Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GnuCash 5.9

gnucash.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 179 posts

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#131

Post by moe_sc »

jjav wrote: post #56
DaoVeles wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is charming in that it has that mid 90s utility design. It is absolutely frustrating because it has that mid 90s utility design. I don't think I have seen any other utility hasnt really progressed on interface design like GNUcash. Like they built a prototype went "Nailed it!" And then moved onto back end stuff while ignoring all input from users.

That's a big win! There are very few things more frustrating than software that keeps changing the UI just because some designed somewhere wants to feel busy. Make it work well and then stop fiddling with it.

There is a middleground. Of course, change for the sake of change sucks, you just have to relearn for no benefit.

But change for the sake of implementing m New features and having a well thought out redesign after collecting issues over a decade or so makes software more accessible and allows you to streamline workflows where new features just got tacked on over time.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#132

Post by twarge »

huegrkdnjvmx wrote: post #123

How come no one mentioned ERPNext. It's open source, can be self hosted, free and biggest growing software in the market. It also scores high on user recommendations. I switched from GnuCash to ERPNext and it has been a blessing.

Can confirm. It's excellent software, though getting going on your own server is not as smooth as, say, gitlab-ce.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#133

Post by kaliszad »

I wonder does anybody use GnuCash for s.r.o. (LLC/ Ltd.) business in Czechia? How is your experience with it, e.g. do you also do DPH (VAT)?

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#134

Post by afroboy »

huegrkdnjvmx wrote: post #123

How come no one mentioned ERPNext. It's open source, can be self hosted, free and biggest growing software in the market. It also scores high on user recommendations. I switched from GnuCash to ERPNext and it has been a blessing.

ERPNext is whole different project and its accountability functionality aren't even comparable to GnuCash.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#135

Post by VMelnalksnis »

blacklion wrote: post #18

I've tried many personal accounting software and all of them (but old Pcoket Money for PalmOS!) are very unhelpful in filling in expenses. If you need to record whole shop visit as one transaction (like "Food at Lidl") it is tolerable, but as soon as you want to enter each line in your receipt as separate part of split transaction (like, food:milk = 2 euro, food:bread = 1 euro, food:eggs = 3 euro, food:meat:pork = 8…

When I started to track my finances I quickly ran into limitations with just a spreadsheet, and also didn't feel like any of the existing options fit my need. I agree that for most (all?) people this level of detailed tracking is probably too much, but it doesn't take that much time for me.

I ended up making my own app https://github.com/VMelnalksnis/Gnomeshade. I also felt similarly regarding accounts, so I split transactions into two parts - transfers and purchases. That allows to handle multiple currencies, and handle categorization separately from accounts. I haven't looked into suggestions like you mentioned, I went with trying to parse receipts for my most common purchases.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#136

Post by john61 »

INTPenis wrote: post #127

As a freelance consultant from Sweden I looked at GnuCash several times over the past 10+ years but it was always the same issue. It's not tailored for our economy and our revenue services. Here in Sweden if your revenue is below 3 million SEK/year, then you can use "simplified bookkeeping" (rough translation of "förenklat årsbokslut"). In practice it means I could write a very basic program to manage my expenses and…

I am also a solo freelancer with simplified bookkeeping. I experienced that Double-entry bookkeeping is - beyond the initial learning curve - not more effort than simple book keeping. That is because it automatically avoids common errors. GnuCash works fine for me since 20 years. Never looking back to fragile spreadsheets and half-baken Access DB's.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#137

Post by samus »

jrootabega wrote: post #12
samus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GnuCash has a scripting engine. If you have to do a specific correction very often, it might be worth it to implement something. If possible, the CSV should be preprocessed of course. If nothing else works, a Gnucash file is XML. A bit annoying to work with, but quite possible.

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.

Internally, it uses Guile. I'm afraid there might not be a good user interface to edit the Guile source files, but at least Guile is much more pleasant to work with than C and offers way less paper cuts. I think it's mostly used for reports. You might have to create a plugin to expose your own scripts in the UI.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#138

Post by john61 »

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…

sqlite is stable for GnuCash, I moved from xml to sqlite a few years ago. No issues.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#139

Post by jrootabega »

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...

It's one piece in one of the puzzles, but it's not really what I'm looking for.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#140

Post by samus »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #110
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These are examine scripts for a REST API that gives access to internals of GnuCash.
Post reply on HN