[GNC] Sharing Some Changes With the GnuCash Community

[Andre Powell]

I have been following the software’s development in the background for some time and had already planned to move my business finances back to GnuCash later this year from Wave Accounting. After doing my taxes this year, I really felt the lack of true accounting workflows with Wave, and it pushed me to reconsider the tools I was using overall.

For my personal finances, I had been using YNAB for years because of its greatest strength for our household: communication. At the beginning of this year, I moved to Actual Budget, but after running into an issue in mid-April and spending a lot of time trying to clean it up, I decided it was time to move back to GnuCash completely.

What I realized during the process was that I needed a few things in place to make GnuCash fit the workflow my wife and I had become accustomed to:

A way to summarize the financial information most important to us
A budget report that better communicates our current position
A way to track debt repayment progress directly inside the same application
I ended up putting together a set of dashboard and report modifications and wanted to share them with the community in case others find them useful or would like to contribute.

Financial Dashboard



Budget vs. Actual
Emergency Fund tracking
Debt Repayment summary
Cashflow snapshot
Net Worth
Account Balances
Projected Balances
Upcoming Transactions
Highest Spending Categories
Budget Report Improvements



Sinking Funds
Future Purchases
Carryover Amounts
The goal was to bring some of the communication and visibility strengths found in tools like YNAB and Actual Budget into a more traditional accounting workflow.

Debt Repayment Planner

Select debts to pay down
Choose snowball, avalanche, or custom repayment methods
Add additional payments to accelerate progress
I have been using this setup for some time and greatly reduced some stress, especially wondering if the numbers are accurate. 

*Disclaimer: My programming background is Java, Python, Swift, and Flutter. It was kind of cool to poke around in Scheme for a change. Between Googling and using some assistance, I was able to get this up and running. I also lean on Refactoring UI to make things look "nicer" than my brain would normally conceive ;-). If there are optimizations or improvements that could be made, I am completely open to feedback.

The dashboard/report modifications are available here: https://github.com/apowell656/gnucash-financial-radar