HomeBank, Grisbi & Gnucash

Message

hankyknot · #31 Post by **hankyknot** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 01:56

I love Puppy, its great, its quick its reliable and it does everything I used to be able to do under Windows (between security updates, forced hardware upgrades and regular reboots) except accounting.

If I could get proper business accounting I could bin windows forever. Alas I'm not having a lot of luck. I have Quickbooks Pro 2007 and no matter what I do I cant seem to get it to work.

I currently have Puppy 2.17 running of a USB key. Is there a specific combination of WINE versions etc that I need?

Dougal · #32 Post by **Dougal** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 10:53

hankyknot wrote:Is there a specific combination of WINE versions etc that I need?

Have you tried googling for it? I think this will be more wine-related than Puppy-related, so people who meddlt with wine will probably be in a better positio to help...

hankyknot · #33 Post by **hankyknot** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 12:20

Must admit because of ever growing but currently small level of Linux knowledge I was trying to stay within the puppy package manager framework.

I guess as long as I back my key up before I do anything too far outside my comfort zone I can always reinstall.

Here goes.....

hankyknot · #34 Post by **hankyknot** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 12:22

Ok I googled and as always a million answers came up.

Most of them ask about the type of linux its being installed on, ubuntu fedora etc. Puppy is never listed but what is the closest association or doesnt it really matter?

hankyknot · #35 Post by **hankyknot** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 12:57

While looking for a solution I came accross this page http://community.intuit.ca/discussion/i ... opic=21054

The thing that caught my attention was the Online Edition, some makes the comment that IE6 is rock solid in WINE. Im off to try and install IE6 under WINE now to see if this really is the case. It may be one solution worth investigating

Ok so installing IE 6 is proving impossible (by that I mean way above my ability level) so will shelve this for now and continue to try and find an alternative.

GeoffS · #36 Post by **GeoffS** » Thu 16 Aug 2007, 22:23

hankyknot
What are the problems you are having with QuickBooks under Wine. I run Version 8 under Wine all the time and have been doing so for over 12 months. I have to install version 7 to get V8 going, V8 being an upgrade.
I have not found any free bookkeeping software that was satisfactory. Most of them are based around a simple cashbook type system and many do not conform to any proper bookkeeping principles. As you will note from the previous discussion Gnucash was the best but it was eventually a disaster. I'm waiting to try version 2.
I currently have 1 problem with QuickBooks. I can not create an invoice and include disbursements (expenses). The window that should display the expenses opens empty. I had never tried to do this before. I normally charge disbursements directly to the client. I actually had to go back to Windows to check that it did work under Windows

I'm not sure that I'm going to chase this bug, I don't really need the feature.
Let me know what your problems are and I'll try to help.
Cheers
Geoff

hankyknot · #37 Post by **hankyknot** » Fri 17 Aug 2007, 00:48

No matter what I do I cant even install it, I get the window telling me that I need to install Flash 7 but cant get beyond it. Flash 7 doesnt install and it seems to ignore the fact I have the Flash9 package installed.

GeoffS · #38 Post by **GeoffS** » Fri 17 Aug 2007, 10:14

As far as I know, I don't have Flash installed and never have

I don't use the internet option in QBooks but that can't be related as you can't even install, have to think about that!!!!!
Don't really see how Flash gets into it.
Geoff

hankyknot · #39 Post by **hankyknot** » Wed 29 Aug 2007, 10:06

Still cant get past Qbooks 2007 need for flash sadly.

Was curious whether the problems with GnuCash were just the result of the dataload from Qbooks and whether its something that would work ok from scratch rather than using files transferred from an Intuit product?

GeoffS · #40 Post by **GeoffS** » Wed 29 Aug 2007, 10:39

hankyknot
I'd forgotten about this one

A question re QBooks - are you installing a Version 6 to 7 upgrade or a straight Version 7. Oh! yes, I do have Flash installed - I don't know why, maybe that's why I've not had your problem.
Re GnuCash - no the problem with Gnucash is very well documented. For some strange reason the developers used floating point arithmetic.

Then they have not trapped all their floating point errors. Eventually you get a floating point error.

Even if that didn't happen you would eventually notice one cent errors occurring. The original version of Gnucash is effectively dead due to that problem.
Cheers
Geoff

TonshA · #41 Post by **TonshA** » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 08:04

A review of buddi here:

http://www.linux.com/feature/119138

It's not a true accounts package. Just a personal finance manager.

DaveA

BarryK · #42 Post by **BarryK** » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 09:40

I think one that has been overlooked in this thread is Qhacc. It's a PET package on ibiblio. It needs Qt.

muggins · #43 Post by **muggins** » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 10:31

do you think it's worth compiling the latest version barry, as the one on ibiblio is v3.3, but latest is 3.5? (next release will use QT4.2!)

muggins · #44 Post by **muggins** » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 13:14

i've uploaded a .pet of qhacc-3.5 here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=21917

SimplyFlower · #45 Post by **SimplyFlower** » Wed 03 Oct 2007, 13:35

The first personal finance software program that I used was MS Money, because I was still using MS Windows. When I decided to switch completely to Linux, I chose Kmymoney2 because it was stated to be like MS Money. I used KmyMoney2 for over a year and liked it.

Then I decided to make Puppy my main OS. I tried all the finance programs available to Puppy and finally chose Grisbi because it would import .qif files. I thought I would be able to import from an exported Kmymoney2 .qif file. This didn't work. The help files weren't useful and the online support isn't in English (English is the only language I can speak and read).

Eventually, I installed GnuCash in another distro and imported the Kmymoney2 .qif into GnuCash. Then I was able to export my data file and sucessfully import it into Grisbi. While I still had GnuCash installed, I decided to use it to see if I liked it. I didn't. It would mix up the entries and when I tried to fix them the program would crash. After a day of frustrations, I uninstalled GnuCash.

In Puppy, I used Grisbi for several months (having finally imported my accounts). It was okay, but I still much preferred Kmymoney2. The main reason I disliked Grisbi was the lack of support and documentation in English. I had to spend a lot of time just figuring out how to do things myself which I never actually got to use the program's complete functionality due to lack of knowledge. Then I discovered how to get a working Kmymoney2 in Puppy. So, I was happliy back to using Kmymoney2.

TonshA wrote:A review of buddi here:

http://www.linux.com/feature/119138

It's not a true accounts package. Just a personal finance manager.

DaveA

I took a look at Buddi and downloaded it. It seems to be a very nice program that works cross-platform (e.g. Windows, Mac, Linux). It will work in any operating system that has Sun Java 1.5 or greater installed which makes it very nice for portability using an USB key (or with a multisession Puppy CD/DVD). It's small (one jar file that is less than 30 K), additional plugins are available for import/export functions which are also very small, fairly simple to use, is well documented, well maintained and supported, several translations are available (English being the main language), and of course open GPL.

The advantage I can see over Kmymoney2 and/or GnuCash is that Buddi doesn't require KDE or Gnome, is cross-platform, and will also help a person to create and maintain a budget which Kmymoney2 doesn't (not sure about GnuCash). The disadvantage is Buddi doesn't have any easy way to reconcile accounts. It's all manual using an outside calculator and checking a person's entries against the bank's. Whereas, Kmymoney2 (not sure about GnuCash) has a nice GUI window that shows running amount differences between the Kmymoney account and the bank's statement.

The advantage I can see over Grisbi is that Buddi supports several translations (mainly English). Grisbi's support is in French. In my opinion, Buddi's import/export functionality works better than Grisbi's (of course not being able to read French, maybe this functionality is the same).

The disadvantage of including Buddi in Puppy is that it requires a full install of Sun Java (it can't use any cut-down versions of java) which would make Puppy's initial iso too large. But just like Sun Java can be added as a .pet package, so could Buddi.

At first glance, I like Buddi. I was able to import my Kmymoney2 .qif file and will be using Buddi for the next few months to really see if it meets all my requirements. It starts up a little slow being java, but once running, it's ok. I think it will be a great financial program to add to Puppy's selection of available add-on .pet packages.

Bahurim · #46 Post by **Bahurim** » Wed 03 Oct 2007, 23:01

I see gnucash is up to version 2.2.1 as of 8-20-07. Has anyone compiled this on puppy from source to see if it will run without the floating point problems?

I have been checking out these finance proggys and wouldn't you know it I really like moneydance, except you have to pay for it.

Also, I have been looking for kmymoney2 for puppy but cannot find a pet or dotpup. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

SimplyFlower · #47 Post by **SimplyFlower** » Thu 04 Oct 2007, 07:30

Bahurim wrote:Also, I have been looking for kmymoney2 for puppy but cannot find a pet or dotpup. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

As far as I know, there isn't a .pet or .pup package for Kmymoney2. There are too many dependencies that have to be met being a KDE application. This does not mean you can't get Kmymoney2 to run in Puppy. You may want to read my earlier post:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 394#134394

Bahurim · #48 Post by **Bahurim** » Thu 04 Oct 2007, 12:35

Ok, thanks SimplyFlower. I am running TeenPup which has a bunch of KDE libs already and was hoping kmymoney2 would run on it without any additional libs. So you just compile it from source then?

SimplyFlower · #49 Post by **SimplyFlower** » Thu 04 Oct 2007, 13:01

Bahurim wrote:Ok, thanks SimplyFlower. I am running TeenPup which has a bunch of KDE libs already and was hoping kmymoney2 would run on it without any additional libs. So you just compile it from source then?

I'm not very familiar with TeenPup, but if you have Gslapt you could install the slackware packages. If not, you can get a Slackware .tgz and try installing as an alien package in PetGet installer. Or you could just compile it from source.

Remember, you will also need libofx. Kmymoney2 won't run without it.

hankyknot · #50 Post by **hankyknot** » Tue 08 Jan 2008, 05:47

Its been a while since anything was added to this post and I'm still looking for linux based alternatives to windows based acounting software, it truly is the last necessity before I can honestly do everything I need within puppy.

Has anyone found anything that actually works?

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

HomeBank, Grisbi & Gnucash

Quickbooks, and WINE, really, what am I doing wrong

Re: Quickbooks, and WINE, really, what am I doing wrong

Hadn't thought of that

.... but just before that

Quickbooks OE

Problems with Quickbooks start with install

Gnucash from scratch a better alternative to transferring?

Any progress?