Giving up on Gnucash

[Jean-David Beyer]

Rod Engelsman wrote (in part):

> And I'm dead serious about the need for someone to take this and fork it 
> into a product that's more friendly for home users migrating from 
> Quicken, Money, etc. The UI paradigm is squarely aimed at accountants and
> that's fine, although the strict double-entry, debit & credit, scheme is
> little more than an unneccessary anachronism. Banks don't even use it any
> more, not in that way at least.  My bank statement has a single column
> with checks shown as negative amounts and deposits as positive amounts.
> The debit/credit, left column/right column business is simply a
> computational device intended to minimize mistakes by clerks. My computer
> isn't prone to math mistakes so it isn't needed.
> 
I have had difficulty in making the switch from Quicken that I use and
detest to GnuCash for my personal accounts. The main trouble is the
downloading of my transactions in my American Express account and my
Ameritrade (stock brokerage) accounts. It may even be possible, but I have
not figured out how. The other problem I have is with the Income Tax report.
I have not really figured out how to customize that, and it does not seem to
save it from run to run. I am running GnuCash 1.8.8, according to the Help
button.

I have no difficulty with the user interface; I even prefer it to the
Quicken model because it is more intuitive, not the random ad hoquery that
Intuit perpetrates on the users.

I am also treasurer of the local Friends' Meeting. I keep all their accounts
in GnuCash, since we have no stock brokerage or credit card accounts. We
have a bunch of members who make contributions and each of them needs a
letter at the end of each year for tax purposes. We have regular and
irregular expenses. GnuCash does wonderfully at that. I have not made any
custom reports, but use the Profit and Loss and Balance sheet for my monthly
reports. Diddling the customization features of the reports has been
adequate. For this, GnuCash is almost perfect.

-- 
  .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
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