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GnuCash 5.9

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Re: GnuCash 5.9

#151

Post by cromka »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #101
cromka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 af…

Yup. Although even if you’re not making any changes based on your habits, it’s still helpful to track money spent to know where your money actually is, especially the liabilities. Except you don’t even need to track expenses at all, outside of the generic “Expenses” category.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#152

Post by jrootabega »

samus wrote: post #137
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.

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.

Yeah, at some point I got the impression that I could use Guile to extend it, but then couldn't find any way to do it as an end user. Not sure if I was just wrong, or out of date.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#153

Post by INTPenis »

john61 wrote: post #136
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.

How is the GnuCash DB any different from using an Access DB?

For simplified bookkeeping GnuCash, and most generalized bookkeeping programs, is overkill.

I accomplish the same thing with 250 lines of Python, and the result is that I get exactly the numbers I need to enter into Skatteverkets e-tjänst, and nothing else. And each transaction is one yaml file, and stored off-site with git.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#154

Post by john61 »

INTPenis wrote: post #153
john61 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is the GnuCash DB any different from using an Access DB? For simplified bookkeeping GnuCash, and most generalized bookkeeping programs, is overkill. I accomplish the same thing with 250 lines of Python, and the result is that I get exactly the numbers I need to enter into Skatteverkets e-tjänst, and nothing else. And each transaction is one yaml file, and stored off-site with git.

Double entry bookkeeping is the gold standard in finance bookkeeping since the romans. It is not overkill, because once mastered it is very easy to handle especially with a program that implements the logic like GnuCash. The problem for novices is usually to understand the logic: https://gnucash-docs-rst.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/C/ch...

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#155

Post by consteval »

cfraenkel wrote: post #76
dogline wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your grandparents tracked money because they were also verifying the math, which could have done by hand. Now, we assume the math is right, and we're checking for fraud. That, and we like to watch a number go up.

Oh come on... there's lots of reasons. Understanding where the money goes. How much are you spending on dining out each month? How much does your car cost when you add it all up at the end of the year? It's easy to fool ourselves when it goes out $10 - $20 at a time.

This is true but unless you have a motivation, i.e. somewhere else that money could rather be going that's somewhat immediate, you're kind of wasting your time (IMO).

If you want a vacation and couldn't afford it or you wanted some cool home gadget and couldn't afford it then sure, delve into your finances. But if that money you're saving is just going to sit around then what's the point? If you already have a rainy day and a 401K or equivalent, then you're good. Ultimately money is worthless if you don't use it.

The reason I say this is because tracking money is not free. It's a mental burden. Do you really want that to be your business? How much mental energy are you willing to give it?

Because it sounds simple until you really want a coffee after work, but it turns out you don't have the budget and then you sit and cry in your car because that hypothetical coffee was the one thing tying you to reality.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#156

Post by consteval »

aidenn0 wrote: post #27
Andrex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing to come to mind is if Gnome's your DE and you prefer more-native-feeling apps. Vice-versa if you're using KDE instead.

Getting OT here, but I've tended to prefer Gnome apps with a KDE desktop. The latest UI pessimizations in Gnome may having me switch completely away from Gnome, with the "You must click on sub menus to open them" being the final straw.

I concur, KDE applications tend to be more traditional. I don't mean necessarily in style, I think they can look quite good, but rather in form. Personally, I think Desktop software UX peaked maybe 10 years ago so to me this is a good thing. Assuming a typical experience of mouse, full-size keyboard, and monitor. Things do change UX wise when you switch to a laptop IMO.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#157

Post by consteval »

jjav wrote: post #54
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is SQLite DB simpler than a human readable markup language?!

If you intend to read it by human eyes, you're right. That seems like a rare edge case though. If you want to interact with the data outside of the software, the common case is you're writing some script for that, in which case being able to use SQL is much easier.

I agree, I think this is what people miss when it comes to machine processing versus human processing.

Human processing benefits from pretty colors and organization. Machine processing is almost the exact opposite, it benefits from data definition and strong guarantees around invariants.

A graph is often the best way for a human to process something. But it's awful for a computer - computers can't see! At least not easily.

A nice in-between is something like XML. But if it's primarily gonna be interacted with by a computer, might as well make it a database.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#158

Post by consteval »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #108
jjav wrote: post #52

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. 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.

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

Simplicity versus complexity is not a linear scale like you describe.

Complex tools can lead to simpler implementations. This is the key people are missing.

For example, C++ is much more complex than C. Okay, now build a generic sequential data structure. It's a quarter the LOC in C++ versus C, and it's a much simpler implementation. Because C lacks the tools, so we have to use macros or maybe void pointers.

In this case, imagine you need to aggregate lots of data from different places, eliminate some of it, collapse some of it etc. For a reporting type thing.

Well, SQLite is more complex than XML. But doing this in SQL is much less complex, because XML lacks the tools. SQL is built for this, so you can do it in a quarter the amount of code, or maybe even less.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#159

Post by consteval »

bbor wrote: post #83
yazzku wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it inexcusable? And what standards? This is for serious finance, not for swiping yolo stonks on Robin Hood.

Well, the applicable standard in this case would be “Web Development” writ large. Responsiveness is a start, but consistency is one of the most important design principles, and this site seems to disrespect user expectations about layout, menus, and interactable elements, from a glance. Responsiveness in particular is “inexcusable” to miss because it’s so easy that it’s practically boilerplate these days, and the lac…

To be fair it's a desktop-only application. Even if you did read it on mobile you'd have to move to a full fat computer to download it, anyway. Yeah conversions and stuff matter.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#160

Post by rad_gruchalski »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #141
samus wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh ok. I will have a look, thank you! Does it allow setting values, or just reading?

It seems to be read / write https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/stable/bindings/pyth....
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