by Jim Fuller, the LO Newbie
I'd been looking around for something that might interest a Linux neophyte like myself and with a little coaching from the head honcho at Linux Orbit, I decided to try out GnuCash and give you the newbie perspective. Although I've always used spreadsheets to keep track of finances, I figured, what the heck.
If you don't know what it is or does, here's the summary of GnuCash from the gnucash.org web site:
"If you've been looking for a way to manage your personal finances under Linux, you've found it! Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system."
To get a copy of GnuCash, go to
http://www.linas.org/pub/gnucash/gnucash/
and select the appropriate distribution version for you. I downloaded version 1.4.7-1 and I tested It on a Compaq 7360 with an AMD K6 500 MHz Processor running Mandrake 7.1 (which is the distro I just LOVE!) After downloading it, I then used Midnight Commander, found the downloaded file and double clicked on it. This expanded the file and created the various directories zipped into the file and then gave me the choice to either "install" or "upgrade". Since 1.3.1 was already on my machine, I selected upgrade, which worked just fine.
(Editor's note: GNUCash is now up to version 1.4.8 as of 11-28-2000)
So now I was ready to give it a try, but first, I thought I'd read more about what it can do. After reading a bit more on their web site, I found that some of the features of GnuCash include:
- Reconciliation to your bank statements
- Multiple accounts
- Multiple currencies
- Account hierarchy
- Double entry
- Income & Expense type of accounts
This isn't all that GnuCash can do of course, and to find out more, you should read the manual available on the Help menu, as it goes into great detail about what the software can do.
At this point, I thought that perhaps this would be a Part I and Part II type of article but as I tested the program I found that having enough information, for just Part I, would be a chore!
Let me first say that anyone familiar with General Ledger and Journal Voucher entries will feel right at home with this software. GnuCash can handle that load fairly easily. I went in and setup some accounts and established the beginning balances. After processing some activity, I ran some of the reports. (Remember the manual under the Help menu, because I used it a lot.)
GnuCash has a relatively simple interface.
One of the areas that I had problems with was trying to get the stock prices of my stock accounts. I kept getting a "script error" and since I know nothing about how to change their script file, well I never got that function to work. It is possible that I was doing something else wrong but never could figure out what my problem was.
GnuCash is about as simple a software package that you could find. As such it does very little for the user. The user must ENTER everything into the system except stock prices (if one can get it to work). So just what would help this to be a much better package? Well (attention GnuCash developers!) consider the following;
1. Automatic entries
I purchased a Truck a few weeks ago and there are no automatic entries that I can use to show the payments. Sure I probably could use some off the wall method to get them into the system every month (other than processing a transaction manually) but I should not have to do that. I will look forward to this if it's in future releases.
2. Interest on:
- Checking account (yes I get paid interest on mine).
- Money Market account.
- All my various CD's
The system should calculate the interest every month and post the results to the various accounts. Why should I have to do that? I got this High Tech Computer that is more powerful than a speeding bullet and can jump tall buildings and I just know it has the ability to add and subtract. (No it's not a Pentium I) I do believe that these items are on the drawing board and hopefully will become reality sometime in the future. If you read the Help file completely, you'll find that this is on the drawing board.
OK. OK. I know I should not knock free software that works, BUT I know that I can do all the functions of GnuCash plus all the other functions I've mentioned, within a spreadsheet. I have done all of these using Lotus 123 and I must assume that the spreadsheet software available "free" on Linux is just as capable, so why GnuCash? I assume it is to compete with popular commerical software on Bill's platform, like M$ Money, Quicken and others. When the good people at GnuCash accomplish all of the items on their "to do" list, then this program will be a first class piece of software (IMHO). Until then though, it's back to my spreadsheets.
Jim Fuller (aka jff, aka Da (cat eating) Mouse) is a retired MIS Manager and programmer. Jim, though not new to computers, is a newbie to the Linux OS. Jim can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
The Newbie testdrives GnuCash
