Reluctantly Going Back to QuickBooks

[Jan Steinman]

I'd like to thank those who patiently answered my questions, but I'm reluctantly going back to QuickBooks.

In particular, the only migration path I appear to have is via CVS import, which seems kludgey. I had numerous segfaults, things didn't seem to go where I thought I put them, and there is apparently no way to import the all-important "Memo" field. Also, I was unable to build a Mac bundled application, and the one that is available for download won't speak to MySQL, which was the main motivation for switching, because I currently keep "double books" on certain things. I was able to build a Quartz (versus X-Term) version, but it just doesn't behave like a regular Mac application, which is important because I was going to let multiple non-tekkie people use it. Finally, the MySQL data model was essentially unusable, even read-only, due to lack of foreign keys and opaque references all over the place.

To be fair, QuickBooks doesn't make it easy to leave their clutches -- all the more reason I wanted to get away! But I spent TWO DAYS importing TWO accounts, and I can't afford to spend another couple weeks plus to get the other accounts in properly. At least I figured out the regex to change "MM/DD/YY" into "YYYY-MM-DD", because GnuCash apparently can't deal with very many date formats.

There was a lot to be impressed with, and I'll be back to check it out at the next major rev level!

I will report the obvious bugs I found (segfault on garbage import, inability to import "Memo" field, strange behaviour of the "Account" field) and hope they get in.

If I were starting out fresh with nothing to import, and didn't need an understandable MySQL data model, I would certainly go for GnuCash! Thanks for all the hard work!

(The following came up totally at random, but seems strangely apropos:)

:::: We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. -- T. S. Eliot
:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::