MoneyDance vs GNUcash

[Tim Wunder]

On 12/30/2003 4:21 PM, I believe that Joel Hammer wrote:

> Well, the New Year is upon us. I feel the need to start tracking my
> money, again. With the kids mostly out of school, we may even have
> some disposable income, but, it's impossible to say without better
> records. Does anyone have experience with either MoneyDance or GNUcash
> they would like to share? I can buy MoneyDance for $20.00 from the Lindows
> warehouse. GNUcash is free. But, I am not adverse to paying for software.
> 

I like and use gnucash. The latest version is 1.8.8. Check the docs on 
www.gnucash.org and read up on how it works. The docs have recently (in 
the past 6 months or so) undergone revision, so they should be fairly 
current. I use it for tracking checking, savings, credit cards, IRA's 
and investments. It has (fairly raw) support for tracking loans 
(mortgages, auto loans, etc,) that is useful, if cumbersome. I also have 
grown fond of it's scheduled transaction support, even though it's not 
quite what I was anticipating it would be. For those inclined, it 
supports a Postgres backend (which doesn't support its business features 
and scheduled transactions, yet.)

FWIW, the gnucash developers are working hard on a gnome2 port, but that 
won't be ready for a few months, yet. It's recently undergone a surge in 
developer input (I lurk on the gnucash-devel mailing list,) which is 
encouraging.

I've never really used moneydance, so I can't comment on it. But I don't 
think it's a double-entry accounting system, like gnucash, but I could 
be wrong.

HTH,
Tim