffice-0.1.0
>=x11-libs/gtk+-2.4 x11-libs/gtk+-2.8.12
dev-util/pkgconfig dev-util/pkgconfig-0.20
nls?
    sys-devel/gettext sys-devel/gettext-0.14.4
doc?
    app-doc/doxygen app-doc/doxygen-1.4.4
    app-text/docbook-xsl-stylesheets app-text/docbook-xsl-stylesheets-1.68.1-r1
ofx?
    >=dev-libs/libofx-0.7.0 dev-libs/libofx-0.8.0-r1
quotes?
    dev-perl/Crypt-SSLeay dev-perl/Crypt-SSLeay-0.51
    dev-perl/Finance-Quote dev-perl/Finance-Quote-1.11
    dev-perl/HTML-TableExtract dev-perl/HTML-TableExtract-2.06
hbci?
    net-libs/aqbanking net-libs/aqbanking-1.6.0_beta

Porting

[cookiepus]

I don't know if anyone from the GnuCash dev comunity reads this, but for what it's worth here's my big problem to trying it or any OpenSource finance package.

Even if these things start to be able to hold a candle to MS Money, there are lots of people (like me) who have years and years worth of data in Microsoft or Quicken. Unless we can port the data, we probably won't really give these things a proper try.

I would imagine that this is HARD to do. At least based on the fact that Quicken tried to make a program to make the porting easier but it sucked (it failed to match up transactions properly - ie that the -500 that left my checking account is the same +500 that arrived in my brokerage)

In my opinion, most people who would use these tools, are the kind of people who were using Quicken or MSM before GnuCash came along. To get us to switch, we need to be able to port our data in a simple and robust way.

just a thoight...

Here's The Fix:

[DaftShadow]

Tell them you use Quicken or MS Money :)

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

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

Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement?

[scarolan]

Get yourself a copy of VMWare workstation, or if you can't afford that get VMWare player and have someone make an image file for you. About 3-4 gigs ought to be enough. Install windows xp onto the image file, and you can use Quickbooks in your VMWare virtual machine without having to dual-boot. The only thing you should need dual-booting for these days is games. :)

Bank of America web crap

[DamnStupidElf]

Do you use the credit card or banking features? Credit card features work for me in Firefox, including payments. I do hate their worthless HTTP only front page, but I just sign in with a random username to get to a proper HTTPS page before using my real username. The idiots in customer support couldn't understand a simple MITM attack, and I doubt they would change the site over it anyway...

Too much hassle to install

[scarolan]

I gave it my best shot but this software is way too much of a pain in the arse to get installed. This one of the main reasons people will not switch to Linux, and well, they're right!

I attempted to install Gnucash 2.0 on a computer running CentOS 4.3, and after going through 30 minutes of dependency hell to get all the required programs installed so I could compile Gnucash, I finally got a fatal error stating that g-wrap wasn't working properly.

Maybe I'll try again later if someone creates an RPM installer, because I don't have time to mess around with the C compiler and obscure config files.

I enter things manually--you should too!

[Noksagt]

If you enter your statement in manually, you can then reconcile the downloaded statements. Most of the commercial apps encourage this behavior in their documentation, even if no one actually does it. This way, you can catch bank errors. It does happen. Not very frequently, but it does happen. GnuCash (and presumably the commercial apps) have completion based on past entries, so manual entries don't need to be that slow.

Re:I have used both; I prefer GnuCash over KMyMone

[advocate_one]

I am looking forward to GnuCash v2 appearing in the Ubuntu repositories.

unfortunately, it won't go into Dapper... it'll be in Edgy. For Dapper, you'll have to request the backport team for it to be put in Dapper backports or else some kind soul will package it and make it available on an unsupported repository.

that's how I've got the most recent KMyMoney, someone has packaged it and stuck it on their own repository.