Managing Money With Linux Apps

lisah writes, "As part of a series of special reports this week, Linux.com is reviewing several ways to manage your money using Linux apps. First up is a review of GnuCash 2.0, a personal and small business accounting package. Though it has a bit of a learning curve, the reviewer says the application is 'stable and robust' and an upgrade from previous versions is well worth it for the program's new features and improved online banking support." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Comments

GnuCash 2.0

[TypoNAM]

It has been working out great from the start for me and I find it far more easier to use than commercial software packages like Quicken, Microsoft Money, and QuickBooks. No annoying or lame navigation, straight to the point which what I like about it best, not to mention the free part which helps too.

I have been using GnuCash 2.0 since it came out quite a few months ago and enjoying it since for all my personal finance book keeping needs. :)

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[afidel]

One of those things is not like the others, Quickbooks is a double entry accounting package meant for SMB's to run their books on, not for personal finance (unless your finances are so complex as to rival a midsized company).

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[kfg]

I learned everything I need to know about managing my money in kindergarten:

I go down to the vault and dive into it.

KFG

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[vga_init]

I hear you.

For me personally, Gnucash is a killer app. Now, I realize I'm using the term loosely because it's not really going to kill other platforms, but for me it did. =) I do like to tinker with operating systems, and sometimes for one reason or another I run Windows on my machine. Having had experience with Gnucash, I was hoping that, like most popular Linux apps, there would be a Windows port I could use. Was there? No. I would die without this program, though, so I switched (not a problem since I'm a Linux hobbyist, but interesting none the less). I find it amusing that I switched away from Windows because of better software support on another platform because usually it's the other way around. ;p

Now that Gnucash is written in GTK2, however, I expect a Windows port? I remember reading that no port was made because the GTK1 code was too hard to port.

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[Serpent Mage]

GnuCash has double entry ledger accounting. It is just defaulting to single entry since only accountants and businesses typically need double entry.

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[Haeleth]

Now that Gnucash is written in GTK2, however, I expect a Windows port?

There are some free-as-in-RMS alternatives that run fine in Windows.

I started out running GnuCash on Linux, but now that I spend most of my time in Windows I've switched to jGnash, a Java-based package that's based on the same principles. It's not as robust or feature-complete as GnuCash, but it does what I need, and it's far less of a pain than fiddling with X11.

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[kris_lang]

Any tips or pointers to beginners about double entry ledgers?
I'm starting a small business and am trying to figure these things out.

How about for proposing a budget for a grant application, perhaps?

SBIR?

Re:GnuCash 2.0

[Procyon101]

The GnuCash help system has a pretty comprehensive yet easy to follow tutorial on it. I learned quite a bit from there.

Finally

[chowdy]

A way to manage all the money i saved by using open source software

GnuCash isn't "Linux"

[SuperBanana]

Managing Money With Linux Apps

That should read "Managing money with a free open source application", since Gnucash runs on Linux, and numerous Unixes- including MacOS X (albeit in a very-poorly-integrated fashion.)

One thing that always bugged me about Gnucash- you have to pull OFX (or whatever) files by hand. Quicken could automatically fetch the latest data from my bank with a button click...

Also, are there any LiveCDs that contain up-to-date versions of Gnucash and associated libraries? On an intel mac, it's almost easier to run a virtual machine just for Gnucash, than spend hours upon hours of compiling with Fink...

Re:GnuCash isn't "Linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wiki

At present, OFXDirectConnect can be used to download transaction data from credit card and bank accounts. Investment transactions should still be imported from downloaded OFX files (I use ofx.py) via GnuCash's File>Import>Import OFX/QFX... menu option.

Sounds like GnuCash 2 has solved most of the problem.

Re:GnuCash isn't "Linux"

[wuzzeb]

I have used gnucash for over a year now, and as soon as I upgraded to 2.0 I set up automatic banking. It works great, I can download transactions and check balances for my credit cards (discover, citi bank, capital one), and my bank (charles schwab bank). I force gnucash to ask me for a password, but otherwise it is a button click.

The only issue is none of the banks really advertise the URL you need to use and type into gnucash. For example, discover card uses https://ofx.discovercard.com/, but good luck finding that on their site anywhere.

And citi bank you need to use
https://secureofx2.bankhost.com/citi/cgi-forte/ofx _rt?servicename=ofx_rt&pagename=ofx%22

I found those by searching on google.

But in any case, gnucash is a great program, in most cases better than the commercial alternatives.

Re:GnuCash isn't "Linux"

[Fez]

One thing that always bugged me about Gnucash- you have to pull OFX (or whatever) files by hand. Quicken could automatically fetch the latest data from my bank with a button click...

This will likely be a non-issue in the future, because even Quicken won't be able to do it. There was a story a couple days ago that banks are dropping the automated connections because of increased security regulations.

Re:GnuCash isn't "Linux"

[Yggdrasil42]

This must me an American thing, because the Dutch banks have never supported automatic downloading into 3rd party apps (as far as i know). Most banks support exporting of account data in Quicken or CSV format, but that's not always very useful, and it's still a manual process. I usually just type data in manually, which is also a good way to force me to check the input.

When using MS Money it always annoyed me (just a little) to see that feature and not be able to use it, but I understand the security aspect of that decision. Allowing an app to pull data of this level of sensitivity with just a password from a bank's website is just not secure enough. In my opinion, that kind of data should be protected by at least Two-factor Authentication. My bank demands the combination of a pincode (something you know), a bankcard (something you have) and a hardware token (also something you have), which is considered strong authentication.

Sweet!

[anaesthetica]

I can't wait to open source my wallet. I hereby release my finances, including stocks and bonds, under the GPL to the Slashdot community.

Gnomoney?

[dotpavan]

is it called gNOmoney for gnome? just curious :)

/poor grad student couldnt think of anything else

GNUcash? GNOsupport.

[uvajed_ekil]

GNUcash is undoubtedly a fine application, and one I wish more people would consider using. Though it does most everything quite well, very few banks and accountants support it fully. Some (many) of us are stuck using Quickbooks because it has become so standard. To its credit, Quickbooks works well for most of us, but it would be nice to have a viable free (or even more reasonably-priced) alternative.

Re:GNUcash? GNOsupport.

[einhverfr]

Join the LedgerSMB project. We started out as an SQL-Ledger fork but are growing by leaps and bounds. 1.2 is scheduled for beta release next Tuesday and includes quite a number of changes. We already have far better Windows support than SQL-Ledger and have corrected a great number of serious security issues. And we have a number of features that allow for one to create vertically tailored solutions from the project without compomising upgradability.

We are committed to helping LedgerSMB take on Quickbooks in their home market too. And rely only on open source components. In all fairness, we are probably a few months away from having features like payroll support. But at least with our software, you can't outgrow it. And we have an awesome team of core developers including two members of the PostgreSQL core community.

Ask and ye shall receive.

[Anonymous Coward]

NUT diet software
http://www.lafn.org/~av832/

ShrinkingMan
http://debain.org/software/shrinkingman/

Diet Monger Ass Kicker
http://freshmeat.net/projects/dmak/

Pydance
http://icculus.org/pyddr/
(dance dance revolution for Linux with dance pad support)

No you have no excuse to be a fat Linux looser. Soon you will be a regular Linux looser like everybody else, except of course you'd have very fast feet. :-)

Moneydance rocks my stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I had kept a win98 virtual environment amount for years all due to one program -- Quicken. I grew to hate Intuit with a passion and finally left them for moneydance. It's a great program without any of the annoying issues that have plagued Intuit products lately. It runs on Mac, Win, and Linux. It handles multiple currencies (one of my main requirements), supposedly does online banking and cheque printing (we don't do either of those where I live), does the usual stocks, etc. Nice clean interface. One of the main things I like (that Quicken used to do back in the DOS days when it was an okay program) is show you a nice overview on your main page -- balance on every account, plus NET WORTH. That's the best motivation in the world to have fiscal good health -- having your net worth hit you every single time you open the program. It's all customizable of course.

Give it a whirl, it's worth the modest price. Platform independance for the win.

Re:Moneydance rocks my stocks

[Yort]

The appeal of MoneyDance is: it works, and it is relatively simple.

There are many people, at least in my sphere of influence, who only really need a computer for websurfing and email. Those two things can easily be done with Linux, and as long as I set up the plugins for them so that Flash and RealPlayer and all that work, they don't even really realize that they're not running what everyone else is.

However, for many people this falls apart when you get to money managing. Most people know about Quicken, and would like to be able to track finances that way. These people just want some simple application - they really don't care about double-entry accounting, they just care that the interface is clean and easy to understand. Moneydance delivers. It also lets them download bank and credit card statements, and it even has a lot of the bells and whistles that a more advanced financial person uses.

I initially looked at both Moneydance and GnuCash, and at that point Moneydance was far more user-friendly, both from a setup/maintenance and usability standpoint. Plus, I've been able to keep the same program as I had to move my primary computer from Linux to Windows to Mac.

So if you're a hard-core Linux/Open-Source geek, then sure, Moneydance doesn't hold a lot of sway over GnuCash. But if you're a more casual user who just wants to know how much money they've got to spend on Guitar Hero II, then Moneydance rocks.

Re:Moneydance rocks my stocks

[cbciv]

One of the main things I like (that Quicken used to do back in the DOS days when it was an okay program) is show you a nice overview on your main page -- balance on every account, plus NET WORTH.

FYI, it still does this, at least as of version 2005 (Deluxe).

Re:Moneydance rocks my stocks

[Yort]

This is true if you are on Windows. If you are not on Windows, or are someone (like me) for whom your OS is not always consistent, then Quicken/Money are not really options (if you can figure out how to run Quicken/Money on Linux/Mac, then you can figure out GnuCash). Moneydance is more for Mac users as well as casual Linux users - for example, there are some people for whom I am able to either replace or put together a small, cheap Linux machine that they can surf the web and read email from, and that's all they need... but sometimes they want to be able to write a document (OpenOffice/Abiword) or track their finances (Moneydance). For Mac users, I've heard that Quicken for Mac is horrible, in which case Moneydance would be the clear winner.

Re:Moneydance rocks my stocks

[swillden]

Why use Moneydance over free as in beer Money or Quicken?

1. Money doesn't run on anything but Windows
2. Quicken doesn't run well on anything but Windows (the Mac version is woefully lacking in features)
3. I use OS X and Linux.

In addition, Moneydance is a great little company as well as a nice app. Support is excellent and the developers are friendly and helpful. At this point, Gnucash may be a reasonable alternative, but when I moved away from Quicken three years ago, Gnucash wasn't really an option. At this point, neither Moneydance nor Gnucash give me any reason to change.

Another good alternative ...

[BlackPignouf]

would be Grisbi:
It's easy to learn, use & configure.
More info there:
http://www.grisbi.org/index.en.html (en)
http://www.grisbi.org/index.es.html (es)
http://www.grisbi.org/index.fr.html (fr)

And already included in Debian/Ubuntu repos.

Re:keyboard shortcut for switching tabs in 2.0?

[dreamlax]

Have you tried Ctrl+Tab? I don't use GnuCash but Ctrl+Tab is very common for tab-switching in any application. Ctrl+Shift+Tab goes the other way usually, too.

MoneyDance is better

[BigRedFed]

Pure java application. Stable. Runs on Linux, Windows, OSX, UNIX, etc. http://www.moneydance.com./ Built to replace Quicken. Integrates with your bank, payment service like paytrust and credit cards. Not as refined as Quicken and a couple of things I like better about quicken, but it's only $30.00. And if you continuously upgrade to the beta versions, you don't have to pay an upgrade fee from what I've seen. If you run Lin/Freespire it's available in CNR.

Re:MoneyDance is better

[Copperhead]

I second the MoneyDance recommendation. I used GnuCash for a while (pre 2.0), and it was really too complicated for what I needed. MoneyDance does what I need it to do, plus I can have a client on my linux box at home and my windows laptop on the road.

Re:How about moneydance?

[say]

I've used Moneydance, and it's far too simplistic. When you attempt to do anything more than balancing a check book (like doing a mortgage or keeping track of taxes) the GUI gets really obscure. GnuCash does also perform better on large data.

Re:OO Calc or Excel

[Xrikcus]

Someone else has already setup the spreadsheet and shortcuts for you :)

Really it's just a spreadsheet dedicated to a particular task that it does well. You're paying someone a little to do that setup for you.

Re:Nice front but what about the backend?

[bobintetley]

I'd really like to use MySQL as a backend storage...

Bit of a plug, but I have a project called Fruity Banking. It's python/cgi and has a web interface that looks and works like GNUcash. It can use sqlite, postgresql or mysql for the backend and it's endlessly scriptable (samples are included for scripting direct debits, etc.). I wrote it for the same reasons as you stated; because I wanted to access my accounts from anywhere and have the backend scriptable and generally muckable about with.

On the downside, it only really does account management (because that was all I needed) and simple account reports. It doesn't integrate with banking services (because I don't need it), but it would be very easy to script and extend to add these facilities.

Syncing with Palm

[The MESMERIC]

Would be nice if it was possible to sync the Palm's Expense directly into GnuCash (or similar).
Better still, would be nice if it was possible to sync instead some better app like Mobile Money.

Re:Does it support budgetting?

[cortana]

Budgetting was added in 2.0. Since it's a new feature it probably isn't quite as advanced as some would like... yet. But, as always, development is ongoing!

Spreadsheet

[AVryhof]

I use a spreadsheet sort of laid out like a check register with a few extra columns to reconcile with.

I use it on Excel under Crossover, but I assume it can be done with KSpread, OO.o, Gnumeric, Google spreadsheet, or even VisiCalc... as long as it supports some simple formulas.

  |     A       |   B   |    C   |        D        |  E   |     F           |   G
0 | Description | Debit | Credit | Running Balance | Bank | Outstanding     | Paid Out
1 | Deposit     |       |   300  |       =(C1)     |      |                 |
2 | GAS         |    30 |        | =(D1 - B2 + C2) |      | =if(E2="X",0,B2)| =if(E2="X",B2,0)

So now you just paste your formulas down the columns .. then all you have to do is fill in your transactions.

When they show up on your bank statement, or in your electronic banking, put an X in column E, and the Outstanding value moves to Column G.

Who needs specialty accounting software when one of the oldest apps around can do it just fine?

MANAGING MONEY != CHECKBOOK REGISTER

[dwayner79]

I would like to budget, reconcile each month, many months, or yearly against the budget. I want to track spending, forecast spending. I would also like to track interest payments, automatically get yearly tax return values, and plan out my retirement.

I guess someone COULD do that with an excel sheet, but it would be a crapload of work, and foolish considering other software packages exist that do it already.

Intuit has an online version (I do not remember it as IE only). So that may be another option for the linux users who don't wear tin hats.

Re:OO Calc or Excel

[Noksagt]

Money-management software differs from spreadsheets in many respects:

• No row/column limits (meant to be a database that has been customized for finance)
• Automatic management of currency and commodities (GnuCash even lets you download conversions as a cronjob)
• All accounts are already "linked" (updating one updates others)
• Auto or manual import of standard financial data
• Customized reporting/graphing
• More intelligent auto-completion of transactions
• Check printing
• Wizards/Druids for budgeting, mortgages, etc.

While you can get some of this in spreadsheets (with varying amounts of work), some of these are so impractical as to be infeasible in spreadsheets.

FAQ on F/OSS Finace

[Noksagt]

The FW Finance faq: Free and Open Source Finance Applications at fatwallet lists other F/OSS applications, as well as a lot of useful links. The favorite of the FAQ is GnuCash & there are links on how to run it in Windows and OS X.

Learning curve?

[siwelwerd]

How do they argue that Gnucash has a "bit of a learning curve"? I picked it up a couple months ago, and in maybe 15 minutes had figured it out. It truly is a wonderful app for personal finances.

Re:Online data downloading.

[ubuwalker31]

Bank of America allows you to download .qif files for the past 9 months....

Re:Online data downloading.

[Noksagt]

But in the U.S., I think only Quicken and MS Money will do it.

You've heard wrong. Gnucash and QBankManager support OFX direct connect throgh AqBanking (I'd imagine that MoneyDance and KMyMoney probably support it too by now too, but don't use them). The only trick, as another poster pointed out, was finding the URL for your banking institution. MS Money and Intuit Quicken have large databases of such things (and even have agreements with banks to not disclose the URL to any other third parties or get kickbacks from some banks for referrals). This connection information has been extracted from the commercial software and/or "discovered" for many institutions & you can find it on the web. So direct connect will work, but the setup may take a bit of work.

Misunderstanding.

[camperdave]

Gnucash does NOT default to single entry. That would require a major redesign of the entire package, as well as being a monumentally stupid step to take. It would basically eliminate Gnucash from being taken the least bit seriously in the accounting world.

Double Entry basically means that when an amount is entered in one account, a corresponding amount is entered in another account. In the manual, paper based accounting days, it literally meant that the bookkeeper make two entries in the ledger - one in the source account, and one in the destination account. As you can imagine, this would be a major source of errors. In all computer based double entry accounting systems the bookkeeper will only enter the number once, and will choose the source and destination accounts. The computer would take care of making the actual entries in both accounts - eliminating one source of errors.

So, do not be confused. Gnucash is doing double entry accounting: always has been, always will be.

Perhaps you're thinking of a single line leger (where all the transaction information is on one line) vs. a multi line leger (where the transaction information is spread across multiple lines). That is merely a style choice.

Business features

[ggeens]

I have used GNUCash for a long time to manage my personal finances. For this purpose, it is quite good. I love the 2.0 interface.

I don't care about the lack of on line banking support (my bank doesn't offer this service anyway). For the rest, I only have a few issues:

• Year closing. Creating a new empty file every year is annoying. (Should be fixed in the next release.)
• Loan entry is rather difficult. (Considering that I need to redo this every year, this is an issue.)

When it comes to small business use, GNUCash does not provide enough. It does allow you to manage invoices and clients, but a company needs some specific things for legal and fiscal reports.

Budget on MacOSX-

[amulder]

Couldn't get into GnuCash.
Didn't like Quicken.
I looked at moneydance 2-3 years ago, and it also was lacking.

None of these support the "envelope" method of budgeting, which IMHO, is the best way to manage your home finances.

Fortunately I found "Budget" from http://www.snowmintcs.com/ which works great on MacOSX.

Re:Very interesting.

[Noksagt]

I wonder whether the URL could be sniffed in some way, by monitoring what Quicken does. I assume that the connection itself is encrypted, but I'm not sure if that includes encrypting the URL as the file is requested or not...

I'd imagine you'd be able to sniff some of these URLs. If not, I'd be a bit concerned--it could mean that Intuit has a machine acting as an intermediary & could therefore have access to my data. But getting this out of money is easy.

I was under the impression that the Quicken protocol was proprietary from end to end, and that it was something more complicated than an HTTP download of a QIF file.

OFX, which is currently used, is actually documented and agreed on by MS, Intuit, and CheckFree.

Do the GNUCash people maintain their own database of bank's OFX URLs?

Not formally, so far as I know. Some have been announced to the list & their are user sites that have this information. I don't know whether there would be an issue disclosing these (depending on how they were discovered). Jeremy's site is the best way to get them that I know of.