[grib@linuxdevel.com: Survey results?]

[Linas Vepstas]

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Prelim survey results are now online, see main website.
--linas


exec summary:


The survey continues, but this is a good time to take a break and show
some results. For those too busy to read through the results, we preface
the results with a summary.=20

It has 45 questions, and its broken into six sections:=20

General=20
Commercializing GnuCash=20
Using GnuCash=20
Future Features=20
Online Banking=20
Personal Profile The summary results and conclusions are below, by
section.=20



General and Personal Profile=20
There were 415 respondants in the 13 days since the survey started.
Respondants are overwhelmingmly male (97%), with a median age in
late-20's, early-30's. They are highly educated: more than 80% have
colllege or postgrad degrees. They're highly technical: better than
2/3rds are programmers, engineers or scientists. And they are old-hands
at GNU/Linux/BSD: more than 2/3rds have been using Linux for over 3
years. This sample is very, very far from what one finds for the average
internet/computer user, nearly half of which is a woman (the left half,
presumably), and most of which is non-technical (no surprise here, the
brain weighs much less than the muscles, guts and bones). At a later
date, I hope to publish the results as they would look if we surgically
removed the geek elements.=20

Nearly 90% have used accounting programs before. Less then 20% find that
GnuCash meets all thier needs. Nearly half wish it had more features,
and about 25% can't use GnuCash because its missing critical features.=20


Commercializing GnuCash=20
Half of all respondants would buy a cdrom and a book. $20USD is the
sweet spot for the CDROM price. Support is not an issue. There is little
interest in a 'GnuCash magazine' or in a general-financial-advice
website.=20


Using GnuCash=20
About 80% use gnucash for core accounting, 10% for incidentals, and 10%
for small-business. 25% would use an MS Windows version.=20


Future Features=20
Top requests: more features, better documentation, all aimed squarely at
the home user. Top picks for each feature category are below:=20



Home users: scheduled transactions (integrated into
dayplanner/calander), budgeting, more reports, online banking.=20


Financial: interest-bearing accounts, better geenral stcok& bond
support.=20


Interop: export reports to spreadsheet.=20


Online banking: 80% of respondants want to do this. Top picks: view
balances, reconcile accounts, pay bills. Little demand for alternative
payment systes, and of those, paypal is the winner. 25% have used
quicken/msmoney for online banking. Security, privacy and reliability
are all hot issues.=20


Business Accounting: support invoicing/billing, accounts-payable,
receivable. However, the results are sort of bizarre: users are not that
interested in an integrated address-book/contact manager/to-do list. I
find this is bizarre, since things like billing/invoicing/checkprinting
is almost useless if you don't have adresses and phone numbers to go
with your invoice system. And accounts-payable is basically a fancy
to-do-list, rendered all-the-more useless withough good checkprinting
(i.e. print address on check) support. So I'm tempted to conclude that
respondants have little/no actual experience in using a small-business
accounting package. Indeed, we should filter results for those who have
actually used peachtree/quickbooks or other business pacakge.=20


dot-com accounting: there is little interest in GnuCash as a
back-end/tie-in to merchant systems. Again, maybe that's because the
respondants are primarily home users.=20


----- Forwarded message from Bill Gribble <grib@linuxdevel.com> -----

To: linas@linas.org
Subject: Survey results?
From: grib@linuxdevel.com (Bill Gribble)

I'm curious about the gnucash feature survey.  It doesn't appear that=20
the results are available online.=20

Can you point me to a results URL or send me the current results?

Thanks,
b.g.

----- End forwarded message -----

--=20
Linas Vepstas -- linas@gnumatic.com -- http://www.gnumatic.com/

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