[LinuxUsers] GNU cash

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Dante Lanznaster <dantecl at gmail.com> wrote:
> I heard of this program a bit after I purchased Quicken 2009 for personal
> use, but I downloaded and tried it. Found it to be complicated to use and it
> lacks the same online capabilities as Quicken has.

GNUCash uses a traditional double-entry accounting system. Ledger-SMB
does as well.

This is probably the initial aspect of complexity, but double-entry is
what every MBA or accountant learns in business school. What Quicken
and QuickBooks do is try to be an electronic checkbook.

The real disadvantage GNUCash and Ledger-SMB has is that they are
almost certainly not what your accountant uses. Sometimes I need my
accountant to make journal entries and if I use QB, he'll happily do
them but if I used some other software I would have to do them myself.

So I haven't made the effort to switch away from QuickBooks yet. And I
may not... QB has a programming API so if I need to extend it, I can.
Also the import/export file format is documented.

-- John.