[GNC] Request for Comments: A simple, mobile-friendly webinterface for GnuCash

[Joshua]

Good evening everybody,

I recently built a simple web interface for GnuCash and wish to share
it with you, in the hopes of receiving feedback and thougths and that it
might be useful to others:

GitHub: https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web

Demo: https://gnucash-web-demo.bachmeier.cc

I have managed all my personal finances in GnuCash for several years,
including the cash I carry with me. Being able to record expenses or
other transactions from my phone is therefore a major usecase to me and
I imagine to many others as well.

Most existing solutions are based around exporting on mobile & importing
in the desktop app, which doesn't really satisfy me. There has been some
activity on this topic here before, e.g. in 2012 James posted about his
project "gnucash-django" [1], but I don't think much came of it (I found a
few other things, check out the "Related Work" section in my README on
GitHub if you are interested).

Anyway, back to my project: I got the Idea to do this when I discoverd
piecash [2] and quickly hacked together an MVP. After some month of
using, patching and extending it I must say I am quiet happy with the
result. One can browse accounts, view, add and edit transactions, and
the like (see the README for a better feature list with screenshots).

The setup is to use one of the database backends instead of the XML
backend and hook the app up to that. I have the app running on a server
(with MariaDB) and use an SSH tunnel to access the database directly with the
desktop app.

Whats important to me is that this stays absolutely simple. I don't want
to replace the desktop app in any way (not that I could). GnuCash Web is
intended as a "companion" app to record (and mayby fix) simple
transactions [3] on the go, because I usually forget them until I get home.

Another neat feature is a simple CLI that can be used to get new price
quotes for all custom securities and currencies in the database. Using
e.g. a cronjob, the price history for my commodities always stays up to
date even if I don't open GnuCash for a while.

Ì've been using my app personally for just over a year now and find it
great. I can no longer imagine using GnuCash for my day-to-day finances
without it and will probably be using (and therefore maintain it) for
many years to come.

Alright, thanks for reading to this point. Please do try out the demo,
look at the repo or even set it up yourself. If you have any thougths,
suggestions or feedback, please tell me. I'm thankful for any
response. I'd be happy to engage in a discussion about this.

Best regards,
Joshua

[1]: https://github.com/sdementen/piecash
[2]: https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2012-March/043762.html
[3]: With "simple" transaction I mean only two splits

--
J.