[Novalug] kmymoney vs gnucash

[Bryan J. Smith]

[ Preserving the entire thread for historical purposes/context ]

As Jerry pointed out, GNUCash is a Personal Finance Manager
that has Double Entry Business Accounting built-in.  It's really
Quicken and Quickbooks functionality built-in, although you won't
get some aspects of either in open source (never will) because
they are under regulatory and have legal/liability requirements
(e.g., payroll).  It's ideal if you run a S-corp and mingle your
small business with personal finance, at least that has been my
experience.

Double-entry bookkeeping is an excellent skill to pick-up, and
I would consider it mandatory for any business owner.  Designing
your chart-of-accounts, watching your cash flow and catching your
own errors when it doesn't is actually not nearly as bad as it sounds.
I used to do my own books for seven (7) years, 2001-2007, and
I'd just hand off my general ledger printouts to my accountant and
he'd charge me next-to-nothing because I already had everything
categorized so he could apply the proper write-offs for various
forms of expense, etc...  I actually used SQLedger for all those
years, but I'd just use GNUCash today (and likely will this year
because I currently have unreimbursed travel/temporary relocation
expenses).

The only issues with GNUCash, like Quicken, is that it lets you
modify your financials ala "ex post facto."  If you do any, real GAAP
reporting, such as a government contractor, then you will need to
use a real system where you have to close books timely for each
period, making any adjustments in your reporting in the next cycle,
etc...  But in your case, you likely don't need to apply GAAP, and
you're find with something like GNUCash.  It really fits the bill as a
nice, single personal-SOHO financial application for most.



----- Original Message ----
From: jerry w <jerrywone at gmail.com>

I used gnucash a long time ago,
and got over the hurdle of double entry
accounting (you have flow of money,
it does not just exist, iirc)
it comes from some place and goes
some place, i.e. income to expense type,
like a transaction and a transfer...

gnucash now includes a budgeting feature
that it didn't used to, but not yet tried,
I use spending plans and had a hard
time convincing people I wasn't just
playing with computers doing the
linux gnucash way, instead of spreadsheets,
but the history of transactions
was nice.  doing a monthly spreadsheet
doesn't figure out the carryover
well...

i've since lost the battle with updating/
entering the data, now some time ago.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Soren Harward <stharward at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/2/09, Sean McGowan <scepticanagramwonk at verizon.net> wrote:
>> I do simple accounting, but would like to be able to easily expand if
>> necessary.  I do own multiple properties, but I am not a business (yet).
>> Currently I do everything by hand (spreadsheets); however, now the new
>> spouse is forcing me to pay better attention to the cash flow.  I am
>> curious if anyone uses these, or preferably has used both.  All the
>> comparisons I found seem to be slightly dated, and the wikipedia
>> comparisons are very basic.  I would like something that would do
>> budgeting as well, if possible.  Any comments would help.
>
> I have used GNUCash for about eight years.  It took a little getting
> used to, but after a few months I got double-entry down well enough
> that I can do good, solid personal accounting with it.
>
> However, I've decided that come 1 Jan 2010, I'm starting over
> completely, and I'm going to start over using kmymoney.  I'm switching
> for a couple of reasons:
>
> #1: kmymoney is oriented more towards personal accounting, and the
> features it lacks (or that aren't as well developed), like payroll,
> are features I don't use.
>
> #2: kmymoney leans more towards simplicity than power for reports,
> which is more what I want (again, doing only personal accounting).
>
> #3: from my testing, I've found securities and investments much easier
> to manage in kmymoney than in GNUCash.  This is important when you
> have investment accounts at seven different brokerages (and that's as
> consolidated as they're going to get) and are tracking about forty
> different securities.
>
> #4: GNUCash is the only reason I have the GNOME libraries on my
> system, and I'm a KDE man.