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GnuCash

gnucash.org

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Re: GnuCash

#91

Post by staindk »

wardedVibe wrote: post #29
Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s a lot of work. I used to manually budget with Google Spreadsheets but eventually threw in the towel and gave into Mint. I still have to go in and manually change certain categories or add tags, but it’s way less work than what I was doing before.

An alternative that isn't as scummy a company as Intuit is https://www.youneedabudget.com/

I'm sure this is less scummy than Intuit Mint but I did not like having to browse around for a good while to find a link to their pricing page - even though it is just at the standard url.tld/pricing[1]. Companies that push their 'free trial' without readily mentioning what their product will cost when the trial runs out annoy me.

$15/month is a lot amount of money in my country.

[1] https://www.youneedabudget.com/pricing/

Re: GnuCash

#92

Post by m-app »

chrsig wrote: post #43
kayson wrote: post #39

Without a way to easily import data directly from my banks/credit cards, using GnuCash (or Firefly III, a great alternative that's also worth checking out) just takes way more time than its worth. (OFX was not as straightforward to obtain or use as one would hope). Mint is so much easier to use - it automatically pulls and categorizes transactions from pretty much any institution imaginable without no user effort nee…

I hated all of the advertising in mint. I recently started using ynab[0], which can also import balances & transactions from banks. It supports oauth and 2fa, which was nice for the reason you listed: I don't want to give my credentials to anyone, even a "trusted" vendor like intuit. It also has a rest api, which I haven't gotten to try yet, but stands out as a very nice to have feature for me. The downside is that y…

I have personally been using Banktivity for some years. It’s a great app with decent feature velocity (not too slow, but not too fast either), has decent support for EU banks now, and syncs really well. You do have to be in the Apple ecosystem to enjoy its benefits though.

Re: GnuCash

#93

Post by staindk »

rushabh wrote: post #49

If you are looking for a modern free desktop accounting platform check out FrappeBooks - https://github.com/frappe/books . Version 1.0 is round the corner.

This looks very neat, thanks for the link.

Seems more targeted towards small businesses/freelancers... wonder if that would make it less ideal for use in a personal finance context.

FWIW I'm happily using a service called 22seven[1] that is backed by a big bank in my country (South Africa). It is super convenient and links to a bunch of different services so you can pull in all your investments etc. to track all at once (of course this means they track you too, but they were doing that before anyhow)... I just don't know for how many years it will stay updated, free, and available for use to people who bank at other banks (such as myself), so I'd like to at least plan for moving to a more open alternative when the time comes.

[1] https://www.22seven.com/

Re: GnuCash

#94

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

m-app wrote: post #92
chrsig wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hated all of the advertising in mint. I recently started using ynab[0], which can also import balances & transactions from banks. It supports oauth and 2fa, which was nice for the reason you listed: I don't want to give my credentials to anyone, even a "trusted" vendor like intuit. It also has a rest api, which I haven't gotten to try yet, but stands out as a very nice to have feature for me. The downside is that y…

I have personally been using Banktivity for some years. It’s a great app with decent feature velocity (not too slow, but not too fast either), has decent support for EU banks now, and syncs really well. You do have to be in the Apple ecosystem to enjoy its benefits though.

I've been using Banktivity for years, but the recent change to a quasi-subscription model leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I understand why they're moving this way, but I'd much rather have $x for the software (with upgrade pricing for major versions) and $y/mo for the features that require their backend to work.

Re: GnuCash

#95

Post by nickjj »

nickjj wrote: post #8

I once wrote about using GnuCash as a freelance solo developer at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-gnucash-as-a-freelancer... . I started using it in 2017 and still use it today. It's still really solid and makes filing quarterly taxes not too painful. In my opinion it's one of the best tools out there if you like your privacy and don't want to link your bank accounts to a third party service.

I didn't include this in my original reply but today is May 1st.

Since GnuCash involves manually entering in transactions it's easy to think that'll take a ton of time.

I just timed myself and it took 5 minutes to input everything for April 2022 into GnuCash. This includes all income and expenses (personal and business). I'm not even using GnuCash's automated feature for recurring payments too, so that 5 minutes includes manually inputting various subscription costs (I don't have a lot). This also includes a bunch of business related things (estimated tax information, a few income streams in their own "GnuCash Accounts" and a few expense streams in their own "GnuCash Accounts"). I do this by opening GnuCash and my bank's dashboard side by side and then running through last month's entries.

Most banks support exporting CSVs and I'm 100% certain I could write a Python script to parse this and auto-import things into GnuCash but since the bank item descriptions for the same transactions change over time I don't want to risk it. The 1 hour per year of manually entering numbers (I copy paste the dollar amounts to reduce human error btw) gives me more confidence than writing that script. I also know to make that script robust enough to consider using it for real in a way that wouldn't require manually checking it would be quite involved. As soon as the script's results require manually checking it for accuracy then you might as well have input things manually without the script.

Re: GnuCash

#96

Post by cricalix »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #75

Does anyone have experience with Skrooge [1], the KDE equivalent of this? [1] https://apps.kde.org/skrooge/

I poked it, and decided I preferred kMyMoney. The latter has some quirks/bugs (some ledger entries lose the payee, but the relational data is still there - haven’t found a repro to report with), but is generally all I need to track something like 14 asset accounts in multiple currencies.

Re: GnuCash

#97

Post by Tijdreiziger »

moistly wrote: post #48
johncs wrote: post #22

For those of you who like the idea of GNUCash but are looking for an easier tool to use (for us developer folks), check out https://plaintextaccounting.com .

Likewise, Beancount. https://beancount.github.io/

The Fava front-end for Beancount is great: https://beancount.github.io/fava/

Re: GnuCash

#99

Post by LoveMortuus »

kayson wrote: post #39

Without a way to easily import data directly from my banks/credit cards, using GnuCash (or Firefly III, a great alternative that's also worth checking out) just takes way more time than its worth. (OFX was not as straightforward to obtain or use as one would hope). Mint is so much easier to use - it automatically pulls and categorizes transactions from pretty much any institution imaginable without no user effort nee…

I've heard many good things about Mint, but my problem with it is that it's US only... Or at least I from EU am unable to use it...

Re: GnuCash

#100

Post by hanklazard »

chrsig wrote: post #43
kayson wrote: post #39

Without a way to easily import data directly from my banks/credit cards, using GnuCash (or Firefly III, a great alternative that's also worth checking out) just takes way more time than its worth. (OFX was not as straightforward to obtain or use as one would hope). Mint is so much easier to use - it automatically pulls and categorizes transactions from pretty much any institution imaginable without no user effort nee…

I hated all of the advertising in mint. I recently started using ynab[0], which can also import balances & transactions from banks. It supports oauth and 2fa, which was nice for the reason you listed: I don't want to give my credentials to anyone, even a "trusted" vendor like intuit. It also has a rest api, which I haven't gotten to try yet, but stands out as a very nice to have feature for me. The downside is that y…

+1 for ynab.

I’ve been using it for 3-4 years now and happily pay for it. It makes tracking our family expenses manageable in a way that I can’t imagine with many other systems. It is especially helpful during times when your expenses suddenly skyrocket (buying a house, wedding, etc). The reports / graphing features are pretty useful too when you’re trying to understand how to shift your spending habits.

It’s essentially a “cash envelope” budgeting system made digital. The idea is to take all of your available cash and distribute it into categories with specific purposes. When you find there is extra money that needs to be distributed, you pay down some debt or maybe start saving for that vacation you’ve been needing. It really helps you get ahead of your spending and to act responsibly with money.

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