Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
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Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#2I've used GnuCash for years before switching to beancount (https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/ with smart_importer: https://github.com/beancount/smart_importer) and fava (https://github.com/beancount/fava/). Much easier to work on your journals (ledger, trades, prices...) since they are just text files. Really great if you're using the beancount package for Sublime: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Beancount.
More importantly, the importers (for all my banks and financial services) let me import and reconcile all transactions, but also archive all documents (including PDF, text files, etc) in one, well organized directory: each file is saved into a folder that corresponds to my account structure such as Asset:Current:Cash, Liability:Mortgage, Income:Salary, Expenses:Health:Dentist. It's great to rely on fava (example: https://fava.pythonanywhere.com/example-beancount-file/incom...) to check your accounting (with all files listed in the journal by date, with tags and links and other neat features) and still be able to browse documents in your file browser.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#3Hold up. Did Gnucash get better reporting or did he make his own? Last time I used Gnucash, which admittedly was 10 years ago, but for a business, I found reporting and the lack of budgeting lacking. The latter could be solved by envelopes (but I find hacky), but the former only by learning Guile, something I was and am not up to. Alternatives like Money dance have a more complete solution, certainly for personal use, in my view.
I guess I'm asking what happened in the past decade to Gnucash ;) 2014 is the last time I really used it, and reporting had then not really changed.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#4Does GnuCash integrate well with exports from credit-card companies or banks? It seems like the big blocker is the time spent logging transactions.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#5> We don’t care about how much money we’ve spent at Amazon
That's like, your opinion man. While I'm sure that's one perfectly valid approach, I find a lot of value in knowing where my money has gone beyond categories.
To make it more concrete, how much I spend at Amazon my Rewards Visa determines whether the 2% bump in rewards is worth the cost of Prime. (I know - most people find enough value in the videos or not thinking about shipping. But I find that I simply spend more at Amazon when I have Prime, so I avoid having it!)
To counter myself, my own software is probably too granular and I waste time on those little details of where I've spent money. I could stand to simplify a bit.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#6"Simple" is not an adjective I'd associate with GnuCash. Maybe it is if you're coming from a background in accounting or have a penchant for numbers. It's pretty complicated, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who just wanted to keep an eye on their budget. A simple spreadsheet will suffice. Or any number of more user friendly tools.
That being said, GnuCash is a powerful double entry book keeping system which can almost certainly handle all your bookkeeping needs. But simple, it is not.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#7I'd be curious if anyone has used this and also used YNAB (and can compare them).
I'd put YNAB along with 1Password (and probably Fastmail) in the class of best single purpose pieces of software that I pay for.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#8I'd be curious if anyone has used this and also used YNAB (and can compare them). I'd put YNAB along with 1Password (and probably Fastmail) in the class of best single purpose pieces of software that I pay for.
Why 1Password? I've tried it throughout the years, and IMO nothing has beat KeePass.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#9I tracked my finances for a while with GnuCash and found myself in the category he describes here:
> If you’re happy with just knowing that your credit card balance is less than a certain amount each month, that’s great! You don’t need GnuCash.
I'm curious what fraction of people track personal finances versus those who don't. I don't know if I'm in a big majority, small majority, big minority, small minority, or what.
Do you track your personal finances? If so, in how much detail? Maybe it would make an interesting Ask HN.
Re: Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
#10I want to like GnuCash but I just can't. I have found the UI to be confusing. I still use a freeware, abandoned version of Microsoft Money: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=207...
The UI is still excellent. It is the only reason I have Windows installed on a spare computer. Despite never being updated, the principals of personal finance haven't changed that much.