[TriLUG] gnucash

Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG trilug at trilug.org
Wed Apr 20 06:40:51 EDT 2022 

On Tue, 19 Apr 2022, Mauricio Tavares wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 9:11 PM Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at trilug.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 19 Apr 2022, Mauricio Tavares via TriLUG wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone use gnucash in a business? How well does it work?
>>
>> have been using it for a small business and then as well for my personal
>> finances for about 20 years.
>>
>      Good to hear! Does that mean you do not use it to generate
> reports to write, say, tax returns?

Hi Mauricio,

The small business is not very active anymore. Mostly I keep track of 
personal stuff for the IRS; mortgage interest, state tax paid on annual 
car registration... The amount of activity is small and I've never 
generated reports from gnucash. The amount of information that goes into 
tax returns is also small, and is transferred by hand. Mostly I balance my 
check and credit card statements, mortgage statements, utility bills and 
cash purchases.

>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2380574 Apr 29  2001 /usr/local/bin/gnucash*
>>
>      Am I correct to assume the if you are not using the DB support,
> the stuff is stored in the something.gnucash file?

yes

calvin: Wed 20 Apr 2022:/usr/local/share/gnucash/mack# dir *.gnucash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  763610 Mar 22 15:35 austintek.gnucash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   68432 Apr 16 13:39 mack_australia.gnucash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5188444 Apr 18 21:23 mack_usa.gnucash

As you can see, I do everything as root. I know this is frowned on in some 
circles, but I've been doing it since I first installed linux in 1994 and 
haven't had any problems with it.

sometime after I installed gnucash, they changed to using (I think) 
postgres for the database. There was a small window when you could convert 
the *.gnucash file to the DB format, which I didn't find out about till 
later. One of my working principles is never to upgrade working software, 
and so I've stayed with the original 32-bit install. gnucash still runs 
fine on my 64-bit machines with 32-bit compatibility libraries.

> Also, what lurks in ~/.local/share/gnucash?

hmm. don't have that directory

calvin: Wed 20 Apr 2022:/usr/local/share/gnucash# dir
total 3244
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root    4096 Apr 29  2001 html/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root    4096 Apr 29  2001 scm/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 Apr 29  2001 perl/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root    4096 Apr 29  2001 doc/
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root    4096 Jul 29  2020 ../
drwxr-xr-x  8 root root    4096 Aug  7  2020 ./
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   40796 Jan 20  2021 backup.sh*
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root    4096 Mar 28 14:47 passwords/
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root    4096 Apr 18 21:24 mack/

the mack directory is my *.gnucash files and notes.

html and doc seems to docs I've never read.

you need the perl and scm directories for my version of gnucash to run

calvin: Wed 20 Apr 2022:/usr/local/share/gnucash# dir perl/
total 56
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 41751 Apr 29  2001 Quote.pm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   228 Apr 29  2001 gnucash.pm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 ./
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root  4096 Aug  7  2020 ../

calvin: Wed 20 Apr 2022:/usr/local/share/gnucash# dir scm
total 300
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 printing/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 gnumeric/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 qif-import/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 srfi/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 report/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16572 Apr 29  2001 prefs.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4845 Apr 29  2001 path.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22696 Apr 29  2001 options.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3557 Apr 29  2001 main.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17251 Apr 29  2001 html-generator.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3486 Apr 29  2001 hooks.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  9844 Apr 29  2001 graph.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4507 Apr 29  2001 extensions.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2083 Apr 29  2001 engine-utilities.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11192 Apr 29  2001 engine-interface.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1116 Apr 29  2001 doc.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1519 Apr 29  2001 depend.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8753 Apr 29  2001 date-utilities.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7162 Apr 29  2001 currencies.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3503 Apr 29  2001 config-var.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6672 Apr 29  2001 command-line.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3646 Apr 29  2001 c-interface.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1191 Apr 29  2001 bs-interp.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8127 Apr 29  2001 bootstrap.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6719 Apr 29  2001 xml-generator.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3854 Apr 29  2001 utilities.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  5006 Apr 29  2001 text-export.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2007 Apr 29  2001 testbed.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3117 Apr 29  2001 substring-search.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3241 Apr 29  2001 structure.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1549 Apr 29  2001 startup.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37866 Apr 29  2001 slib-backup.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6466 Apr 29  2001 report.scm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13878 Apr 29  2001 report-utilities.scm
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root  4096 Apr 29  2001 ./
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root  4096 Aug  7  2020 ../

>> I gave a talk on it for TriLUG back then.
>>
>      I think it is high time for a new talk... hint hint

It would have to be a general talk on double entry accounting, using any 
double entry software. Once gnucash is installed (which wasn't simple back 
then, but probably is a lot better now), it's just a generic double entry 
accounting program. I'm not an accountant, so I would only be able to talk 
about what works for me. With 20 years of it under my belt, I'm confident 
that I have a system that works and keeps happy all the parties I have 
financial interactions with. As with any software that tracks finances, 
quite a bit of setting up of ledgers is involved. Initially, not knowing 
much about accounting, it took a while to figure out, but once that's 
done, you just do the same thing every year. I'm quite pleased to be able 
to use a program like gnucash. It's made tracking my daily cash flow a lot 
easier (I'd say "makes it possible").

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) trilug (dot) org - azimuthal equidistant
map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!

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