11 ms·

GnuCash – Open-source personal and small-business accounting software

331 points by neya 4y ago

corbet 4y ago
For the curious, I took a fairly detailed look at GnuCash for business accounting a while back: https://lwn.net/Articles/731126/ https://lwn.net/Articles/731126/
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
I work on a web/app-based personal finance tool, and just to clarify a few things regarding data aggregators (third parties that aggregate your financial data into personal finance apps like Plaid, MX, Finicity, etc). There tends to be two main ways these aggregators interface with banks. The first is via screen-scraping or reverse-engineering internal APIs. The second is via direct integration (ie Oauth-type connections). Understandably, a lot of the HN-crew is skeptical of "handing over" their credentials to third parties, but for Oauth integrations, it's worth noting that: - you're redirected to the bank to enter your credentials (ie the third party never gets a chance to see them) - often, you get to choose which permissions to allow (ie read vs write, read only, which accounts) - the banks have signed off on the integration So even if you decide you're not comfortable with the screen-scrapes / internal APIs because you don't trust the aggregators, worth considering the direct ones.
- mthoms 4y ago
  Is there a list of which banks support these "Oauth-type connections" somewhere?
txr 4y ago
I tried GnuCash a long time ago but was not happy how convoluted the UI was, maybe have to give it another try. After that I switched to MoneyMoney [1] which is just awesome to work with. It is mostly focused on the german market and directly supports import from most major german banks, sadly MacOS only. [1] https://moneymoney-app.com/ https://moneymoney-app.com/
klaussilveira 4y ago
Anyone knows how I can get OFX out of Apple Card via an API?
- gen220 4y ago
  At least they offer OFX at all now... in the first few months, IIRC, they only supported PDF statements or something similarly difficult to work with. I'd love for "shortcuts" to include a statement hook. "Every month, copy most recent apple card statement, email to xyz@domain.tld". But the "wallet" section of the shortcuts app is basically empty. Until then, I email myself apple card statements at the end of the month, takes maybe 5 minutes but it involves a lot of tapping.
kup0 4y ago
I use Gnucash essentially as a manual-entry glorified digital checkbook/register. I used to do it on paper for the longest time- it's how I was taught and my bank took a long time to modernize. I don't know that I still need to continue this habit digitally, but there's still something useful/comforting about keeping my own transaction list to constantly check against my bank's... Gnucash is adequate for doing this for me.
matham 4y ago
Is there somewhere a good list of spending categories to use with it? Every now and then I run into a transaction that I can't quite fit into any category and have to squeeze it into something (un)related.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  I think this will depend on your own preferences and use case. The initial default expense accounts in GnuCash are a reasonable starting point, but of course you can add, delete or amend accounts according to your preferences.
hevsuit 4y ago
I've been using Gnucash since 2020 to manage personal expenses and income, and it has made the world of a difference. In particular, I find the income statement feature very powerful when I'm doing an end-of-year review of my spending. In terms of time commitment, about 20 mins every two weeks seems to be enough for logging all my transactions into Gnucash - I have 3 bank accounts, 1 investment account and 1 retirement account.
- emacsen 4y ago
  Have you tried any of the plain text accounting packages? I'm really interested in lived experience of using Gnucash vs, say Beancount or HLedger.
  - hevsuit 4y ago
    No unfortunately, I've only used Gnucash. One of the main reasons I stick with Gnucash is the monolithic file format. If one day I need an accountant to review my finances, or if I suffer an audit by the tax man, I can send on the single .gnucash file with all my data. While Gnucash's UI is not the greatest, an accountant/auditor can easily install Gnucash and generate reports with only basic knowledge. Another nice feature is the file linkage features, where I can directly link my payslip pdf files to the gnucash entries. I have folder structure on my GDrive with all of my stored bills, payslips etc. If required, I can zip up my Gnucash file and corresponding documents folder and the reviewer can instantly access important financial documentation from within the Gnucash application. Gnucash uses relative file paths for sourcing linked documents - all a reviewer has to do is specify the head directory and all the linked documents will open as usual. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think this is a feature in the text-only approaches.
    - emacsen 4y ago
      > Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think this is a feature in the text-only approaches. I unless I'm missing something, all those features are available to me now. > If one day I need an accountant to review my finances, or if I suffer an audit by the tax man, I can send on the single .gnucash file with all my data. I can do the same with a git repo, or a zipfile. > an accountant/auditor can easily install Gnucash and generate reports with only basic knowledge. I'm not sure I understand the advantage here. A professional could install beancount too, and run the same scripts I do. My real life experience is they don't actually want this level of depth. > Another nice feature is the file linkage features, where I can directly link my payslip pdf files to the gnucash entries. I have folder structure on my GDrive with all of my stored bills, payslips etc. You can link to external documents in Beancount and possibly the others and it's kept in the same archival system: https://beancount.github.io/docs/beancount_language_syntax.html#documents https://beancount.github.io/docs/beancount_language_syntax.h... It looks like I'm not missing out?
patopop007 4y ago
I was a faithful Gnucash user but ever since I switched to an ARM based Mac I haven’t been able to run it natively. Has anyone been able to build it for ARM or know of an available universal binary?
- looperhacks 4y ago
  The normal Mac download works just fine for me
  - iruoy 4y ago
    That's because it's running on rosetta2. Works fine though. This isn't a resource intensive app
lolc 4y ago
I use Gnucash to do the accounting of two small communities. It does the basics and some reporting for me. I don't need more. It's been around for a while and that gives me trust that it will stay maintained and I won't have to re-learn another app.
koheripbal 4y ago
Is the MySQL backend option fully functional now? I need to be able to code sql reports for my small business, or it's a no-go for us.
- memling 4y ago
  > Is the MySQL backend option fully functional now? Out of curiosity, was there anything about it that wasn't working? When I got married I moved away from GNUCash because the interface was too intimidating...but I had been using the MySQL backend for a few years by then? and I don't recall any issues with it.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  I have no issues with it, though the website still has this warning: > Note this feature is considered experimental. It works for most of the common use cases but some corner cases have been reported to result in data loss. The GnuCash developers fix each issue as it gets reported. There is however no full test coverage so there may still be scenarios left that result in data loss.
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Anyone serious about their business will see this warning as a deal-breaker. Running a business is hard enough - I cannot imagine debugging my accounting tool.
    - NoboruWataya 4y ago
      I should clarify that the warning applies specifically to the SQL storage format. I'm not aware of any data loss issues using the default XML format. Agree that as a business you would not want to take any chances. For my personal use I use SQL because that means I can use the piecash[1] library to interact with my financial data without relying on the official Python bindings (which aren't great to use). [1] https://pypi.org/project/piecash/ https://pypi.org/project/piecash/
- dorfsmay 4y ago
lettergram 4y ago
Having used gnucash, I find a regular Google sheet with a Google form for entry better. The main reason is anyone in my household whose spending can then add transactions. Further and more importantly, I can attach receipts to transactions. Given Google forms work on mobile I can literally take a photo and in a few clicks have everything added to my spreadsheet.
- nukst 4y ago
  Wouldn't this do? https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-assoc.html https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-assoc.h...
- fipar 4y ago
  I used to do this for the reason you mention (anyone in the household can enter transactions), but since 2020 I’ve moved to gnu cash and the double entry accounting is the main reason. I admit I knew very little about accounting before, and gnu cash forces you to learn the basics of double entry in order to use it, so perhaps I could have done this with the sheet method, but I find it much easier to find errors this way. I “resolved” the problem for other family members by having them give me their receipts (for cash, otherwise I just get the info from the banks) and entering the transactions myself. While it does mean a bit more Work for me, we have better financial planning now so I feel it’s worth the trouble. Another thing gnu cash helps me solve a lot easier than sheets is handling multiple currencies (I live in a country with its own currency but with part of the economy in USDs, notably cars and real estate, plus I earn in USD and some of my local purchases are done in local currency but using my US card). With gnu cash it’s dead simple to handle transactions and accounts in multiple currencies (I use 3), including having historical values available. Not saying your method is wrong at all, of course, just wanted to offer the perspective from someone who apparently did the inverse migration you did.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    Yeah I agree, I generally like gnucash but the mobile receipt upload is really critical for me. I do keep track of incomes, expenses, and transfers. A bit complicated setup initially but not bad
petesergeant 4y ago
I switch from Gnucash to MoneyDance some (15?) years ago. I can't remember why now, but they were very similarly designed if anyone's interested in a paid (and I imagine slightly slicker) version.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  I see it's written in Java - is it a self contained app or does it need the Java runtime installing? Managed to go several years without needing to install that and don't intend on installing now.
  - mnw21cam 4y ago
    Could you comment on the reasons for your reluctance to install a Java runtime?
- jamesu 4y ago
  Can also recommend MoneyDance. Transaction entry and reconciliation is pretty slick, plus it's just a java app so you can run it on anything.
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Gnucash was discussed here recently : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754
lloydatkinson 4y ago
There's some criticism of it here that I just found while evaluating if it's any good for personal use. https://www.reddit.com/r/GnuCash/comments/o4s1bx/im_starting_to_see_the_serious_limitations_built/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GnuCash/comments/o4s1bx/im_starting...
- balderdash 4y ago
  I think the complaints are fair, but I’d frame them differently. It serves the power user/technically adept individual user, and the very simple corporate user (e.g. books for an entity that holds an investment property, personal consulting business) quite well, but think commercial software is the much better solution for basic individuals and SMBs+ For individuals with any sort of modest complexity double entry accounting is the only solution and it’s great at that.
skirmish 4y ago
Anybody know how to do an equivalent of MS Money cash flow forecasting in Gnucash? I really miss it. It should plot account balance assuming already entered future transactions and repeating transactions happen as scheduled. Looks like this, and it really helps me plan: https://preview.redd.it/908a4kg3ww931.jpg?width=879&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a69be4945d1e218207132a4461c25a524c265917 https://preview.redd.it/908a4kg3ww931.jpg?width=879&format=p... Here is another competitor promising this feature, would be great if Gnucash could do it somehow too: https://www.kualto.com/blog/microsoft-money-replacement/ https://www.kualto.com/blog/microsoft-money-replacement/
- WesleyJohnson 4y ago
  I really miss this aspect of MS Money as well. Thanks for turning me onto Kualto, I'll have to check it out for this feature alone.
- turrini 4y ago
  Gnucash is wonderful, but since 2006 I've migrated to KMyMoney and never looked back. It also does forecasting.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    Same here. KMyMoney's UI conveniences were significantly better than Gnucash when I switched over a decade ago. (Also somewhat switched to ledger, but I still use KMyMoney for data entry and then run a script to convert the KMyMoney XML to Ledger).
- balderdash 4y ago
  I haven’t done it, but you should be able to do that in gun cash by just chatting specifics and or grouped accounts from the cash flow statement?
- fatcow 4y ago
  Huh there's a Balance Forecast report which does exactly this. It considers the Scheduled Transactions applicable to your accounts, and shows the forecasted balances.
mcjiggerlog 4y ago
I've been using Gnucash for tracking my personal finance for years and find it indispensable. I export CSVs of my transactions from my bank and import them into Gnucash. I spend about 20 minutes every couple of months to pull in the latest CSV and manually categorize anything that has not been automatically categorized. For investment accounts I just treat them a single asset and add adjustment transactions to keep the total value up to date. This small amount of work lets me see down to the cent where I am spending money and track my net worth. It has a bit of a learning curve starting out, but I would really recommend trying it out.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  What actual actions did you took based on this analysis ? How much do you estimate it saved you ?
  - mcjiggerlog 4y ago
    The answers to that are always going to be pretty personal. To me the small amount of time it takes is well worth it to have full insight into where money is coming and going.
  - NoboruWataya 4y ago
    I'm not the guy you're responding to but for me, GnuCash has helped me identify a number of subscriptions I don't use anymore, that I have then cancelled. It also helped me identify a direct debit that I had forgotten to cancel when I moved house. So there have been tangible savings. Of course you could argue that I could have discovered these things just by reviewing my bank statements regularly, but that's most of the work of importing them into GnuCash anyway, and it's easier to spot these things when you are actively categorising your transactions. It's also just a helpful way to track the growth of your net worth over time when you have multiple accounts, investments, etc. You may or may not take action based on what you find but it's good to know.
  - DrudgeCorporate 4y ago
    I run reports monthly to see where I'm putting my money. I used to follow a strict budget but that was way too rigid for me and would sometimes put me in a rock a hard place. So now I just spend as I'm comfortable and adjust in the future months. If you own a business or do work on the side where you are 1099'd then it makes it way easier to send your books to your accountant so they aren't asking for information.
chris_wot 4y ago
I’ve found doing bank reconciliations difficult, otherwise it’s a great app.
blitz_skull 4y ago
Tried Gnucash, quickly stopped due to the complexity of getting it all organized. IMO a much better option is something like Lunch Money. Killer UI, and does what it does well.
prairiedogg 4y ago
I was a Gnucash user for a decade before switching to beacount (https://github.com/beancount/beancount https://github.com/beancount/beancount). Can't see myself ever going back.
- seltzered_ 4y ago
  I haven't been active on the beancount mailing list lately, but have been working to meld Fava and Beancount together in a vscode environment using Eclipse Theia, with the long-term goal of making Beancount and plaintext accounting feel more like a packaged, crossplatform app that doesn't require upfront programming experience to at least do manual entries. This drive sorta came after using Beancount+Fava for a couple years and realizing Im the only one who could understand the accounting system and it'd suck if I needed to share it to family or start an organization with it. Happy to hear if there's interest in such a thing. I'm the same guy that collaborated on bringing extensions to Fava a few years ago.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  What are the advantages over beancount? I often consider switching myself because beancount (and PTA generally) looks cool, but I don't really have an actual reason to leave GnuCash.
- bogle 4y ago
  Plain-text accounting is great. I choose hledger for the accounts of a small side business that doesn't warrant hiring an accountant.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
  Fava as a GUI is awesome too https://github.com/beancount/fava/ https://github.com/beancount/fava/
davidatbu 4y ago
If only the android app wasn't buggy :( . I can't delete recurring transactions on the mobile app. This wouldn't be a deal breaker if it weren't for the fact that syncing is finicky (you have to use Dropbox/Syncthing), and so having to use my laptop to take some actions is just so much hassle to make sure I don't accidentally lose (some) data.
Phurist 4y ago
What is wrong with HLedger ? Why would I use this bloated software over it ?
nukst 4y ago
I recently adopted Gnucash as an alternative to my old faithful expenses spreadsheet using Gnumeric and I have to say, after grasping the basics it improved my bookkeeping drastically. One very useful and brutally simple feature that I like is the ability to attach files to a transaction. In Brazil we use boletos[1] extensively and Gnucash made my life a heck of a lot easier to keep track of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boleto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boleto (roughly translating, a ticket)
slavoingilizov 4y ago
This comes up on the homepage consistently about every 6 months or so. I am not sure why. Every time it does, it's obvious it has devoted fans and bitter enemies. The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. Given Europe and the UK have had Open Banking for years now, and a universe of apps automatically pulling, categorising and reporting transactions (including many incumbent banking apps) - I'm curios if this is a US-only phenomenon - why would people use decade-old software instead of the latest in banking technology? Any users from Europe or UK? Previous threads: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445
- tommyage 4y ago
  I have a fully working setup. In order to be useful for my personal budget management though I need some program to scan receipts and invoices via camera or pdf, to be honest. Nonetheless. I am from germany and I successfully integrated sync with multiple bank accounts via aquafinance. I can pull down and automatically categorize transactions and even issue transfers. There are more reasons i did not fully commit yet: I have no automatic backup configured. I do not have an designated desktop-pc yet. Having all this important data on a mobile device is insecure imo. I have no _real_ usecase to apply double-checked accounting (hopefully this is the correct term). Nonetheless, it's great. If one had a tax-guy I guess it is even more beneficial.
  - tommyage 4y ago
    I want to note that there are no licenses fees or paid software in use.
  - Maledictus 4y ago
    What is aquafinance? Can you say which banks work for you?
    - 4y ago
dorfsmay 4y ago
The problem I have with gnucash is handling over data to an accountant to do yearly tax etc... for a small business. I have written https://github.com/dorfsmay/gnucash_general_journal https://github.com/dorfsmay/gnucash_general_journal and it help somehow but it still is a lot of work for them and can be confusing if they're not willing to spend the time on it + time they spend is money they charge me. I plan to change this to output to OFX sheets separating the different accounts, hoping it helps. I'm surprised there are no standard for accounting data and would love to hear from accountants what would help them importing data in their systems.
- jsmith99 4y ago
  Assuming you have posted everything to the correct accounts, the Trial Balance should be all they need. (Trial balance is a summary of the total on each account - checking that it sums to 0 is the key advantage of double entry book keeping.) If it doesn't, then perhaps the account structure isn't granular enough? For the report you use, why don't you send a traditional general ledger and let them pivot it in excel by account (columns) and transaction number (rows)?
mwexler 4y ago
If one isn't tied to open-source only, but hates the QuickBooks hegemony for small biz accounting, we had some good experiences with Wave (https://www.waveapps.com/ https://www.waveapps.com/). Very easy to use, cheap, and if your needs aren't too complex, it's a pretty nice experience. SAAS, closed source, etc, but at least it wasn't QB.
- quintex 4y ago
  +1 for Wave. Have been using it for my needs over the past 12 months with no major complaints. It appears their business model is based on getting you to accept payment for services through their automated invoicing, which they take a percentage of[1]. 1. https://www.waveapps.com/pricing https://www.waveapps.com/pricing
CuriousCosmic 4y ago
I really like Gnucash but I had to give up on it a while back due to limitations that likely will never be resolved. Instead I switched to hledger for the time being(which I may likely be moving away from soon due to the poor support for lots). The main issues revolved around dealing with multiple currencies. One major limitation is that tracking cryptocurrencies without slow accrual of rounding errors is nigh impossible due to the precision limits set in place by Gnucash. This of course is on top of the fact that Gnucash refuses to add support for adding additional currencies or commodities which requires tracking them like securities. The solution to this of course is to recompile Gnucash with the internal currency list modified but that breaks compatibility with all other Gnucash compatible apps unless you recompile those as well. And in general either workflow (recompiling or using the securities workflow) is just an unnecessary hassle to deal with when I want to track things other than cryptocurrencies like airline miles, cashback points, etc. The other major issue I have is that the support for tracking price bases in multiple currencies is really not there yet. I'll likely be moving to another country in the next two years and I will need to be able to track gains across multiple currencies. Ultimately the difference will be small enough that it won't matter much for taxes but nonetheless I'd prefer to be able to maintain consistency in my books to the best of my ability. I also just find the workflow for tracking unit prices to be clunky and awkward.
- gen220 4y ago
  Can you expand on "poor support for lots"? I maintain a ledger with GNU Ledger; until now, I'd assumed hledger and GNU Ledger were basically at feature parity. Can you not do something like this in hledger? 20 AAPL {$100.00} @ $151.28 ; [=2022-07-18]
  - simonmic 4y ago
    https://hledger.org/investments.html#what-about-lots- https://hledger.org/investments.html#what-about-lots-
- grepfru_it 4y ago
  >Gnucash refuses to add support for adding additional currencies or commodities which requires tracking them like securities I found a post on the mailing list which describes this problem (and provides a solution). Can I ask for a reference of the refusal to better understand your concern?
IshKebab 4y ago
KMyMoney was much better when I compared them about 20 years ago! No idea if that is still the case but given there were better alternatives then I would imagine the same is true now.
Linda703 4y ago
[dead]
xz18r 4y ago
I'm surprised never seeing any reference to MoneyManager Ex[1] in these threads. I've been using it for a year, syncing my database with Syncthing (as you do with GNUcash) and it's simply awesome. It's more aimed towards personal finances though, as it uses single-entry accounting. Still, highly recommend. Open-source, all platforms, polished, active development. [1] https://moneymanagerex.org/ https://moneymanagerex.org/
- deno 4y ago
  Not a single screenshot on that website. The github page has some at least: https://github.com/moneymanagerex/moneymanagerex/ https://github.com/moneymanagerex/moneymanagerex/
pmoriarty 4y ago
As a big fan of terminal interfaces, text-only formats, and emacs, I really wanted to use and like ledger, but I ultimately decided to use GNUCash instead as I had thousands of receipts to enter manually and doing that in ledger was much more painful than in GNUCash, which could automate a lot of this process with sophisticated autocompletion.
transfire 4y ago
My biggest problem was with importing CSV from my bank (TD Bank). It got all the debits and credits reversed, so I had to fix them all by hand. In the end it wasn't worth maintaining -- too much manual down;loading and entry. I need a system that can automatically pull the information from my banks and make it easy for me to massage the data as needed.
dogline 4y ago
Personal Finance links I've assembled: Free/open: - Gnucash -- solid app: https://www.gnucash.org/ https://www.gnucash.org/ - Beancount -- Text based: https://beancount.github.io/docs/index.html https://beancount.github.io/docs/index.html - Fava -- Web interface for Beancount: https://beancount.github.io/fava/ https://beancount.github.io/fava/ - Plain Text Accounting -- there are several apps with a similar approach: https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ Others/Paid: - You Need a Budget -- Popular a couple years back: https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/ - Moneydance -- https://moneydance.com/ https://moneydance.com/ - Lunch Money -- https://lunchmoney.app/ https://lunchmoney.app/
- lutrinus 4y ago
  I've been using YNAB for years now looked at the competitors from time to time. While their pricing has increased quite a bit (by now also for long time users coming from YNAB 4), for me it is worth every penny and better than anything else out there. I can't recommend it enough and I don't even get paid to write this comment.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    I think I'd keep paying for YNAB even if the price doubled twice more, it's worth that much to me. I'm not saying other budgeting tools can't compare/complete but for me it works really well and has lead to my saving literal 10's of thousands of dollars over the span of just over 2 years. Once you get everything dialed in you can almost run on auto-pilot (repeating transactions and goals are your friend). Could I drop YNAB and continue with my better financial behavior? Possibly, probably in the short-term for sure but I know I'd slowly drift until I was back where I was before starting YNAB. The yearly cost ($99/yr) is well worth the cost to keep me on the right track and notice early when I'm slipping.
- karencarits 4y ago
  https://manager.io https://manager.io is also nice, although perhaps targeted more towards small businesses
- 4y ago

331 points by neya 4y ago

For the curious, I took a fairly detailed look at GnuCash for business accounting a while back: https://lwn.net/Articles/731126/ https://lwn.net/Articles/731126/

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

I work on a web/app-based personal finance tool, and just to clarify a few things regarding data aggregators (third parties that aggregate your financial data into personal finance apps like Plaid, MX, Finicity, etc). There tends to be two main ways these aggregators interface with banks. The first is via screen-scraping or reverse-engineering internal APIs. The second is via direct integration (ie Oauth-type connections). Understandably, a lot of the HN-crew is skeptical of "handing over" their credentials to third parties, but for Oauth integrations, it's worth noting that: - you're redirected to the bank to enter your credentials (ie the third party never gets a chance to see them) - often, you get to choose which permissions to allow (ie read vs write, read only, which accounts) - the banks have signed off on the integration So even if you decide you're not comfortable with the screen-scrapes / internal APIs because you don't trust the aggregators, worth considering the direct ones.

mthoms 4y ago
Is there a list of which banks support these "Oauth-type connections" somewhere?

txr 4y ago

I tried GnuCash a long time ago but was not happy how convoluted the UI was, maybe have to give it another try. After that I switched to MoneyMoney [1] which is just awesome to work with. It is mostly focused on the german market and directly supports import from most major german banks, sadly MacOS only. [1] https://moneymoney-app.com/ https://moneymoney-app.com/

klaussilveira 4y ago

Anyone knows how I can get OFX out of Apple Card via an API?

gen220 4y ago
At least they offer OFX at all now... in the first few months, IIRC, they only supported PDF statements or something similarly difficult to work with. I'd love for "shortcuts" to include a statement hook. "Every month, copy most recent apple card statement, email to xyz@domain.tld". But the "wallet" section of the shortcuts app is basically empty. Until then, I email myself apple card statements at the end of the month, takes maybe 5 minutes but it involves a lot of tapping.

kup0 4y ago

I use Gnucash essentially as a manual-entry glorified digital checkbook/register. I used to do it on paper for the longest time- it's how I was taught and my bank took a long time to modernize. I don't know that I still need to continue this habit digitally, but there's still something useful/comforting about keeping my own transaction list to constantly check against my bank's... Gnucash is adequate for doing this for me.

matham 4y ago

Is there somewhere a good list of spending categories to use with it? Every now and then I run into a transaction that I can't quite fit into any category and have to squeeze it into something (un)related.

NoboruWataya 4y ago
I think this will depend on your own preferences and use case. The initial default expense accounts in GnuCash are a reasonable starting point, but of course you can add, delete or amend accounts according to your preferences.

hevsuit 4y ago

I've been using Gnucash since 2020 to manage personal expenses and income, and it has made the world of a difference. In particular, I find the income statement feature very powerful when I'm doing an end-of-year review of my spending. In terms of time commitment, about 20 mins every two weeks seems to be enough for logging all my transactions into Gnucash - I have 3 bank accounts, 1 investment account and 1 retirement account.

emacsen 4y ago
Have you tried any of the plain text accounting packages? I'm really interested in lived experience of using Gnucash vs, say Beancount or HLedger.
- hevsuit 4y ago
  No unfortunately, I've only used Gnucash. One of the main reasons I stick with Gnucash is the monolithic file format. If one day I need an accountant to review my finances, or if I suffer an audit by the tax man, I can send on the single .gnucash file with all my data. While Gnucash's UI is not the greatest, an accountant/auditor can easily install Gnucash and generate reports with only basic knowledge. Another nice feature is the file linkage features, where I can directly link my payslip pdf files to the gnucash entries. I have folder structure on my GDrive with all of my stored bills, payslips etc. If required, I can zip up my Gnucash file and corresponding documents folder and the reviewer can instantly access important financial documentation from within the Gnucash application. Gnucash uses relative file paths for sourcing linked documents - all a reviewer has to do is specify the head directory and all the linked documents will open as usual. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think this is a feature in the text-only approaches.
  - emacsen 4y ago
    > Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think this is a feature in the text-only approaches. I unless I'm missing something, all those features are available to me now. > If one day I need an accountant to review my finances, or if I suffer an audit by the tax man, I can send on the single .gnucash file with all my data. I can do the same with a git repo, or a zipfile. > an accountant/auditor can easily install Gnucash and generate reports with only basic knowledge. I'm not sure I understand the advantage here. A professional could install beancount too, and run the same scripts I do. My real life experience is they don't actually want this level of depth. > Another nice feature is the file linkage features, where I can directly link my payslip pdf files to the gnucash entries. I have folder structure on my GDrive with all of my stored bills, payslips etc. You can link to external documents in Beancount and possibly the others and it's kept in the same archival system: https://beancount.github.io/docs/beancount_language_syntax.html#documents https://beancount.github.io/docs/beancount_language_syntax.h... It looks like I'm not missing out?

patopop007 4y ago

I was a faithful Gnucash user but ever since I switched to an ARM based Mac I haven’t been able to run it natively. Has anyone been able to build it for ARM or know of an available universal binary?

looperhacks 4y ago
The normal Mac download works just fine for me
- iruoy 4y ago
  That's because it's running on rosetta2. Works fine though. This isn't a resource intensive app

lolc 4y ago

I use Gnucash to do the accounting of two small communities. It does the basics and some reporting for me. I don't need more. It's been around for a while and that gives me trust that it will stay maintained and I won't have to re-learn another app.

koheripbal 4y ago

Is the MySQL backend option fully functional now? I need to be able to code sql reports for my small business, or it's a no-go for us.

memling 4y ago
> Is the MySQL backend option fully functional now? Out of curiosity, was there anything about it that wasn't working? When I got married I moved away from GNUCash because the interface was too intimidating...but I had been using the MySQL backend for a few years by then? and I don't recall any issues with it.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
I have no issues with it, though the website still has this warning: > Note this feature is considered experimental. It works for most of the common use cases but some corner cases have been reported to result in data loss. The GnuCash developers fix each issue as it gets reported. There is however no full test coverage so there may still be scenarios left that result in data loss.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Anyone serious about their business will see this warning as a deal-breaker. Running a business is hard enough - I cannot imagine debugging my accounting tool.
  - NoboruWataya 4y ago
    I should clarify that the warning applies specifically to the SQL storage format. I'm not aware of any data loss issues using the default XML format. Agree that as a business you would not want to take any chances. For my personal use I use SQL because that means I can use the piecash[1] library to interact with my financial data without relying on the official Python bindings (which aren't great to use). [1] https://pypi.org/project/piecash/ https://pypi.org/project/piecash/
dorfsmay 4y ago

lettergram 4y ago

Having used gnucash, I find a regular Google sheet with a Google form for entry better. The main reason is anyone in my household whose spending can then add transactions. Further and more importantly, I can attach receipts to transactions. Given Google forms work on mobile I can literally take a photo and in a few clicks have everything added to my spreadsheet.

nukst 4y ago
Wouldn't this do? https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-assoc.html https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-assoc.h...
fipar 4y ago
I used to do this for the reason you mention (anyone in the household can enter transactions), but since 2020 I’ve moved to gnu cash and the double entry accounting is the main reason. I admit I knew very little about accounting before, and gnu cash forces you to learn the basics of double entry in order to use it, so perhaps I could have done this with the sheet method, but I find it much easier to find errors this way. I “resolved” the problem for other family members by having them give me their receipts (for cash, otherwise I just get the info from the banks) and entering the transactions myself. While it does mean a bit more Work for me, we have better financial planning now so I feel it’s worth the trouble. Another thing gnu cash helps me solve a lot easier than sheets is handling multiple currencies (I live in a country with its own currency but with part of the economy in USDs, notably cars and real estate, plus I earn in USD and some of my local purchases are done in local currency but using my US card). With gnu cash it’s dead simple to handle transactions and accounts in multiple currencies (I use 3), including having historical values available. Not saying your method is wrong at all, of course, just wanted to offer the perspective from someone who apparently did the inverse migration you did.
- lettergram 4y ago
  Yeah I agree, I generally like gnucash but the mobile receipt upload is really critical for me. I do keep track of incomes, expenses, and transfers. A bit complicated setup initially but not bad

petesergeant 4y ago

I switch from Gnucash to MoneyDance some (15?) years ago. I can't remember why now, but they were very similarly designed if anyone's interested in a paid (and I imagine slightly slicker) version.

lloydatkinson 4y ago
I see it's written in Java - is it a self contained app or does it need the Java runtime installing? Managed to go several years without needing to install that and don't intend on installing now.
- mnw21cam 4y ago
  Could you comment on the reasons for your reluctance to install a Java runtime?
jamesu 4y ago
Can also recommend MoneyDance. Transaction entry and reconciliation is pretty slick, plus it's just a java app so you can run it on anything.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

Gnucash was discussed here recently : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754

lloydatkinson 4y ago

There's some criticism of it here that I just found while evaluating if it's any good for personal use. https://www.reddit.com/r/GnuCash/comments/o4s1bx/im_starting_to_see_the_serious_limitations_built/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GnuCash/comments/o4s1bx/im_starting...

balderdash 4y ago
I think the complaints are fair, but I’d frame them differently. It serves the power user/technically adept individual user, and the very simple corporate user (e.g. books for an entity that holds an investment property, personal consulting business) quite well, but think commercial software is the much better solution for basic individuals and SMBs+ For individuals with any sort of modest complexity double entry accounting is the only solution and it’s great at that.

skirmish 4y ago

Anybody know how to do an equivalent of MS Money cash flow forecasting in Gnucash? I really miss it. It should plot account balance assuming already entered future transactions and repeating transactions happen as scheduled. Looks like this, and it really helps me plan: https://preview.redd.it/908a4kg3ww931.jpg?width=879&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a69be4945d1e218207132a4461c25a524c265917 https://preview.redd.it/908a4kg3ww931.jpg?width=879&format=p... Here is another competitor promising this feature, would be great if Gnucash could do it somehow too: https://www.kualto.com/blog/microsoft-money-replacement/ https://www.kualto.com/blog/microsoft-money-replacement/

WesleyJohnson 4y ago
I really miss this aspect of MS Money as well. Thanks for turning me onto Kualto, I'll have to check it out for this feature alone.
turrini 4y ago
Gnucash is wonderful, but since 2006 I've migrated to KMyMoney and never looked back. It also does forecasting.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Same here. KMyMoney's UI conveniences were significantly better than Gnucash when I switched over a decade ago. (Also somewhat switched to ledger, but I still use KMyMoney for data entry and then run a script to convert the KMyMoney XML to Ledger).
balderdash 4y ago
I haven’t done it, but you should be able to do that in gun cash by just chatting specifics and or grouped accounts from the cash flow statement?
fatcow 4y ago
Huh there's a Balance Forecast report which does exactly this. It considers the Scheduled Transactions applicable to your accounts, and shows the forecasted balances.

mcjiggerlog 4y ago

I've been using Gnucash for tracking my personal finance for years and find it indispensable. I export CSVs of my transactions from my bank and import them into Gnucash. I spend about 20 minutes every couple of months to pull in the latest CSV and manually categorize anything that has not been automatically categorized. For investment accounts I just treat them a single asset and add adjustment transactions to keep the total value up to date. This small amount of work lets me see down to the cent where I am spending money and track my net worth. It has a bit of a learning curve starting out, but I would really recommend trying it out.

phtrivier 4y ago
What actual actions did you took based on this analysis ? How much do you estimate it saved you ?
- mcjiggerlog 4y ago
  The answers to that are always going to be pretty personal. To me the small amount of time it takes is well worth it to have full insight into where money is coming and going.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  I'm not the guy you're responding to but for me, GnuCash has helped me identify a number of subscriptions I don't use anymore, that I have then cancelled. It also helped me identify a direct debit that I had forgotten to cancel when I moved house. So there have been tangible savings. Of course you could argue that I could have discovered these things just by reviewing my bank statements regularly, but that's most of the work of importing them into GnuCash anyway, and it's easier to spot these things when you are actively categorising your transactions. It's also just a helpful way to track the growth of your net worth over time when you have multiple accounts, investments, etc. You may or may not take action based on what you find but it's good to know.
- DrudgeCorporate 4y ago
  I run reports monthly to see where I'm putting my money. I used to follow a strict budget but that was way too rigid for me and would sometimes put me in a rock a hard place. So now I just spend as I'm comfortable and adjust in the future months. If you own a business or do work on the side where you are 1099'd then it makes it way easier to send your books to your accountant so they aren't asking for information.

chris_wot 4y ago

I’ve found doing bank reconciliations difficult, otherwise it’s a great app.

blitz_skull 4y ago

Tried Gnucash, quickly stopped due to the complexity of getting it all organized. IMO a much better option is something like Lunch Money. Killer UI, and does what it does well.

prairiedogg 4y ago

I was a Gnucash user for a decade before switching to beacount (https://github.com/beancount/beancount https://github.com/beancount/beancount). Can't see myself ever going back.

seltzered_ 4y ago
I haven't been active on the beancount mailing list lately, but have been working to meld Fava and Beancount together in a vscode environment using Eclipse Theia, with the long-term goal of making Beancount and plaintext accounting feel more like a packaged, crossplatform app that doesn't require upfront programming experience to at least do manual entries. This drive sorta came after using Beancount+Fava for a couple years and realizing Im the only one who could understand the accounting system and it'd suck if I needed to share it to family or start an organization with it. Happy to hear if there's interest in such a thing. I'm the same guy that collaborated on bringing extensions to Fava a few years ago.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
What are the advantages over beancount? I often consider switching myself because beancount (and PTA generally) looks cool, but I don't really have an actual reason to leave GnuCash.
bogle 4y ago
Plain-text accounting is great. I choose hledger for the accounts of a small side business that doesn't warrant hiring an accountant.
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
Fava as a GUI is awesome too https://github.com/beancount/fava/ https://github.com/beancount/fava/

davidatbu 4y ago

If only the android app wasn't buggy :( . I can't delete recurring transactions on the mobile app. This wouldn't be a deal breaker if it weren't for the fact that syncing is finicky (you have to use Dropbox/Syncthing), and so having to use my laptop to take some actions is just so much hassle to make sure I don't accidentally lose (some) data.

Phurist 4y ago

What is wrong with HLedger ? Why would I use this bloated software over it ?

nukst 4y ago

I recently adopted Gnucash as an alternative to my old faithful expenses spreadsheet using Gnumeric and I have to say, after grasping the basics it improved my bookkeeping drastically. One very useful and brutally simple feature that I like is the ability to attach files to a transaction. In Brazil we use boletos[1] extensively and Gnucash made my life a heck of a lot easier to keep track of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boleto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boleto (roughly translating, a ticket)

slavoingilizov 4y ago

This comes up on the homepage consistently about every 6 months or so. I am not sure why. Every time it does, it's obvious it has devoted fans and bitter enemies. The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. Given Europe and the UK have had Open Banking for years now, and a universe of apps automatically pulling, categorising and reporting transactions (including many incumbent banking apps) - I'm curios if this is a US-only phenomenon - why would people use decade-old software instead of the latest in banking technology? Any users from Europe or UK? Previous threads: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445

tommyage 4y ago
I have a fully working setup. In order to be useful for my personal budget management though I need some program to scan receipts and invoices via camera or pdf, to be honest. Nonetheless. I am from germany and I successfully integrated sync with multiple bank accounts via aquafinance. I can pull down and automatically categorize transactions and even issue transfers. There are more reasons i did not fully commit yet: I have no automatic backup configured. I do not have an designated desktop-pc yet. Having all this important data on a mobile device is insecure imo. I have no _real_ usecase to apply double-checked accounting (hopefully this is the correct term). Nonetheless, it's great. If one had a tax-guy I guess it is even more beneficial.
- tommyage 4y ago
  I want to note that there are no licenses fees or paid software in use.
- Maledictus 4y ago
  What is aquafinance? Can you say which banks work for you?
  - 4y ago

dorfsmay 4y ago

The problem I have with gnucash is handling over data to an accountant to do yearly tax etc... for a small business. I have written https://github.com/dorfsmay/gnucash_general_journal https://github.com/dorfsmay/gnucash_general_journal and it help somehow but it still is a lot of work for them and can be confusing if they're not willing to spend the time on it + time they spend is money they charge me. I plan to change this to output to OFX sheets separating the different accounts, hoping it helps. I'm surprised there are no standard for accounting data and would love to hear from accountants what would help them importing data in their systems.

jsmith99 4y ago
Assuming you have posted everything to the correct accounts, the Trial Balance should be all they need. (Trial balance is a summary of the total on each account - checking that it sums to 0 is the key advantage of double entry book keeping.) If it doesn't, then perhaps the account structure isn't granular enough? For the report you use, why don't you send a traditional general ledger and let them pivot it in excel by account (columns) and transaction number (rows)?

mwexler 4y ago

If one isn't tied to open-source only, but hates the QuickBooks hegemony for small biz accounting, we had some good experiences with Wave (https://www.waveapps.com/ https://www.waveapps.com/). Very easy to use, cheap, and if your needs aren't too complex, it's a pretty nice experience. SAAS, closed source, etc, but at least it wasn't QB.

quintex 4y ago
+1 for Wave. Have been using it for my needs over the past 12 months with no major complaints. It appears their business model is based on getting you to accept payment for services through their automated invoicing, which they take a percentage of[1]. 1. https://www.waveapps.com/pricing https://www.waveapps.com/pricing

CuriousCosmic 4y ago

I really like Gnucash but I had to give up on it a while back due to limitations that likely will never be resolved. Instead I switched to hledger for the time being(which I may likely be moving away from soon due to the poor support for lots). The main issues revolved around dealing with multiple currencies. One major limitation is that tracking cryptocurrencies without slow accrual of rounding errors is nigh impossible due to the precision limits set in place by Gnucash. This of course is on top of the fact that Gnucash refuses to add support for adding additional currencies or commodities which requires tracking them like securities. The solution to this of course is to recompile Gnucash with the internal currency list modified but that breaks compatibility with all other Gnucash compatible apps unless you recompile those as well. And in general either workflow (recompiling or using the securities workflow) is just an unnecessary hassle to deal with when I want to track things other than cryptocurrencies like airline miles, cashback points, etc. The other major issue I have is that the support for tracking price bases in multiple currencies is really not there yet. I'll likely be moving to another country in the next two years and I will need to be able to track gains across multiple currencies. Ultimately the difference will be small enough that it won't matter much for taxes but nonetheless I'd prefer to be able to maintain consistency in my books to the best of my ability. I also just find the workflow for tracking unit prices to be clunky and awkward.

gen220 4y ago
Can you expand on "poor support for lots"? I maintain a ledger with GNU Ledger; until now, I'd assumed hledger and GNU Ledger were basically at feature parity. Can you not do something like this in hledger? 20 AAPL {$100.00} @ $151.28 ; [=2022-07-18]
- simonmic 4y ago
  https://hledger.org/investments.html#what-about-lots- https://hledger.org/investments.html#what-about-lots-
grepfru_it 4y ago
>Gnucash refuses to add support for adding additional currencies or commodities which requires tracking them like securities I found a post on the mailing list which describes this problem (and provides a solution). Can I ask for a reference of the refusal to better understand your concern?

IshKebab 4y ago

KMyMoney was much better when I compared them about 20 years ago! No idea if that is still the case but given there were better alternatives then I would imagine the same is true now.

Linda703 4y ago

[dead]

xz18r 4y ago

I'm surprised never seeing any reference to MoneyManager Ex[1] in these threads. I've been using it for a year, syncing my database with Syncthing (as you do with GNUcash) and it's simply awesome. It's more aimed towards personal finances though, as it uses single-entry accounting. Still, highly recommend. Open-source, all platforms, polished, active development. [1] https://moneymanagerex.org/ https://moneymanagerex.org/

deno 4y ago
Not a single screenshot on that website. The github page has some at least: https://github.com/moneymanagerex/moneymanagerex/ https://github.com/moneymanagerex/moneymanagerex/

pmoriarty 4y ago

As a big fan of terminal interfaces, text-only formats, and emacs, I really wanted to use and like ledger, but I ultimately decided to use GNUCash instead as I had thousands of receipts to enter manually and doing that in ledger was much more painful than in GNUCash, which could automate a lot of this process with sophisticated autocompletion.

transfire 4y ago

My biggest problem was with importing CSV from my bank (TD Bank). It got all the debits and credits reversed, so I had to fix them all by hand. In the end it wasn't worth maintaining -- too much manual down;loading and entry. I need a system that can automatically pull the information from my banks and make it easy for me to massage the data as needed.

dogline 4y ago

Personal Finance links I've assembled: Free/open: - Gnucash -- solid app: https://www.gnucash.org/ https://www.gnucash.org/ - Beancount -- Text based: https://beancount.github.io/docs/index.html https://beancount.github.io/docs/index.html - Fava -- Web interface for Beancount: https://beancount.github.io/fava/ https://beancount.github.io/fava/ - Plain Text Accounting -- there are several apps with a similar approach: https://plaintextaccounting.org/ https://plaintextaccounting.org/ Others/Paid: - You Need a Budget -- Popular a couple years back: https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/ - Moneydance -- https://moneydance.com/ https://moneydance.com/ - Lunch Money -- https://lunchmoney.app/ https://lunchmoney.app/

lutrinus 4y ago
I've been using YNAB for years now looked at the competitors from time to time. While their pricing has increased quite a bit (by now also for long time users coming from YNAB 4), for me it is worth every penny and better than anything else out there. I can't recommend it enough and I don't even get paid to write this comment.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I think I'd keep paying for YNAB even if the price doubled twice more, it's worth that much to me. I'm not saying other budgeting tools can't compare/complete but for me it works really well and has lead to my saving literal 10's of thousands of dollars over the span of just over 2 years. Once you get everything dialed in you can almost run on auto-pilot (repeating transactions and goals are your friend). Could I drop YNAB and continue with my better financial behavior? Possibly, probably in the short-term for sure but I know I'd slowly drift until I was back where I was before starting YNAB. The yearly cost ($99/yr) is well worth the cost to keep me on the right track and notice early when I'm slipping.
karencarits 4y ago
https://manager.io https://manager.io is also nice, although perhaps targeted more towards small businesses
4y ago