by moasda on 9/30/24, 5:26 PM with 173 comments
by JaggerFoo on 10/1/24, 1:00 AM
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
by blacklion on 9/30/24, 8:37 PM
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 euro, etc) you need to type everything again and again without good suggestions, based on your previous history. Such suggestions could be very sophisticated, taking counterpart and other parameters and suggest "food:bread" and price by letters "br" if counterpart is "Lidl" or "clothing:bra" and other price if counterpart is "Victoria Secret", for example, but, alas, nothing I've tried, support this.
Really, old (PalmOS 3.0!) Pocket Money was a breeze, and everything else, Desktop or Mobile, is much, much worse in this aspect.
Also, I think, that when you have all you transactions vrty detailed, it is better to have nested "categories" and not nested "accounts". It is almost cosmetic difference, but it is strange for me to have "cache" and "food:meat:pork" as same type of objects. I don't transfer money to "food:meat:pork", I spend money for it. I transfer money to the shop, not to the product! As far as I know, professional accounting systems doesn't have account for each asset of the firm, like different accounts for monitors, laptops, computers and (computer) mices.
Maybe, I don't find it yet? Any suggestions?
by misnome on 9/30/24, 8:46 PM
But GNUCash existed when I first got a job decades ago.
GNUCash exists today.
I don't think any other package really matches the endurance.
by mszcz on 9/30/24, 7:15 PM
by blackle on 10/1/24, 8:20 AM
It's good software! I eventually wrote code that dynamically links with the libgnucash library so I can auto-generate monthly invoices for the member's dues.
by GlibMonkeyDeath on 9/30/24, 8:24 PM
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-garden compared to plain-text tools.
The plain-text format requires more work at first, but after you get the hang of it (and provided you have some background in scripting software) it is awesome.
by noveltyaccount on 10/1/24, 12:27 AM
by INTPenis on 10/1/24, 9:01 AM
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 income and just have it generate all the necessary numbers that I then enter manually into our revenue service's online app every year.
by rnadomvirlabe on 9/30/24, 9:20 PM
by dmwilcox on 9/30/24, 8:42 PM
by bdjsiqoocwk on 9/30/24, 7:09 PM
I have a few (comparatively minor) complaints about GnuCash, but they're around UI. Things like: it would be nice to assign all matching (eg Regen) transactions to a selected account, and stuff like that.
But overall, having something that is A) simple and B) I control fully, beats everything else.
The principles of free software show, I guess.
by skwee357 on 10/1/24, 1:03 PM
Everything was recorded correctly, but reports would show wrong numbers.
After migrating from GnuCash to beancount, I realized that some transactions where recorded with invalid currency conversion rates.
As someone who relocated recently, manage money in at least 3 currencies, and have an online business, I can’t handle it. I need everything to be explicit in order to avoid mistakes.
by warabe on 10/1/24, 2:46 AM
by PeterZaitsev on 9/30/24, 11:59 PM
I think it would benefit from some changes in the next major version though - the GL of account is good but requires a lot of work for example to track vendors. If I want to track where I'm buying my groceries I have to create separate account for those, rather than being able to optionally specify vendor.
by garupoliq on 9/30/24, 8:36 PM
by _benj on 9/30/24, 8:44 PM
I’m not sure what it was but I couldn’t get it working for me. Tried HomeBank afterwards and was blown away by how accessible it is in comparison.
I might give another try at GnuCash to track something like business/project expenses but it was rather hard to use for my personal finances.
by lloydatkinson on 9/30/24, 8:53 PM
by Okx on 9/30/24, 7:15 PM
by huegrkdnjvmx on 10/1/24, 8:40 AM
by _blk on 10/4/24, 5:50 PM
by kaliszad on 10/1/24, 10:14 AM
by bbor on 9/30/24, 11:35 PM
by Seattle3503 on 9/30/24, 11:23 PM
I've been looking for a less data intrusive budgeting app. The other I saw was Firefly III.
by jldugger on 9/30/24, 11:44 PM
by rkaid on 10/1/24, 7:19 AM
I use scheduled transactions for all my fixed expenses, and Gnucash enters them 100 days in advance. I manually enter my income, usually also 3 months in advance. My income is very predictable, but can of course vary a little. I then plan out how much to transfer on payday to my debit card account, my bills account, my savings account, etc. I enter any "random" bills (variable or unexpected expenses) as they show up. This allows me to see, in Gnucash, quite exactly how much money I'll have available at any point in time the next 2-3 months.
I keep every receipt for things I buy during the week, and every Sunday I have a routine. It's become a bit overkill, but I enjoy it. First I scan the receipts with a scanner app on my phone. Then I sync the scans to my computer using Syncthing. Then I enter each transaction and link it to the scanned receipt. My hierarchy of expense accounts are reasonably detailed, I'd say.
I've gone so far as to program useful shortcuts into a numpad, to make this process even easier. So for example, instead of Ctrl-A or whatever is the default for linking a transaction to a file in Gnucash, I have one convenient button on the numpad. Other buttons select different transaction views. For a while I even had a setup where I could RDP to a docker container with Gnucash, so I could use it while at the office. For this I'd also use Syncthing to sync my gnucash data between my desktop and the container.
Is it overkill to scan every grocery receipt and whatnot? Yes. Do I need all this historical data? No, not really. But it's somewhat interesting to scroll 3 years back and look at some random dates to see what I bought and what prices were like. It's also useful for tax purposes. And I'm a bit of a data hoarder ;) (I should add that I don't always keep the receipt - I often pay with Google pay and then if it's just food or coffee or something simple like that I just keep the notification until I can enter the transaction in Gnucash.)
The biggest thing this setup gives me is great peace of mind. I've struggled with anxiety and depression, and I've lived through times where I've had credit card debt and very little income, so money has been a big stressor at times. Now I have a reasonably well paid job in IT and no debt except student loan, so I could probably live well without Gnucash, but it's still a source of mental well-being, even comfort. I enjoy my weekly routine and micro-managing my money. Sometimes I just open Gnucash to look at how well I'm doing financially (not wealthy by any means, but my net worth is at least in the positive). Gnucash was also great for planning how to pay off my credit cards.
by 9cb14c1ec0 on 9/30/24, 10:06 PM