Bills

[Donald Allen]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Mac & Barbara <mbcraig at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Can gnucash be used to pay bills, or will it have that capacity in future updates ?

I am not one of the developers, just a happy Gnucash user. But I think
the answer to your question is going to be "no, in the US". But ...
I've been using Gnucash for several years now, after years of using
Quicken and then a year of Microsoft Money (ugh) when Walt Mossberg
gave it a good review in the WSJ. With both, I used the bill-paying
feature, and had doubts about switching to Gnucash because it didn't
support this in the US. But I found the simplicity and sensible design
of Gnucash so compelling, I went ahead anyway (after a transition
period where I maintained my records in both). To replace the
bill-paying feature, I signed up for web-based electronic bill-paying
with the bank that holds my checking account. To my surprise, this has
been nearly as convenient as the integrated bill-paying. Sure, in the
worst case, you have to enter a transaction twice, once on the bank's
website and once in Gnucash. But many of the transactions are periodic
and some of those are the same amount every month (e.g., mortgage
payment). For the latter, I have scheduled an automatic transaction
with the bank website, and entered a scheduled transaction in Gnucash,
and just stand back and let the technology take care of everything.
For many of the periodic transactions where the amount varies (e.g.,
electric bill, cable tv/internet, credit cards), I've set up automatic
payments via the payee's website to pay the bill in full every month.
Recording in Gnucash is very easy, because of auto-completion. I could
go on, but I won't. The point is, I don't miss the lack of this
feature at all.

/Don

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