KMyMoney vs Gnucash

[Geert Janssens]

On Friday 15 August 2014 15:16:05 Gour wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> in another, non-related thred in devel list I did mention by brief
> experience with KMyMoney and Geert asked me to share it here...
> 
> Some time ago I stumbled upon the release notes about KDE Plasma-5. It
> looked interesting and I thought that maybe I should give it a try
> not to be so old-fashioned with my desktop. :-)
> 
> Moreover, I was thinking that maybe that the right time to try some of
> the apps from KDE arena if and/or how they can replace my current
> ones.
> 
> Gnucash is one of the *critical* app on my desktop, so I decided to
> try KMyMoney on the newly installed KDE Plasma-5 (everything running
> under VirtualBox) - I also stumbled upon some reviews greatly
> praising KyMyMoney over Gnucash, mostly in regard to report
> customization and ease of use
> 
> So, after KMyMoney was installed, I did manage to import my
> personal.gnucash file into it - the job was done quite well, almost
> painlessly.
> 
> However, after I tried and did enter my 1st transaction, the magic was
> gone, there was no joy and I quickly decided there is no chance that
> application could replace Gnucash on my desktop. It was also end of
> my KDE/Plasma dreaming and very quickly I was back at my regular
> desktop using i3 wm with some Xfce parts.
> 
> Probably Geert will be disappointed with superficial review of
> KMyMoney and I want to apologize to all its devs possibly reading
> it...but, entering transactions in GC is *much more* intuitive and
> easy, at least for me.
> 
> Whether it's just a fact that I've become quite familiar with GC's
> interface or the UI in Gnucash is simply more easy to work
> with...that's the question I do not have answer to nor I'll try to
> figure it out. It's simply not according to my taste does not fit my
> mind. Whatever. :-)
> 
> It could be that customizig reports in KMyMoney is easier - that's one
> of the features I'd like to see in Gnucash: ability to customize
> reports/invoices more easily without fiddling with Guile which is
> really not used so much to deserve the status of Gnucash's scripting
> language - but I simply didn't arrive so far in my 'evalauation'.
> 
> Finally, afaict, KMyMoney is not suitable for (smaller) businesses and
> if GC could, somehow, provide feature to have quotes (besides
> invoices), it would extend its usage quite far.
> 
> That's why for this part I still use PHP/MySQL web app to handle
> quotes/invoices.
> 
> That's all from me (for now).
> 


Gour,

Thanks for your feedback. What I take away from it is this:
- KMyMoney is very good in importing GnuCash data. I have my doubts about the opposite 
direction.
- You like transaction entry much better in GnuCash. So do I actually. I really think the way 
the registers work in terms of user experience are a very powerful feature of GnuCash. We 
should keep this in mind should we ever pick up the register 2 work.
- Our report system is in need of a revamp. We know this for some time already.
- The business features could use some expansion. You mention quotes, John mentioned price 
lists. No doubt there are more.

Thanks again,

Geert