Bookkeeping the FOSS way
Smart Money
Put your personal finances in order or manage your small business with GNUCash 3.5, a free and open source software program designed to handle both basic and complex accounting data.
If you're starting your own business or want to take greater control of your personal finances, you may have been tempted to subscribe to one of the many popular proprietary (and sometimes expensive) accounting products on the market such as Sage and Intuit QuickBooks. There is some sense in this: If you choose a less well-known product that is later discontinued, all your financial data could become unreadable overnight. Many of the freeware finance programs also don't support more advanced features like double-entry bookkeeping.
GnuCash offers a ready solution to both these dilemmas. As free and open source software, there's far less risk of support being discontinued altogether, and it can open and save transaction data in a number of formats. Despite being free of charge, the program is suitable for complex accounting data and supports double-entry bookkeeping, multiple currencies, and credit card transactions out of the box.
GnuCash 3.5 [1], which is the focus of this review, contains a truly staggering number of features. We have focused here on setting up accounts and inputting transaction data, but we encourage readers to take the time to explore the program's extra functions, too (see the "Other Features" section).
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