Re: Debian GnuCash packages orphaned
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 11:50:43AM -0400, David P James wrote:
> > GnuCash is the best of the lot, but that isn't saying very much.
>
> I don't find GnuCash terribly usable for personal finances. The
> double-entry bookeeping that GnuCash uses doesn't work very well with
> personal finances. In the main window you end up with expense and
> income accounts piling up in a rather meaningless way. I took a few
> business accounting courses in university and I really don't think that
> double entry is appropriate for personal finance since categories of
> expense/consumption become accounts with cash flowing in, which makes
> absolutely no sense in the context of personal finance. GnuCash may
> well be useful for businesses (I wouldn't know) but for personal
> finance it's just plain annoying since the goal of each is different.
>
> For personal finance I use KMyMoney2, since conceptually it's far more
> like Quicken on Windows (and probably MS Money as well).
I found doing double-entry accounting for my personal finances quite
natural. There's only one rule: the debits must equal the credits.
*Everything* else is just a matter of taste.
(For instance, Enron could have had all the wacky business deals it
wanted, if it had merely piled up all the balancing transactions in some
on-book account. Anything goes, swing from the rafters, but create a
special account to balance it, and there it is on the books.)
Paying for lunch at McDonalds is a $5 credit to the Food account;
$5 debit from cash, on the general ledger. Withdrawing money from
the ATM is a debit from checking, credit to cash. Your employer is an
Accounts Receivable, and the Power Company is an accounts payable.
The only problem with GnuCash was the U/I: it made it exceedingly
awkward to work with large #s of accounts, because of all the modal
dialogs to enter them. Nothing wrong with the concept.
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