GnuCash opens a number of interesting possibilities:
I realized with great effort I could only create an imitation of a program that many knowledgeable people have struggled with over years of time. I could have updated my own program, but I became somewhat philosophical when I saw how powerful GnuCash had become over about a decade of time. And finally, GnuCash happily imports modern online bank records and integrates the results into its account database, which eliminates hand entries for all but a few accounts from institutions that don't offer usable data downloads (Fidelity, are you listening?). And unlike PLCash, GnuCash uses double-entry bookkeeping, a great advantage that may requires some explanation. PLCash doesn't save its data in a database, which makes external analysis and import/export difficult. There are many reasons for my having abandoned my own program. In this article I describe GnuCash, related issues like SQLite database manipulation and related issues. To manage my financial records, until recently I've been using my own program PLCash, a relatively simple Java-based program that served my needs, but one that couldn't read online bank record downloads, which meant a lot of hand data entries and inevitable errors.Īs much as I would like to continue using my own program, I'm in the midst of switching over to GnuCash, a much better program, and, like PLCash, free.
GNUCASH IMPORT QFX UPDATE
Of particular interest to dedicated GnuCash users is a way to restore the online stock price update feature that was recently lost because of a policy change at Yahoo.īut first, the backstory. The article includes and describes a number of useful Python programs - programs that require a user's GnuCash database to be saved in the SQLite database format. This article discusses GnuCash and the advantages of using a proper database file format, which GnuCash supports.