GNUCash value proposition

[C M Reinehr]

Steve,

Your situation sounds similar to mine. Quicken was the only application 
tying me to Windows & I finally made to jump about three years ago and 
never have regretted it.

At first, I was concerned about being unable to download transactions 
automagically but as Russell just has commented I just switched to 
entering all transactions manually and it has not been a burden. I pay 
most of my bills either using my bank's bill pay service or direct debit 
arrangements (utility & credit card companies only) an enter the 
transactions into my checking ledger as I receive the bills & schedule 
them for payment. This allows me always to know my current & future 
balances. Even though I could, free of charge, download my bank 
transactions, I don't bother.

The most difficulty I encountered in making the switch was in 
transferring my transaction history from Quicken to GnuCash & that, 
primarily, was my fault. Instead of researching & testing, I just jumped 
into the deep end & did it. A little patience & preparation would have 
made it go more smoothly.

One final consideration is that I already was very familiar with double 
entry business accounting, so had no difficulty understanding GnuCash. 
Someone without accounting experience and knowing only Quicken's 
category system will have a more difficult time of it.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!

CMR

On 04/24/2017 10:31 AM, Steve Cohen 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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-- 
"Most bad government has grown out of too much government." -- Thomas 
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