What is Reddit's opinion of
GnuCash?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
>I’ve got £5000 left to pay and the bike is worth £3000 at an absolute maximum. I can’t get rid of it otherwise that would put me in much more debt with no form of transport.
You wouldn't be in any more debt. You're £5000 in debt now on the bike, you will be £2000 in debt after selling it.
I recommend getting all your finances, eg credit cards, current accounts, bike loan, etc into a software package like this :-
So that you have proper visibility of it.
As a keen motorcyclist myself I can well imagine what giving up the bike would feel like, but it's time to cut your cloth accordingly.
Once you've done that, it's a case of paying off the highest APR debt first. If you want to go down the route of defaulting on everything io the hope that you'll get interest frozen, Stepchange can help.
Ako već dijeliš daj stavi i download link za tablicu. Sad si samo sliku stavila :P
Ovo tvoje je jednostavno napravljeno ali ako nekog zanima postoji GNU Cash super je alat.
GnuCash, a free open source tool, enables check printing.
https://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml
If she's paying folks that use remote deposit capture (a banking app that uses a photo of a check to deposit it) she won't need magnetic ink/toner, but if she's printing many checks it may be worth asking her bank if they need that.
http://www.sourcetech.com/blog/micr-ink-vs-micr-toner-what-is-micr-ink
Most of my research on this topic was provided by first officer Abagnale, during many, many flights.
If you're looking for accounting tools to keep track of your money, I can recommend the following open-source ones:
- GnuCash (Windows/macOS/Linux)
- My Expenses (Android)
- Ledger (Windows/macOS/Linux/*BSD) - more difficult than the others but cool if you like plaintext
https://www.gnucash.org/ There are.
The reason I use YNAB is that I'm paying for convenience. I don't want to have to continuously export and categorize my bank accounts.
You don't have to use either. You can do it all on a spreadsheet. You can put them in a cloud storage and open them on your phone. You can take out all of your "true expenses" and "just for fun" as cash money and put them into envelopes and spend out of them (a la Doug Ramsey).
I use YNAB because I'm lazy and willing the pay for the convenience. The question the price increase raises is "Is the monetary value of my laziness greater than $50 and less than $84 a year?"
All these are good questions, but they are all really about accounting rather than GnuCash. GnuCash is a tool for double-entry bookkeeping. To use it well, you do need to know the fundamentals of accounting and double-entry bookkeeping.
I suggest you read an introductory book on small-business accounting. Then read the Tutorial and Concepts Guide from GnuCash: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html .
The company is crap, the software is useful. I only use it because I have a history going back 10+ years and it would be a huge pain to transfer to another piece of software. Their sunset policy requires you to purchase a new version every 3 years and their support is shit.
If you're starting off from scratch, I'd recommend looking at other options such as YNAB, GNUCash or Moneydance.
You could close the books every month, but you'd probably be happier using one or more of the Income & Expense reports.
I use hledger. I've tried Mint, YNAB, Everydollar, and a few others. Hledger is part of what's known as plain text accounting r/plaintextaccounting. What I like about it, is it's simple and future proof. There's no vendor lock-in, I control my data, and it's free. If you're interested in a free but GUI based accounting system where you still have control over your data, you may consider looking into GNU Cash.
Want a "genius" way to save money?
Budget. Count all your money, take note of every income and expenditure, and plan every purchase (or pool "safe money to spend"). Plan ahead of time how much money you think you can save every month and put it into savings as soon as you get it.
And get GNUCash or something. It's pretty fantastic.
I went from living paycheck to paycheck to putting $1000 away a month, and it feels fantastic. Didn't spend a dime on software or anything else, and all it really takes is watching what you're doing. It's seriously transformed my life, and I'd recommend it for absolutely everybody. It's a few hours to set up at first and get all your things balanced, but once you're in the swing of it, it's maybe 10 minutes a week every week to keep your budget up to date. The best part is it doesn't even feel like I'm spending less money. It feels like free money.
GnuCash doesn't sell your data (data stays local on your computer), and doesn't cost anything besides time. It may need more effort to customize reports and graphics to your liking than mint, but this is largely a one-time effort. You do have to feed it the data yourself, rather than linking it to your accounts and getting automatic updates.
> https://www.gnucash.org/ - Free, windows, macOS and linux options - no web version or apps.
Ther's an Android version of GnuCash. I've been using it for a couple of years and it does everything I want it to.
I wouldn't go to big banks just to get some spending tracker. I download all my statements as CSV files and import them to GnuCash. A Free and OpenSource Desktop Accounting Software. It doesn't not look colourful, but gets the job done. It can do much more stuffs than just spend tracking.
GnuCash is my absolute favorite (free) program when it comes to basic accounting.
You'll have to input everything yourself, which is bad if you don't find bookkeeping at least semi-enjoyable, but it's great if you need a mechanism to force you to examine what money is coming in and where it's going.
Even if you don't specifically have a budget, you'll definitely recognize trends, and know when to sound the alarm bell and investigate further. (Such as if a utility bill suddenly spikes, or if your grocery/dining amounts continuously creeps up every month.)
This may be over complicated for what you are looking for, but I use Gnucash (https://www.gnucash.org) as my personal finance software. It is free and seems to have a decent community of developers. It is double entry accounting based, so if you are not already familiar with that, you'd have to read through the tutorial/concepts guide. Once you get it set up and start adding data, you can run income statement reports (income vs expenses over a specific period of time) and balance sheet reports (net worth on a specific date).
I use gnuCash and do full double entry accounting of all my expenses. I enter all items going to the end of the next year to give me projections. Have data going back to start of 2018.
Using the charts and reports to really optimize every last penny has been a huge boon to my financial well being. Makes planning for large expenses quite a bit easier.
If you want to do this as a programming exercise that's good, but if you really just need software free-open source software exists for this.
If you want fancier plots or more analysis the software doesn't do all the data is stored in a plain-text tabular format you could grab for furthur processing.
I use GNU cash, but there isn't much in the line of help / customer service. It's free and open source so if you're decent with figuring things out it should be alright.
First, I'm so sorry to hear about your father's passing. I offer my sincere condolences. During this time, you'll have to gather up some information about your family's finances. What I recommend first is jotting down all of your household's assets and liabilities. Then, write down your family's monthly income and expenses. Once everything is accounted for, I suggest inputting everything into a personal finance software. There's a plethora of options - some free, some not - that are suitable for you. "GnuCash" and "See Finance 2" are the ones I personally use.
GnuCash: https://www.gnucash.org/
See Finance 2: https://scimonocesoftware.com/products/see-finance/
Not only will you have greater control over your finances, you'll gain confidence and have peace of mind. Hope this helps and best of luck!
Peace...
Ich hab mir letztens GnuCash geholt. Mit allen Funktionen hab ich mich da noch nicht beschäftigt, benutze das hauptsächlich als Haushaltsbuch. Ist glaube ich eigentlich eine Freeware-Alternative zur Buchhaltung für Kleinunternehmer und genau darauf war ich scharf. Ich wollte kein "normales" Haushaltsbuch, sondern eine private Buchhaltung/Bilanz anlegen.
Entsprechend trockener ist das natürlich gestaltet. Lässt sich vielleicht nicht so schön anschauen wie Mint, aber ist für mich vollkommen ausreichend.
For anyone who does not have access to Excel, or perhaps does not have especially strong Excel skills, GnuCash is Free as in Freedom:
GnuCash is a free open-source accounting software. I've used it for the past 5 years. You can import transaction data from QIF/OFX/HBCI files. It's incredibly flexible and you can create just about any account hierarchy that you can imagine.
I would strongly suggest to use GnuCash https://www.gnucash.org
It's open source, cross platform, not cloud based and has compatible mobile (Android at least) app that you can use for cash expenses on the go.
I've been using this one for years. It has double entry accounts, can display pretty graphs and supports multiple currencies as well I can track my investments there.
I never felt comfortable with 3rd party accessing my bank accounts and my info being sold to someone else.
The learning curve is not that steep, though I have to admit is not that eye-candy as many alternatives.
I use GnuCash.
Pros:
- Open source, Free
- Generate graphs (and tables) to show your expense categories, net worth over time, assets over time, etc.
- Track assets and liabilities across any number of banks (and cash in wallet, etc)
- Track investments
Cons:
- Manual data entry (they do have support for online banking, but I couldn't get it working)
- Looks a bit dated
- Not particularly intuitive (but now that I'm used to it, it's quick and easy)
Ich nutze seit 2015 GnuCash (https://www.gnucash.org/). Ich muss zugeben, dass ich nur einen Bruchteil der Funktionen nutze, die das Programm anbietet.
Mein Ziel war es eine klare Übersicht darüber zu bekommen, wie meine Ausgaben aussehen und ein Gewinn/Verlust Diagramm über mehrere Monate/Jahre zu bekommen. Nachdem ich GnuCash entdeckt habe, musste ich nicht mehr weiter suchen.
Soweit ich weiß, kann GnuCash auch Aktienkurse aus dem Internet abrufen. Habe es bei mir jedoch nicht eingerichtet
It's a reverse purchase. It will be a credit into your credit card with the assigned category of what the refund is for, thus correcting that account for what you unspent.
Update
Here's more information: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/cc-enterpay1.html
This explains exactly how to handle this situation.
I can't tell from this screen shot, but the likely scenario here is that you sold shares and did not account for income or loss.
Let's say you bought some mutual fund shares:
Account Debit Credit Bank 10000 Rs Mutual Fund 10000 Rs (1000 shares at 10 Rs)
Then later you sell your shares at 20 Rs each. The naive way to do this is like so:
Account Debit Credit Bank 20000 Rs Mutual Fund 20000 Rs (1000 shares at 20 Rs)
But now your trial balance will fail, because you have created money out of nowhere, through magic. You only put 10000 Rs into your Mutual Fund, and therefore only 10000 Rs can come out. Extra money needs to come in via an income (or go out via an expense) account.
The "using the ledger only" way to do this would be to do something like this:
Account Debit Credit Bank 20000 Rs Mutual Fund 10000 Rs (1000 shares BOUGHT AT at 10 Rs) Capital Gain 10000 Rs (gain from selling at 20 Rs)
The other thing you can do is use the "View lots" feature to create a realized gain/loss transaction in the Mutual Fund account for you (or you can create that by hand.) This is described in detail on this page: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html
Before I used a plaintext approach I used GnuCash. In its documentation there is a "Tutorial and Concepts Guide". Obviously it mostly focuses on how GnuCash is used in regards to accounting concepts but you could take a look at 2.1 Accounting Concepts and see if it seems appropriate to you.
GnuCash is GNU GPL licensed, cross-platform program. Works offline, can save data in SQLite, XML or PostgreSQL format which can be accessed and updated from multiple systems running macOS, Linux, Windows but NOT at the same time. You can have real life account structure for every type of income or expenses. You can prepare P&L, balance sheet, capital gains, expenses charts and many other reports.
It also has an android app as mentioned by u/hrjet and u/5ol which can be used to enter transactions on the go and then these transactions can be synced/merged with the desktop data file. No iOS app yet.
Plain-text accounting with hledger or Ledger CI is also a way but I've not tried that because GnuCash gives all the required features and helps me keep all my bank, investment and credit card accounts reconciled.
If you're using GnuCash for personal expenses control and is not restricted to more traditional accounting conventions, tax filling, report filling, etc - then no problem in using some heterodox classifications If it suits your needs!
However, in a more traditional accounting structure, this control would be done via Vendors (Liability account). And then you would rely on the Reports menu to pull your payments / expenses by Vendors.
The downside is that it adds additional steps to the booking process and when dealing with personal accounting, usually we like to make it simpler, so there's that.
This is covered in the GnuCash T&CG at https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_capgain.html
Note that recording unrealized gains for your personal books is fine (you can do what you like) but for audited accounts you'll really need to seek tax accountant advice.
Personally I would not reflect the doubled asset price unless I actually sell it... at which point I'll record Income:Capgains to reflect the increased monetary value received.
I use gnucash and load/categorize transactions monthly. Free, open source, based on double entry accounting, stores data in sqlite behind the scenes so I can do any advanced querying myself. Works like a charm.
There is good info on the gnucash site including how to setup automatic recurring payments using templates (if you have a variable rate you will need to update your transaction template when you receive a new schedule of payments). https://lists.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/loans_mortgage1.html and https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-sched-loans.html.
Which report are you referring to?
To me it seem similar to a mortgage but no house or fees. See: Gnucash Guide - Mortgage Loan
You owe your friend money - that is a liability on your books.
Personally I recommend tracking all your bank accounts / credit cards / loans in something like this. https://www.gnucash.org/
That way, nothing comes as a surprise, future payments can be anticipated and worried about weeks / months in advance.
I believe in aircraft circles there is a phrase “stay ahead of the airplane”, personal finance is the same.
https://www.gnucash.org/ ako ovo koristiš lako skužiš kud lova curi. Ali veći je problem zaraditi dodatnu lovu, ne štediti ovu koju dobivaš. A tu nikakvi self-help priručnici ne pomažu, samo dobra pozicija u stranci.
The Currency: drop down list defaults to the currency configured in the Accounts tab under GnuCash Preferences (see Section 10.2.2, “Accounts”). If you wish your accounts to use a different default currency, select one from the list.
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/acct-hierarchy.html
I hope this helps
I found the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide really helpful when I was getting started using the program. It covers the basic accounting you need to know to use GnuCash effectively.
I highly recommend https://www.gnucash.org/.
It's free, open source, totally offline, easy to backup and runs as a native app.
IMO it's one of the best expense tracking tools around, plus it's dead simple to create reports and charts which makes filing taxes really easy for someone who is self employed.
When it comes to categories, you can have sub-categories of categories, so it'll handle drilling down into things as much or little as you want. You can also see the totals for the main parent categories automatically.
Check out GNUCash if you're interested in learning a little about accounting while figuring out where your money is going! (https://www.gnucash.org) It definitely has a learning curve, but I'm more confident about how much I can put where now.
O GnuCash é um programa de contabilidade pessoal e para pequenos negócios. É software livre (e gratuito) sob licencia GNU GPL, e com versões para GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows e Android.
Eu o venho usando desde há uns anos e estou muito contente com ele. O único problema que tive com ele, e que num princípio eu não sabia como funcionava a contabilidade de dupla entrada, mas uma vez superada a minha ignorância todo correu bem.
Ich nutze seit einiger Zeit hibiscus
Pro:
- ich finde es nicht übermäßig kompliziert, doppelte Buchhaltung ist zwar schön, aber als Privatperson brauch ich das nicht
- direkte Anbindung an Banken die HBCI unterstützen ist möglich
- ich kann meine Buchung direkt in der Software anlegen und tätigen (per HBCI)
- es wirkt auf mich robust, zumindest hatte ich in zwei Jahren Nutzung keine Probleme
Contra:
- keine Budgetierungsfunktion, nur die Möglichkeit Buchungen zu taggen (du kannst also nur hinterher auswerten)
- Wertpapiere o.ä. kann man auch nicht verfolgen
Davor habe ich GNUCash und KMyMoney ausprobiert.
Von ersterem habe ich die Krätze bekommen. Es ist definitiv mächtig, hat aber auch den Charme eines 90er-Jahre-Tabellenkalkulationprogrammes. Für mich war das ein No-Go.
KMyMoney sieht wirklich hübsch aus und kann wenn ich mich richtig erinnere auch Budgets. Damals als ich es testete war die Importunterstützung nicht so gut und vor allem konnte ich keine Buchungen erzeugen. Damit fiel das dann nach etwa einem Jahr wieder vom Tisch. Neulich hab ich es nochmal probiert und es scheint jetzt besser zu sein. (Zumindest der Import über HBCI scheint jetzt zuverlässiger zu funktionieren.) Ich denke das ist also auf jeden Fall mal einen Blick wert.
I don't know of any videos offhand but I can see if I had any 3rd-party tutorials bookmarked (though I can be bad at bookmarking sometimes!).
Just to double-check though, have you already gone through the tutorial /u/beisenhauer linked? For myself, I found the chapter "The Basics" really useful in my understanding of all the terms and concepts. I started with the section "Accounting Concepts" and just clicked "Next" all the way through to the last section, "Putting It All Together", which walks through exactly how to set up your accounts, with screenshots. This explained the basic concepts, how GnuCash applies them, and how to work GnuCash.
The rest of Part 1: "Getting Started" talks in more depth about types of accounts and how money moves between them, and the rest of the tutorial talks about how to apply it to real-life scenarios.
I would really recommend this tutorial. If you're getting stuck somewhere along the way, share, and we can probably explain what it's saying in more detail!
It's back!
Looks like they offer the docs for download in case you don't want to be dependent on the site.
You can also use the Wayback Machine in a pinch: Chapter 1, saved for posterity. Let's hope it stays up though.
I use GnuCash - https://www.gnucash.org/
A bit complex to start with, but allows me to track income, expenditure, debt, property values, etc.
A separate account is fine. But there's no need as long as you can keep on top of things.
As for tax - get an accountant :-)
GNUCash - but I have a business education and experience with double-entry accounting. It makes sense to me because that's how I learned accounting and budgeting. It may or may not be right for other people.
Misschien GnuCash? Is in mijn ervaring redelijk simpel in gebruik, maar kan als je dat wilt behoorlijk geavanceerd zijn. Ik gebruik de bijbehorende mobiele app ook wel eens, op vakantie bijvoorbeeld om alle uitgaven daar bij te kunnen houden en na afloop zo te kunnen importeren naar mijn overzicht. Andere voordelen: lokaal (dus mijn gelddata gaat niet naar een derde partij), ondersteund verschillende platformen (Linux ook) en voor mijn doeleinde goede documentatie. Misschien is het allemaal wat meer werk dan diensten van derden, maar dat vind ik zelf geen ramp. Geeft me wat meer het idee van hoe het zit met de geldstromen.
Please review section 9.7.1.1 of the documentation concerning manually calculated gains/losses.
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html
As outlined in the documentation: At the time of sale, there would be two split lines for the stock asset account (eg. Asset: Stock:Ticker). The first, with a share quantity and price would be the shares actually sold. The second, with no shares or share price provided (only the debit/credit amount) is the manually-calculated capital gain/loss.
That is precisely what I have done in my sale entry. My manually-entered gain ($96 USD entered into split row 6 without any share quantity or price) aught to be recognized as denoting a manually calculated capital gain; and not be mangled as it is currently.
As for the "Trading Accounts" helpful for certain multi-currency / multi-asset scenarios. Please see the following primer:
https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html
In the past, the purchase and sale transactions, as outlined in my original post, were working as intended. For many years. Now I'm having this issue.
Ando nesse dilema há alguns anos.
Google Sheets serviu durante 7 anos.
Nunca encontrei algo poderoso e customizável, pensei até em fazer uma app para isto mas... decidi voltar a olhar para a oferta.
Comecei em inícios de 2020 a usar uma série de ferramentas, todas em simultâneo.
Por agora resta o GnuCash para tudo e o Portefolio Performance apenas para savings e investimentos.
Haverá melhor? Talvez... Acrescento que apenas trato destas coisas no desktop.
Thank you.
I attempted to use YNAB many years ago, but it’s too expensive to justify the cost now. I did download Gnu Cash as an alternative but I got a bit overwhelmed with it so I had to walk away.
You could look at GnuCash as a free and open source personal accounting solution. It's not advanced enough to run simulations and it does require some legwork on your end, but it's reasonable.
Inspired by other similar post, I have been wanting to submit one myself.
I make all my payments with Card or online and very rarely with cash. I then import the bank statements directly into GnuCash application. This gives me a good overview of all my expenses.
For generating the diagram I used https://sankeymatic.com
I used Quicken for many years but painfully converted to GnuCash when Quicken changed to a subscription model. GnuCash is a free-to-use open-source double-entry bookkeeping program that doesn't have the bells-and-whistles of Quicken but does everything I need. Its relative simplicity and flexibility allow me to set up accounts and enter transactions the way it makes the most sense to me.
I have made in-kind transfers of a mutual fund from one account to another (conversion to a Roth IRA), which would seem to be a similar situation and haven't had any problems. From your description, it sounds like you are using a positive value for Total Shares in the account for which you are making a "sale", which is not correct: the value must be negative.
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html
Are you charging interest on these loans? If so, having one account per loan is not unreasonable, although I'd probably name them by date the loan began rather than amount (since the amount you are owed will change as they pay you back). If you're not charging interest, one option is using the business/accounts receivable features are for. If you've never worked with A/R before, it can be a bit confusing, so read https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/bus_ar.html carefully if you decide to use it.
Agreed.
Cecilthelionpuppet, I'd also recommend this earlier section of the GC tutorial. Once I read that double-entry bookkeeping and the 5 account types clicked for me and now I know exactly how to classify any account life throws at me. https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics-accounting1.html
I use the credit card as a liability and input all the subscriptions or other charges as expenses to the credit card. Then move money from asset:checking to liability:credit card when I pay it off at the end of the month.
Here’s the tutorial page for credit cards.
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_cc.html
First, you'll need to set up your stock as a security in GnuCash https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Stocks/add_stock
Then create a Stock account for the stock using that stock as security.
Then follow the tutorial to add a buy transaction from Opening Balances account: https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide
I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish. It seems easier to use splits:
- Income:Salary
- Assets:Checking
- Assets:Savings
- Assets:401(k)
- Expenses:Insurance:Medical Insurance
In your example as stated, I would use a single income account if for no other reason than that the definition of "pre-tax" gets complicated quickly (i.e. income vs. payroll taxes).
I personally don't use budgets, I automatically put aside the money for savings/investing at the beginning of the month, and then manage the rest.
I'm more concerned with tracking income/expenses and investment performance, that's why double entry works for me. Periodically I look at the plots it produces to see if there are places I can trim the fat.
Double-entry is also very useful if I have to contact HMRC. I track all the taxes / NI I've paid, and I can quickly query how much I paid and on which tax year. I've had to check this while on the phone, which is really quick to do, since double-entry accounting software is designed to do this.
Gnucash does have budgeting features (maybe beancount as well), if you'd like to use them. But I don't have experience with them: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_budgets.html
Ayy, I can relate to you. YNAB is a good app but I agree, too expensive. You know they started out as some sort of Excel or Google sheet template. You can use Excel for managing money as well.
OR
You should give GNUCash a try, it's free but has a learning curve.
In my opinion one of the best switch I made.
You might look into plaintext accounting:
https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/jk7n2p/invoicing_and_expense_tracking/
Gnucash has invoicing features:
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/pt/gnucash-guide/bus-ar-invoices1.html
GnuCash, with companion Android app, has served me well for more than 9 years now. Taking your gas bill as an instance, in Gnucash, you'd just look at the Gas expense account to see how much you spent. If you would like it to do the math and show a pretty graph over time, run a report of Expenses over time, and select the expense accounts you care about, from a single (say, Gas) account to all the accounts in your budget.
I work for a small non profit as well. This software has worked brilliantly. Does everything Quick Books does but better. Slight learning curve but nothing you can’t handle. Oh, and it’s 100% free and open source.
Discussion of the account structure for securities: https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide, chapter 9.
The short version: create an account of type “stock”, and in the account creation setup sheet where it asks for currency, choose “New Security”, and enter the details of the stock or mutual fund.
check out https://www.gnucash.org/
for importing you just need to export from your bank/credit company as a CSV / quicken format and it can usually handle it. It's not easy to learn but very powerful
If you're nit-picky like I am and need stuff "just so" try GnuCash: https://www.gnucash.org/. It's a true double entry bookkeeping application. Fair warning, you may need to learn or know some things about accounting. I'm an engineer and it took me a good while to figure out the details of accounting but I love the accuracy.
I know exactly my net worth at any given point in time and I can tell what my W2 will say weeks before I get it, it's super easy for me to balance my checkbook and I can see ALL my accounts at the same time. I mean, all: Assets, Expenses, Equity, Liabilities, and Income.
I used Excel for several years to track my basic checking account balance and credit cards. When I started trying to track a couple of small business accounts I needed more dimensions than Excel could handle. I ditched Excel and I tried using Intuit Quickbooks and found it was FAR superior but I then realized that I hate Intuit. You know, their software is crippleware? They make it work for a year or two then force you (through the software) to buy it again.
I said "F-that", Intuit can suck "the big one". Anyway, I learned about GnuCash shortly after trying quickbooks and found that it has nearly the same feature set and I like the interface much better. Best of all, it's open source (free) so you know it's going to get better and better with time.
If you're just looking for a number that's close without doing much work, one of those other suggestions (mint, YNAB, etc) will probably get you there. If you want to get every last cent and detail accuracy, I'm not sure it gets better than GnuCash. :)
>"Equity is the amount funded by the owners or shareholders of a company for the initial start-up and continuous operation of a business," quoth google.
That's a rather confusing entry point to the idea, sadly.
OP: The GNUCash accounting equation is basically Assets - Liabilities = Income - Expenses + Equity. Equity is just a source of assets and liabilities that is neither income nor expense, so that your books remain in balance. AFAICT you won't transact with it outside of initial balances; I have mine hidden by default just to avoid the confusion.
Free isn't really an option for a budgeting products. If using Plaid, it can cost upwards of $5 to set up a new user, then $1.50/month to get their transactions. Then there's website hosting, developer payroll, tech support, etc.
If your bank supports transaction downloads, you can use a free tool like GnuCash:
https://www.gnucash.org/ It's not automated, but you can set up recurring transactions.
I'm running Gnucash on Windows 10 and doing online price retrieval. It's been a while since I installed Finance::Quote and it was tricky, but I don't remember getting this error. The message sounds like it could be related to file/folder permissions. I think gnc-fq-update needs admin permissions, but I would have expected you to be warned either by Windows or the perl script if you didn't run it that way. When I installed Finance::Quote, I followed the instructions in Section 9.6.3.1 (https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=4&lang=C&doc=guide) with success. That might provide further hints for you.
Used to use Microsoft Money yonks ago, after I got a free version on a CD with a computer I bought.
Currently use GnuCash.
I get paid to make budgets and manage expenses at work, so why would I not do the same for my own money?
I literally use small business accounting software. GnuCash is free, open source software.
I have reports created to track my year over year spending and pacing. I don’t go as far to create a line item budget, but I do my books each month, and my goal is to always spend no more than I did the year prior.
Stocks-appen fra Apple er god. Ellers er kan du bruger ticker-koder i både Microsoft Excel (Office 365 data types) eller i Apple Numbers på Mac. Personligt foretrækker jeg at bruge GNU Cash, som også kan importere direkte fra min Nordea netbank. Aktiekurserne opdateres automatisk fra Alphavantage API. Da det er et egentligt regnskabsprogram, så har jeg også styr på handelsomkostninger, skat og udbytter. Det er lidt stejlt, men der er god hjælp online da det er fri software.
https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=4&lang=C&doc=help
https://www.gnucash.org/index.phtml?lang=it_IT
Guida esplicativa: https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=4&lang=it_IT&doc=guide
Open source, ben fatto, privato e sicuro.
Ci sono anche app per aggiornare i dati in mobilità.
I use gnucash. It's not fully automatic, although there are ways to import from various sources.
I briefly tried some of the other ways like Emma, but found them frustrating and couldn't quite get them how I wanted them.
Never used AceMoney before, but if you want an offline software GnuCash is the way to go. It is not the prettiest software, and may require more manual entry, and will require a very basic understanding of double entry accounting (or willingness to learn), and there is no phone app... but damn, it’s fantastic and it’s free!!!
I first stumbled upon it looking for an offline option that doesn’t require bank connections. I store my data files in Dropbox so it’s always backed up and accessible from multiple computers. You could also store them locally if you don’t want anything in the cloud.
There is a learning curve, but it is also flexible. It allows you to set up your account how you want, allowing you to generate reports that meet your needs. Once you have your accounts set up how you want, you should be able to easily import your current data into GnuCash.
There are options for automatically getting stock prices, to update your portfolios. There are also options that will allow you to connect it to your back account, but I didn’t want that anyways, so I import my transactions with a CSV.
Have you gone through the section on interest-bearing accounts?
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest_int1.html
That also has a simple example with lots of explanation and screenshots. Is it helpful?
When selling, you need to be sure to put in a negative value for the number units/shares you are selling. Simple example:
| Description | Transfer | Shares | Price | Buy | Sell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sell Mutual Fund | Brokerage:Cash | -10 | $10.00 | $100.00 |
You could study existing open source accounting software such as GNUCash
or MoneyManagerEx. You might even be able to add your features to an existing program - which would be faster that writing one from scratch.
Use whatever language you are most comfortable with. Don't get too attached to what you create, though, because most first attempts at anything don't succeed, but teach us how to improve ourselves and our solutions.
Also there are probably options that would require little to no programming, either paid or free (maybe GNUCash?) that would be better for most use cases.
So, in summary, if you want to help your family a built solution is usually a better choice, if you want to learn build it up, language doesn't matter much and don't grow attached so you can rebuild from scratch with lessons learned if needed.
Hi /u/WeekendJPOW, you're not shadowbanned, but 11 of your most recent 27 comments/submissions were removed (either automatically or by human moderators).
Comments:
fp99bi8 in investing on 02 May 20 (1pts):
> I use GnuCash, its free as in free beer and open source.
> https://www.gnucash.org/download.phtml
fp8k5xt in wallstreetbets on 02 May 20 (1pts):
> weekend dow
fp5je5c in wallstreetbets on 01 May 20 (1pts):
> NASDAQ 100
fp58pzo in wallstreetbets on 01 May 20 (1pts):
> me
fp4q5dd in wallstreetbets on 01 May 20 (1pts):
> Test
fp1uexp in singapore on 30 Apr 20 (1pts):
> old people anytime can die just let them enjoy their last few days
fp1qaak in wallstreetbets on 30 Apr 20 (1pts):
> WeBull's desktop app is great but they are gynese
fp1c5tx in wallstreetbets on 30 Apr 20 (1pts):
> Tanker chads?
foynhi9 in wallstreetbets on 29 Apr 20 (1pts):
> They are already puts on themselves if they aren't from target schools
foxlfvk in wallstreetbets on 29 Apr 20 (1pts):
> Wirecard looking cheap
Submissions:
ga7kor in investing on 29 Apr 20 (2pts):
> Do you still buy bonds when high yield savings accounts give better return and they are not necessarily negatively correlated with equities anymore?
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GnuCash: https://www.gnucash.org/
It's an open-source double-entry accounting program, but it can be configured to track stocks/ETF prices as well.
Not the most user-friendly piece of software, but covers all my needs and allows me to make custom reports and charts, so I'm happy with it.
I use GNUCash, which is similar to Quicken or other accounting software. I setup recurring bills for however long I need to, and have them created anywhere from two weeks to thirty five days ahead depending on what the bill is.
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I realize this may not be exactly what you're looking for. But, my thought is that if I have it automatically deduct from the register, it can forecast a month ahead and see what my expenses will be. In terms of variable bills, I budget high and then adjust that single entry once the actual payment is made
> It depends mainly on the format that your bank exports to. Unless your bank exports to QIF, your best option is usually CSV. > > The guide for CSV in the wiki should be detailed enough: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/trans-import.html > > If your bank does not export CSV or QIF, but the export, as an example, Excel, you will need to afterwards convert the Excel file to CSV (that should be quite straight-forward).
I see where you are going. But, don't you find this inconvenient? I am looking at something like OFXDirectConnect where your bank account is linked to GNUCash and it uses the banking API to update GNUCash automatically. I wonder if you have tried the HBCI / FinTS version.
It depends mainly on the format that your bank exports to. Unless your bank exports to QIF, your best option is usually CSV.
The guide for CSV in the wiki should be detailed enough: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/trans-import.html
If your bank does not export CSV or QIF, but the export, as an example, Excel, you will need to afterwards convert the Excel file to CSV (that should be quite straight-forward).
But if we focus on the investment side, it will depend mainly on if your bank exports the right information (prices, number of shares etc). If you have them, in principle you can do it with the CSV transaction import wizard. Otherwise, you may need to first import the transaction and the correct value of number of shares, price, etc. (I believe that GnuCash will assume 1 to 1 (e.g. 100€ -> 100 Shares).
Of course, feel free to relay this question to /r/GnuCash
I have a debit card which is backed by BTC to make purchases with, so it gets a little complicated, but I use GnuCash to track my buys and sells (like a stock or commodity. It does a good job of calculating my gains/losses using FIFO. It is a bit of a hassle inputting all of the small transactions and corresponding exchange rates into the database, but not too hard.
Oh, ignore me,
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest-stockprice1.html
​
9.6.4 said to add extra column showing the Total GBP (or US i guess) and that shows the total value of the asset.
Niiiice, time to setup the cron job to update it regularly.
​
Appreciate everyones help.
> I had tried LibreOffice DB a bit in the past. It had some issue where it was trying to use some Java library that wasn't wired up right, even after I made sure all the dependencies were installed.
yeah, bugs are always possible. However, I did some searching and what you want is definitely doable. I couldn't find the exact template for you, but you should be able to create a form to input data and image for each item. Here is a contact database template that is similar in functionality: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates/contact-database
> Also, I'm not an accountant, but saying I spend $50/month on a liability when I haven't actually spent $50 sounds really strange. Unless it's transferring into a sub-account and then later spending that out.
I am not an accountant either but I do know a bit. I think gnucash requires some basic accounting knowledge:
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/basics-accounting1.html
The idea is that the things that will cost you in the future should be valued now. The opposite of liability is an asset, some of which are cash and your bank balance. So at the end of the month in which you don't pay your insurance premium, your liabilities would grow by $50 and your assets would also grow by $50 while your net worth would be unchanged.
If you're starting to find spreadsheets limited (due to their nature, rather than - say - lack of knowledge about how you could use them,) you may be better off using software designed for the purpose.
I personally use https://www.gnucash.org/ (Previously used MS Money, but don't use Windows much these days.)
Gnucash is free and open-source software (FOSS). That is, anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software. This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright licensing and the source code is usually hidden from the users.
You can check out GnuCash or MoneyMangerEX if you're looking for an out of the box, ready to go solution. I will note, that these are definitely not the prettiest pieces of software, so don't expect flashy graphics and stunning effects. They're purely utility.
If you're into self hosting for full control Firefly III is tough to beat.
There's also nothing wrong with a simple spreadsheet or good old fashioned pen and paper.
I've used Intuit Quicken, Mint, Yodlee, even Microsoft Money and they all have limitations and problems.
I now download all my financial info using a bunch of programs I wrote.
I might look into GnuCash since it's open source.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it user friendly but GnuCash is free and has great documentation.
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide.pdf
My wife and I use the android app to sync with the full app on my pc so we aren't ever left with a big pile of receipts.
Hope that helps!
Use some sort of financial software so that you can easily track all your accounts, and aren't caught out by future payments.
These seem to be the best open source options at the moment.
What works for you is different than what works for me and there's nothing wrong with that. I just like to educate others and allow them to make their own decisions based on their model and ideals. There's no one size fits all solution.
My usual recommendation is GnuCash as it's open source and fully featured. It's definitely not the prettiest looking GUI but it's not absolutely garish either. It can be used for basic budgeting, generate graphs and reports, or even used for small/medium businesses. Was meant to be a Quickbooks alternatives, I believe.
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I would recommend using some accounting software, then you place all the future payments into the account for a month or 2, and you can see when/if you're going to have problems.
I've not used it, but this looks good...
https://www.moneymanagerex.org/
And GNUCash will certainly do the job, but is a little peculiar to use..
Molto bello!
Posso consigliarti di dare un'occhiata anche a GnuCash? Io ho fatto il passaggio da Excel questo gennaio e non mi trovo troppo male, devo approfondire un po' il feeling.