KMyMoney vs Gnucash

[Geert Janssens]

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Hi John,

Thank you for your feedback. I'll reply in between.

On Friday 15 August 2014 11:49:25 John Morris wrote:
> Hi Geert,
>   Thanks for asking. Having used Quicken for over twenty years, I have
> been looking to move away from it for about eight years now.
> Obviously, it has not been a high priority, but it has always been in
> the back of my mind. Several years ago, something (I don't recall
> what) brought it to the forefront and I actually downloaded and
> installed the then-current version of GnuCash. While I was pleased to
> find an open-source solution and the feature set looked very good, I
> found the GUI to be marred by poor implementation. Additionally, the
> rigidity I experienced from the user and development communities was
> very off-putting. So much so that I sadly abandoned GnuCash and
> returned to Quicken while I sought another solution. The main two
> points of view that were held and expressed with almost religious
> fervor were (a) that GnuCash implements "true" double-entry
> bookkeeping and to do it any other way would be laughable and
> imbecilic and (b) that an orthogonal tagging system (Quicken has a
> rudimentary one in its Classes) is a waste of time and completely
> useless.
> 
You're expressing it rather radically but that makes it nice an clear :)

For me however both approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

I believe the double-entry bookkeeping has been a good design decision and serves as a very 
strong base for GnuCash.

On the other hand I completely agree that you can't model everything in such double-entry 
accounting system. Particularly not with regards to reports you would want to generate based 
on your data.

There is even a first example of using tags/categories present in the code: the tax system for 
the US tax report kind of works this way. Unfortunately it was implemented with a very specific 
and limited scope in mind and is hence very hard to extend to be more generally useful.

But let it be clear that I'm certainly in favour of adding a tagging system on top of the double-
entry bookkeeping base. From where I stand, the fact it hasn't happened yet is simply because 
so far no one has contributed the code for it. The reasons for that are multiple. The active devs 
all have other priorities (and limited time!) and no one else has provided such code. But I will 
certainly support the implementation of such a system in GnuCash if someone steps up.

>   Fast forward to this summer. With my current OS (Mac OS X 10.6)
> showing its age and my hardware likely to be replaced in the next few
> years, I'm again looking to replace Quicken because it will not run
> on the next Mac or the next Mac OS I use. Having found nothing that
> meets my needs, I have decided that I will have to accept GnuCash's
> limitations, at least until I find a better alternative or have the
> time to get back into programming myself (putting me in a different
> pot of the same dimensions as the one I have been in for most of the
> time I've been using Quicken). So, I downloaded the current version
> and fired it up. This time I did the extensive work required to
> convert my Quicken data to GnuCash and have been using the new system
> for about a month now.
> 
>   I freely admit that there are some very nice features and parts of
> the implementation are excellent.
Thanks. I'm glad there are also parts you like. :)

> However, the user experience is
> still marred with inconsistencies and the design remains mired in the
> thinking from a bygone era.
Yes, agreed. I have plenty of ideas to improve on this, but not enough time... (Still active 
though)

> Also, I'm still witnessing the rigid
> thinking that drove me away the first time (Michael's note was just
> one example).
Michael is not the user/developer community. While I appreciate his feedback on some 
occasions I also disagree on others. In this case I disagreed with him.

> That said, I have exhausted the time I can afford for
> this conversion project. Given that I will be moving to a new version
> of the Mac OS this fall or winter, I simply have to accept the flaws
> and rough edges just to get my work done.
I appreciate you have taken your time to express your frustrations. I can't promise anything will 
improve anywhere soon, but I find it important such views are expressed openly in the 
community. They are vital for the project to understand where it stands. So thanks.

Geert