[GNC] questions from a new user

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Hello, Neil, and welcome to GnuCash.

On 2023-01-08 16:14, Neil Morrish wrote:
> Hi
> I am not sure if gnucash is right for me, as it seems quite hard to get
> started. Can you advise me what steps to learn about for my simple
> requirement please?
> I want to keep a record of business transactions so I can send invoices and
> make an annual report for my tax calculation.
> I do work for 4 or 5 customers and like to give an invoice that shows the
> things I've done , the cost of the work, and the expenses I incur.
> I dont want to link this to my bank account.
> When it is set up, is it easy to input the entries quickly?

Your situation sounds familiar. It reminds me of my requirements for 
invoicing, when starting out my small consulting business.

What I get from your requirements are:

  * main task is to generate invoices
  * small volume of invoices
  * easy

That, plus "track my time spent by project", was my requirements list 
when I looked for an invoicing tool.  GnuCash can generate invoices, but 
it doesn't track time spent, and it is not "easy". GnuCash is really 
good for bookkeeping, keeping track of those bank accounts and credit 
cards. It does some business-related tasks like generating invoices. And 
it has a steep learning curve. And the customer support is this list — 
we are friendly, well-intentioned, but only volunteer, so not always 
fast or effective.

So I ended up paying hundreds of dollars CAD per year to Freshbooks 
<https://freshbooks.com/>, a web-hosted tool which puts a lot of effort 
into making invoice generation easy, making time-tracking easy, and 
having very good customer support.

So, GnuCash is good for a lot of situations. It can certainly meet all 
your requirements except "easy". But it may not be best for your 
requirements.

Best regards,
     —Jim DeLaHunt