Financial Apps for Linux
Craig M. Buchek
February 16, 2006
People first, then money, then things.
-- Suze Orman
Financial Apps
- GnuCash
- KMyMoney
- MoneyDance
- Quasar Accounting
- Honorable Mentions
- Web-Based
GnuCash
- GNOME app, but still GTK v1 (which is VERY old)
- GPL
- GTK v2 version is in the works, they've put out the first test release
- Double-entry accounting takes some getting used to
- Sub-accounts are well done
GnuCash Demo
KMyMoney
- KDE app
- GPL
- Has some quirks
- Accounts must belong to an Institution
KMyMoney Demo
MoneyDance
- Proprietary, $30, free trial
- Limited number of transaction entries
- Some feature limitations
- Cross-platform Java
- Nice "home page" with summary and reminder calendar
- Nice-looking reports -- chasrts and graphs
- Password-protected data
- Investments: stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, etc.
- A bit hard to configure
MoneyDance Demo
Quasar Accounting
- www.linuxcanada.com
- Currently at version 1.4.7
- GPL, various $$$ commercial support packages
- Geared toward full retail business use
- POS
- Invoicing
- Barcode product labels
- I was unable to get it to compile on Ubuntu 5.10
Honoroble Mentions
- Kapital (TheKompany) - $40-50 commercial, KDE
- Grisbi - Euro-centric, hard to figure out
- Check Book balancer (CBB)
- MyBudget
- jGnash
Web Based (Business/Enterprise)
- XIWA
- SQL-Ledger
- OFBiz
- GNUe
- Compiere
- WebERP
- OpenMFG
Summary
- All the products have their quirks
- None are quite up there with Quicken or MS Money
- GnuCash is the best all around, in my personal opinion
For Our Mac Friends
- iBank 2.0
- Mac OS X 10.4 only
- $40 (free trial)
- Automator scripts included, easy to make your own
- Downloads stock quotes
- iCal integration
- Backup to .Mac available
- Also available: $30 iBiz, which does invoicing and time-tracking
- iCash 3.0.4
- $30 (regularly $40)
- Mac / PC
- MoneyDance
- Java - runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows
- $30
