GNUCash value proposition

[Russell Mercer]

For the majority of the 8 years I've been using Gnucash, I've entered all
of my transactions manually.  I've tried some of the import functions, but
haven't found that they meet my needs as far as their ability to
automatically categorize, and the descriptions tend to be rather arcane.
So, in that regard, I've never incurred any cost.

Given the number of transactions we have, and the time it takes, which
isn't more than a couple hours a month, I think it is a net benefit because
it gives me a direct time to check what is happening with each account, and
see if there are any odd transactions.  The more regular transactions you
have, that you can schedule, the more your input time will be reduced.

Hope this helps.

Russell

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 8:31 AM, Steve Cohen <stevecoh2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have stumbled into the world of GNUCash, which I never heard of until
> yesterday, over frustration with another forced and unwanted upgrade of
> Quicken.  I use Quicken to track my personal finances, including
> investements (which I'm not too rigourous with because I have a
> financial guy who sends me the offical statements upon which my taxes
> are based).  I mainly want to pay bills, keep a rough running total of
> my net worth, and be able to download my transactions in banks and
> credit cards to a central place.
>
> I know my way around Linux, Open Source and GitHub and am not unwilling
> to get my hands dirty with technical details.  It would be one more nail
> in the coffin of my Windows use, which would make me happy.  And as I
> near retirement, the thought of possibly even working on such a project
> is not unappealing to me.
>
> But as I began thinking about ways to move from Quicken to GNUCash, the
> following obstacle is holding me back:
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings#Chase It
> will apparently cost me $9.95 a month just to be able to automatically
> download my transaction data from Chase Bank, which is more than Quicken
> would cost me if I upgraded every year (which I don't).  Possibly plus
> connection fees to the other financial instituations, (brokerages,
> pension accounts, etc.) that I now connect to via Quicken.
>
> So my question is, and please don't take this as a hostile question, is
> whether it is correct that in making the jump from Quicken I will have
> to pay the banks these high connection fees to use OFX?   If it is, I
> might just opt to stick with Quicken, which I'm not crazy about. Or am I
> missing something?  While there is documentation that is as recent as
> this year, there are also documents dated 2006 or 2008, so I'm not clear
> about the prospects and viability of this project.
>
> What do GNUCash users do?  Pay the ten bucks a month?  Give up on OFX
> and automatic downloading, or download data from the banks' websites and
> manually import into GNUCash?  Or something else?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Steve Cohen
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