The GnuCash core

[Paul Dunbar]

Well there are a few reasons I'm going for something web-based.

I want to provide a personal finance management system to the small
number of users of my website, mostly for myself, but people have
seemed interested in this idea when I talk about it.  In that sense my
target audience isn't so much end users as it is web administrators
who would be interested in providing PFM features to their users (I've
seen finance.yahoo.com and heard of MSN providing something like this,
though not to a full extent).  I want something that runs commands on
a schedule (like bill payments, alerts, importing bank transactions,
reconciling, etc.), and it seems to makes sense to use a server for
this since a server is supposed to be always on.  I also want this for
platform independance, I would like to login to an SSL site and input
transactions, check balances, etc. without going through the trouble
of X11 forwarding or transferring data. I've got a list of features
that I haven't seen in other PFM applications, some of which make
sense from a web server.  that list can be found at
http://www.ethernaut.net/~merlin/blog/?postid=48 (keep in mind many of
my feature ideas are just ideas right now, I figure when building
something 'new', worry about what's useful/worth doing at the design
phase)

-----------
If I do decide to use the gnc api for this,  I plan to do my own UI
stuff, as well as reports and things like scheduled tasks (All though
I might try to see if I can't marry my idea of using cron with gnc's
scheduled payments system).

btw I appreciate you not insulting/shooting me down on this though, I
know it seems a little impractical and a LOT ambitious, but I think
with proper watering and plenty of sunlight, this could be really
useful. :)  I haven't been doing development for longer than a couple
of years, but I think I can put something decent together IF I use the
right design and have useful criticism.

Thanks again,
Paul Dunbar
paul.dunbar at gmail.com


On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 14:42:53 -0500, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> 
> Paul Dunbar <paul.dunbar at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > I am in the beginning stages of developing a web-based Personal
> > Finance Manager.  I am currently considering the GnuCash core for
> > finance calculations and transaction management.  Ideally I would like
> > to be able to have my data stored in a postgres server that can be
> > shared between gnc and my application.  I decided the first place I
> > want to go when considering this would be the GnuCash development
> > team.  I have looked at many of the docs on the core and am hopeful,
> > but my learning curve will be high.
> >
> > Questions? Comments? Insults?
> 
> I'd ask you a primary question: why "web-based"?  If you're going for
> a more enterprise-wide system then web-based may be reasonable, but
> for personal use I really don't see the average user being able to
> install, conifigure, _AND SECURE_ a web server in order to run a
> "personal finance manager".
> 
> Having said that (see, I'm trying not to be insulting ;) you could
> write another interface around the gnucash API.  You'd in effect need
> to re-implement all the UI pieces of gnucash, but you could do it.  I
> don't know how hard it would be, nor how much time it would take, or
> even what the integration would look like.  But anything is possible,
> it's just a SMoP (Simple Matter of Programming).
> 
> :)
> 
> -derek
> --
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>