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

[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

[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"

[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"

[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.

Gnomoney?

[dotpavan]

is it called gNOmoney for gnome? just curious :)

/poor grad student couldnt think of anything else

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.

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: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: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: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?

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.

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.

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.