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GnuCash 5.9

gnucash.org

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Re: GnuCash 5.9

#101

Post by freddie_mercury »

cromka wrote: post #36
stouset wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually all that useful to you to track each receipt line-item? For a few specific types of purchases, maybe, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you might be taking on needless work that doesn't create value for you anywhere near that level of effort.

I’m with you on that one. Been tracking my personal finances since 2011 and I have yet found a need to go deeper with analysis. Although I can imagine it could be interesting to go extra deep, e.g. to observe changes in my nutritional habits based on my grocery receipts juxtaposed with, say, my bloodwork. But even then it’d be a gimmick as I could not potentially rely on any correlation noticed. I’m sure someone coul…

I agree. I've also been tracking my family's personal finances for about that long.

You have to ask yourself what you're going to do with the data. Don't just collect data for data's sake.

The most granular I've ever needed is things like: "wow, I've spent way too much on hobbies in the past 3 months" or "we've spent way too much eating out this month" or "the kid's sports are getting out of hand". Or even "we can afford to spend a lot more on vacations over the rest of the year".

Those are all very top level categories. I can't imagine a world where I'd ever make a lifestyle change based on how I spend on meat over the past six months.

And if you're not actually making a change then the data is just data hoarding.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#102

Post by 6510 »

RussianCow wrote: post #71
muti wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many levels in between tracking at the "Amazon" level vs the "Meat:Pork" level. For example I currently track all unprepared food shopping as "Groceries", and would break down "Amazon" shopping into categories such as "Electronics" or "Books". Ultimately it comes down to how much effort you want to spend categorising spending, but there are many levels of granularity and orthogonal dimensions to slice again…

Sure, and my Amazon example wasn't very illustrative of the kind of information that could be gleamed from tracking this at a more granular level. A more concrete example is that my wife and I were flirting with the idea of reducing our meat consumption (for non-financial reasons) and wanted to see what the financial implications would be. Another example is to try to accurately price out past trips we went on: some…

You can do a lot with specific and very little with generic entries.

In NL we got the banks to allow exporting [YOUR] data kicking and screaming. Nothing real time sadly but at least it's a thing now.

I would like to force merchants to do the same.

Enforce some protocol that doesn't suck and it should take 0 seconds.

Imagine the things we could build and how many people we could fire.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#103

Post by 127 »

VonGuard wrote: post #95
JaggerFoo wrote: post #78

I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don't use QuickBooks as VC's recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don't need VC money or a CPA. I haven't tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable? I used to be a technical/functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so…

It's great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone's time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non…

The situation seems quite dire.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#104

Post by rtpg »

VonGuard wrote: post #95
JaggerFoo wrote: post #78

I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don't use QuickBooks as VC's recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don't need VC money or a CPA. I haven't tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable? I used to be a technical/functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so…

It's great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone's time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non…

Serious question: is it not possible to export/import into Quickbooks for example? I agree with the principle of letting the accountant choose, just wondering if there's any way at all to "fight back", for lack of a better word.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#105

Post by elric »

VonGuard wrote: post #95
JaggerFoo wrote: post #78

I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don't use QuickBooks as VC's recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don't need VC money or a CPA. I haven't tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable? I used to be a technical/functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so…

It's great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone's time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non…

> Your bank will hate you

Why? Surely all US banks use open, standardized data formats to export financial statements and to execute transactions in bulk? Or are you thinking of another reason?

US banking is a shitshow which is decades European banking, addressing that would benefit everyone.

> Your investors will hate you

Why? Surely your investors are interested in accurate accounting? Can gnucash not generate some kind of report they need? If so, that should be a trivial fix.

> Some places won't audit without Quickbook

That is an impressive shitshow of a situation.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#106

Post by faustlast »

mszcz wrote: post #3

I tried it years ago but finally settled on HLedger. Like GnuCash, I own and control my data, but with HLedger I have an ability to go in and correct or change something (and not in a "accounting-appropriate" way) in bulk just by editing it in Sublime Text. Then again, my use case is pretty basic and not mission critical so YMMV.

I have also used hledger and ledger (specifically the lots feature) for many years. One nice feature of hledger is its csv rules system, which is very flexible. I extended it with simple python scripts to add extra information for registering capital gains. So, end of the day the raw input data is just some csv files with records and the output is financial reports with various levels of detail.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#107

Post by seltzered_ »

JaggerFoo wrote: post #78

I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don't use QuickBooks as VC's recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don't need VC money or a CPA. I haven't tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable? I used to be a technical/functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so…

In case anyone is migrating from QB and wants to help others, the qb-escape quickbooks to gnucash converter could use some help: https://github.com/erikmack/qb-escape/

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#108

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

jjav wrote: post #52
bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you don't have SQLite, how do you open a SQLite database? The only way is you have to re-implement SQLite from scratch. Good luck with that. Now imagine you don't have vim, how do you open an XML file? You can use any of other thousands of text editors out there, or any of tens of libs in tens of different languages. I think your take that sqlite is simpler than a text file is the weird one.

> Suppose you don't have SQLite, how do you open a SQLite database? The only way is you have to re-implement SQLite from scratch. Good luck with that. Or, you know, install SQLite. Although it is so ubiquitous that it is almost certainly installed already. Even on a mac it's there already. Or if you are on some system where it is not, a single package install away.

Yes, I know what to do. Doesn't change the fact it's more complex.

In fact, any database is more complex than a text file.

You sound like the kind of person to push at work for a database when a file would suffice, introducing needless complexity.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#109

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

VonGuard wrote: post #95
JaggerFoo wrote: post #78

I use GnuCash for business accounting and it does what I need. I don't use QuickBooks as VC's recommend in blog posts. QB has some convenient features, but that is not enough for me to pay the price QB is asking. I don't need VC money or a CPA. I haven't tried using GnuCash with Sqlite, but I would like to experiment when I get the time. Is it reliable? I used to be a technical/functional engineer for Oracle EBS, so…

It's great for personal or very small businesses but god help you if you are building a real startup with GNUCash. I am speaking from experience here, GNUCash zealotry is a plague. I honestly wish this project basically did not exist, because the business world despises GNUCash, ONLY cares about QuickBooks, and using anything else is a giant waste of everyone's time. Believe me, I have been fighting this fight in non…

I would like to learn more about this. Why is it that those things won't work with GnuCash?

A lot of other people seem interested, if you have a blog this would be a great post.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#110

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #44
jrootabega wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a link to the docs for the scripting engine? I've seen conflicting information over the years and I'm not sure what the latest really is.

Does this help? https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/stable/bindings/pyth...

The other person said GnuCash has a scripting engine. These are just scripts. Not the same thing.
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