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GnuCash 5.9

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Re: GnuCash 5.9

#71

Post by RussianCow »

muti wrote: post #53
RussianCow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this exercise for a little over a year to understand my expenses in detail. Like the OP, I found it really frustrating to do with any bookkeeping software I tried, to the point where I eventually gave up as I didn't think it was worth the effort. I started writing a web app to make this easier but just didn't have the motivation to finish. With that said, I learned quite a bit as a result of that level of granu…

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 things normally get filtered under other categories, such as clothes or other products purchased specifically for the trip.

This level of granularity probably isn't worth it to most people, but I found it useful as an exercise to do once because it opened my eyes to insights about my expenses I never would have thought about otherwise. And if there were software that made this super easy to do (<1 minute per entry), I might still be doing it.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#72

Post by hippich »

tunesmith wrote: post #49
berkut wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried a lot in the past as well, and after getting annoyed with proprietary OS X software (iBank in particular) back in 2009 or so, and not really liking GNUCash and KDEMoney (at least back in 2009) ended up writing my own open source simple app (native Cocoa, with a more recent Qt port for Linux) that I've been using every since on a daily basis. In terms of the detail, I used to do very detailed breakdowns of…

At some point I really should do a first principles analysis of why I track money... as far as I know, it mostly comes down to: 1. is fraud happening? and 2. Am I saving enough for retirement? Oh, and I guess 3. taxes For fraud, I think it's basically a matter of whether we can recognize each transaction. You don't actually need to download transactions for that; you can just skim your monthly statements. For saving,…

In the early period after moving to the USA, for a few years I was tracking money in and out in great detail. Including splitting checks from stores. And while I did not set explicit budget, I believe it allowed me to keep our finances healthy. And it certainly decreased money-related anxieties, giving me sense of control.

I stopped doing it after a few years, after I felt pretty secure financially. And that certainly coincided with more spending on things that I would otherwise not spend on...

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#73

Post by noveltyaccount »

GnuCash holds a special place in my heart. My first couple years out of college, running a very tight budget on a lean income. Every time I shopped I'd bring my receipt home and enter it diligently on the ledger. Everything reconciled always. It was a ton of work :)

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#74

Post by FredPret »

massysett wrote: post #22
GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #14

I looked carefully at GnuCash before settling on Beancount (or plain-text accounting in general) for personal finance software. The deal breaker for me was the underlying XML or SQLite formats of GnuCash. These are not terribly amenable to scripting, either for ingesting raw data or reporting. Whereas this is basically the point of plain-text tools like Beancount or HLedger. GnuCash feels too much like a walled-garde…

To each their own I guess: my experience is the exact opposite. Plain text looks simple to human eyes but parsing it in a structured way is a nightmare and scripting edits to plain text is a mess. Databases on the other hand are built for this. After years of dissatisfaction with plain text accounting and many hours spent trying to improve it, I now use SQLite and it has been an enormous improvement.

I build my transaction list in Excel and then export that to .beancount with a very simple script. You could do the same with sql except even easier.

That gives me the benefits of Fava and all the other PTA tools as well.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#75

Post by Gigachad »

stouset wrote: post #24
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…

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 feel like it isn't for the vast majority of people. I did a bit of tracking on my spending but it just ends up showing that the vast majority of my spending was on rent and fixed bills which are very easy to track in just a spreadsheet. The amount I'm spending on biscuits and milk week to week doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme.

A lot of banking apps these days will automatically categorize your spending as well which eliminated much of the need to manually enter it in to a different app.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#76

Post by cfraenkel »

dogline wrote: post #68
tunesmith wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point I really should do a first principles analysis of why I track money... as far as I know, it mostly comes down to: 1. is fraud happening? and 2. Am I saving enough for retirement? Oh, and I guess 3. taxes For fraud, I think it's basically a matter of whether we can recognize each transaction. You don't actually need to download transactions for that; you can just skim your monthly statements. For saving,…

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.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#77

Post by yazzku »

bbor wrote: post #60

I know the aesthetic is part of the “simple” appeal, but it’s just inexcusable to not have a responsive (aka “mobile friendly”) site in 2024. It’s also a great example of why I don’t trust hand-rolled guis like this, if I can avoid it: the standards are standard for a reason.

Why is it inexcusable? And what standards?

This is for serious finance, not for swiping yolo stonks on Robin Hood.

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#78

Post by JaggerFoo »

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 I dealt with very complex schemas that interlinked with each other especially in the sub-ledgers.

I've always toyed with the idea of adding Revenue Recognition functionality to GnuCash but am too busy to do so. Perhaps after seeing the schema in Sqlite I can take a shot at it.

Cheers

Re: GnuCash 5.9

#80

Post by BeetleB »

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…

As others have said, you're likely too granular. I just separate into "Groceries", "Supplies", "Clothes", etc.

I couldn't quite understand what you need, but I use KMyMoney (migrated from GnuCash over a decade ago). If you've gone to Walmart and itemized in the past, then the next time you go to Walmart and import your CC statement, it will pick the last Walmart transaction with a similar total charge as your starting point. It's mildly helpful.

And yes, it does do Categories instead of Accounts. The latter, however, is more in line with accounting principles.

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