MS-Money user so GNUcash newbie and first post

[Ian Waddington]

Hi

 

Hopefully I have got this post right, I have never used a mailing list
manager before, I'm more used to the traditional forum approach.

 

I have been using MS-Money in the UK since day one, in fact I was a beta
tester on several of the UK versions. My current 40Mb UK 2005 file has 11
years' worth of data and is struggling with some serious performance issues
which seem to have been made worse by a recent move to Windows 7.  I've a
number of options for continuing with Money, including archiving, virtual
machines or a new file from say Jan 1.  Very mindful I'm using a very
unsupported product and that one day it might just all stop I have decided
to explore alternatives so installed GNUcash 2.3.15 to have a look and play.

 

I am sure all my questions have been asked before so my first question is
whether or not there is a list of questions for ex Money users? If so could
someone point me in the right direction.

 

If not my questions so far are

 

1, I am used to recording a Payee for each transaction. This helps me find
things at a later date. Is there a way to record this information?

2, I make extensive use of classifications to give an extra dimension to
reporting and tracking, two examples, to track household decorating project
to track all expenditure against that project irrespective of the account
(or category), or to track the total cost of a holiday, a classification
allows you to report on a quite disparate set of transactions.

3, Memo field to capture information about a transaction, for example it was
a Toaster or the car mileage and litres purchased on a full receipt.

 

So far I believe I could probably do all the above with a structured
Description field but I'm not yet sure how successful that would be for
subsequent searches and would ideally like something a little more
structured. Perhaps, I can define my own fields into the database, is there
a way?

 

I also have some non-Money related questions

4, Is there any best practice guidance about protecting my email address
using this type of mail manager?

5, IE complains about the GNUcash site certificate, why is this?

6, Is there a sample file somewhere that would give me a head start with my
evaluation?

 

Thank you for your help