Easy Finance Management with GNUcash
Sunday, February 8th, 2009I started using GNUcash (a free accounting program) about a year ago. It has a lot of cool features for keeping tabs of your money. You can use it to keep track of stock trades, car payments, credit card transactions, and just about every other transaction under the sun. It also makes filling out tax returns a snap. The cool thing about this software is that it comes entirely free, and has the best documentation I have ever seen from an open source program. For those who are considering using GNUcash for the first time, I highly recommend the tutorial.
With version 2.2.8, GNUcash is even better. A lot of the bugs that were nagging me before have now been fixed. But wait, there’s more! The licensing issues with online banking for Debian and Ubuntu users have now been resolved, so the default package on both platforms comes with OFX support.
Of course, because it is free software, online banking has a few caveats. First, you have to use a clunky interface to set it up. However, that interface is documented pretty well on the GNUcash wiki. The second problem is a little harder to deal with. Some banks don’t advertise their OFX information online, and if you have an obscure bank (like mine), it’s not listed on that wiki article either. Fortunately, there is a real cool database for OFX information. If your bank isn’t listed on either of these sites, you’re stuck with trying to contact their tech support. Good luck, and have fun.