Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4 [LWN.net]

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 19, 2010 0:22 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]

This is offtopic: but I have to say Intuit does actually listen to input. I made a comment one year about the 401k system in quicken being a steaming pile and they fixed it dramatically, covering every feature I reported missing in the next release (this was many years ago, probably a decade or so). If you have issues with Intuit software have you bothered reporting the issue to them?

If you are referring to the DRM and EULA mistake they made a few years ago, they did fix it the next year and actually expanded the EULA to give the users more rights (not commenting on EULA's, proprietary software or windows in general).

Unfortunately (and I don't think I'm alone here) I feel trapped in Quicken as it's the only software I've found with the features I need, I enjoy the news reports reviews on GnuCash though, I hope it gets the features I need eventually and I can dump Quicken and import the 15+ years of information I have in Quicken into a non-proprietary format.

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 19, 2010 9:16 UTC (Wed) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

At least you have the option of Quicken.

Here in the UK, Intuit stopped producing Quicken back in 2005. I got a letter in the post, a CD with a final update, and that was my lot. Not great, considering I'd bought a new version each year since 1998.

Since then I've done my accounts on the back of envelopes and in quick-and-dirty spreadsheet models, and have just recently become frustrated enough with that to want to evaluate the Linux options.

But I must admit I'm still a bit bitter about it. I can't quite forgive Quicken for just giving up on the UK market.

It was, I admit, a major factor in my migration to Linux from Windows. I'd tired of Windows for numerous reasons, and looked at both Mac and Linux, and realised that a decent Linux distribution was less likely to have products/projects disappear due to its open-source nature.

Lie fallow, yes. But if there's demand, someone may pick the project back up, even if it requires forking it.

The worst of it for me is that I really liked Quicken. It was a nice balance of features and ease of use. It doesn't yet have a decent equivalent on Linux that I've found. And if I could run it under Wine or VMware, I would. But in this country, I don't even have the option.

So funnily enough, I'm still a bit annoyed with Intuit...

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 19, 2010 17:01 UTC (Wed) by jsatchell (guest, #6236) [Link]

I'm fairly sure that at least some of the Sage products can run under Linux, although they seem to keep very quite about this. Maybe one of their offerings will help.

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 23, 2010 14:59 UTC (Sun) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

Thanks.

After my Quicken experience, I'm not eager to lock up my data in a proprietary program again.

But it's always good to have the option should I find I need an accountant. Most accountants are much more familiar with Sage, so if I start my own business it's good to know I'll be OK with wine. :-)

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 20, 2010 21:06 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize they ended support in the UK. What did the end of support do to the software? I'm curious because you could still buy it, just can't get support from Intuit. I'm curious what features of the software went missing that UK users needed that us Yanks don't, I'm guessing the pound isn't a usable currency but not sure on that because Yanks could have money in pounds in UK banks. So, if you have used it since they ended support what features did you lose?

This is actually a fairly good example of why FOSS is better than proprietary.

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 23, 2010 15:07 UTC (Sun) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

Online features - bank integration and so forth - suffered. And Quicken always used to come in a couple of different versions, one of which had a tax preparation program. That needs yearly updating, and the cessation of development made that useless.

The pound is still a usable currency, AFAIK. But the US version isn't localised properly, either. In the UK, we perform checks and cash cheques, and we quite like it that way. And we all checking accounts current accounts, for example.

And we couldn't buy it after a short while either. There seems to have been a 2009 version on Amazon.co.uk, but I'm not sure if that's just a direct US import. Curiously, all versions of Quicken seem to be out of stock currently regardless of version, with the exception of a few second-hand copies of Quicken 2000. ;-)

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 19, 2010 2:01 UTC (Wed) by NicDumZ (subscriber, #65935) [Link]

Yes, your guess is partly true. There are actually a bunch of Free softwares that have accounting features, but if you want to be generic and have an implementation that can apply to any use case, you have to think in very broad terms, and I think that it leads us to ERP class of software.

There are at the moment at least two decent free ERP softwares, and I work for one of them. For the sake of neutrality I wont quote names, but it's not hard to find.

The major issue is however the configuration, that takes a lot of time. I think that maybe the original author or the commenter do not have the complexity of such softwares in mind: when you have to code an elegant, generic accounting software, that can do advanced imports, transactions, with concurrent accesses, and whatever features you need, you just end up with a huge set of generic blocks, and gluing them together to fit the end-user needs takes days of consulting work.

Of course, if you need an US-only accounting program aimed at small businesses, that must be doable, with very little end-user configuration. But if you think of something that can suit all customers, all over the world, in (not all, but ) most of the business ranges, you either have to choose to have very limited features, or very long configuration time requiring various coding and scripting.

Knowing that I have had to work for the other complex option, on the "configurator" and on the developer side, I am very excited about GnuCash: it is extremely easy-to-use, and has limited but quite powerful features. It is perfect for my personal accounting, and I would not like this to change to a more advanced/complex interface.
Now that OpenOffice is decently usable, my relatives used to use the "but Microsoft Money is not available on Linux" point to argue why they would not switch to Linux. I am happy that today I can point them to GnuCash, which is easy to set-up and to use. I would be disappointed to see this software evolve into a business-oriented software, with all the complexity that it necessarily induce.

Looking forward to GnuCash 2.4

Posted May 19, 2010 8:58 UTC (Wed) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

Likewise, a decent not-aimed-at-accounting personal finance product like Quicken would be welcome too.

Finance programs on Linux can be divided into two broad groups:
* Accounting-based ones, which insist on accounts for everything and veer towards heavy categorisation, tax details, reconciliation and double-entry
* Personal finance ones, which are more about budgeting and ease of use

The accounting-style ones are more mature, but less pleasant to use. There's a new crop of personal finance ones following in their wake, but they don't seem mature enough to me.

This observation comes from trying numerous accounts packages recently on the Ubuntu 10.04 beta, so all the packages were fairly up to date. Everything was either overkill for my simple needs, or unstable/too immature.

(For example, GnuCash and Grisbi were overkill. KMyMoney crashed repeatedly when importing data from my bank and wxBanker looks great, but is very basic at the moment.)

Time will fix this, I'm sure. But I suspect it will fix the personal finance side sooner than it fixes the accounting side, I'm afraid. Itch scratching, and all that...

HomeBank

Posted May 23, 2010 12:05 UTC (Sun) by Velmont (subscriber, #46433) [Link]

I use HomeBank, it's quite nice. I've written a few scripts for it so that it works almost automatically with my bank.

I find it easy to use, but the reporting isn't really good; it can't print out information. So I'll guess I have to make a python HomeBank-XML-to-OpenOffice-converter so I can use OO.org to do printouts of reports.

HomeBank

Posted May 23, 2010 15:13 UTC (Sun) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

Homebank wasn't too bad. I just didn't mention it because I didn't want the comment to turn into a "quick review of all accounting software"... ;-)

I felt much as you do - Homebank seemed fine except for the reporting side.

To be honest, having looked at all the options, I'm now thinking of writing my own little system in Python. Nothing fancy, just enough to scratch my own itch. Plus, if I do it right, I can access my accounts any way I choose to write a client for - be it web, console (via SSH) or gtk/qt desktop client.

Don't expect me to open-source it though. Like much of what I write, it'd be too embarrassing to show the source in public!