Ask Robert Merkel About GnuCash Development

GnuCash is probably the best-known Linux accounting program for home and small business users. GnuCash development is now sponsored by The Linux Developers Group, Inc., a company formed this May by the core GnuCash developers, including Robert Merkel, who originally got involved with GnuCash because, he says, "I was sick of my father nagging me about the dud accounting program he used." Please feel free to ask Robert about GnuCash, guile, shared libraries or almost anything else, even cricket. (He's Australian and a major cricket fan.) We'll send Robert 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

Online banking and OFX support

I saw in the gnucash source tree that there have been some attempts at OFX (XML-based Online Financial eXchange format), are they still alive and is anyone active on them? Is there any work being done on online banking and how important are they to the gnucash developers? What/When should we expect to see something come from these efforts and how far along are you?

Re:Checkprinting support

This has actually already been done. You can print to either Quicken/Quickbook style checks or Microsoft money style checks (or you can create your own custom format).

Gnucash 1.6.0 really is getting to be a pretty full featured program. It's not much like the old X-Accountant program that you probably tried way back when.

Small Business Accounting

Seeing as how Microsoft has purchased Great Plains and how Peachtree is an awful hack, our small business has a great interest in finding an affordable suite under a libre OS. We have looked into a few options, but honestly, I think GnuCash for small businesses is worth waiting for.

So, here are my questions:
. Do you guys have any timeframe on the small business release?
. Have you considered creating a startup to fund development of the small business suite? There is a *lot* of potential here for selling services unlike Nautilus... tax updates, training, dead-tree manuals, etc.

Thanks for all the good code!
-l

Palm Conduit?

I'm likely not alone in my need to be able to sync my finance software with my Visor. Are there any plans to link GnuCash to a Palm-based money manager program, a la Quicken and PocketQuicken? Or are there any plans to develop a new, GPLed "PocketGnuCash"?

Re:Integer based currency type

1.6 is based on an integral type (gnc_numeric). This is one of the big changes since 1.4. I'm not sure if a round-off error was ever demonstrated to have occurred with the old code, though.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

GnuCash and Gnome Office...

I know there has been expressed interest on the part of the GnuCash developers to have GnuCash be right there in Gnome Office with the other applications. What specific plans do you have along those lines? Any plans for integration with Gnumeric, e.g. to allow quick importing of financial data into a spreadsheet or vice-versa? Or being able to pull in GnuCash reports into an AbiWord or Open Office document?

XML and billing ...

Currently there are a number of XML billing initiatives such as XMLPay, VisaXML, etc... How do you see these trends influencing the design and development of GNUcash ... in particular do you think that your users are only looking for a simple view/format/verify client (think IMAP server + XML extensions) while GNUcash moves towards being the agent of record (aka a specialised ASP?) Of you do see GNUcash as a drop-in replacement for existing monolithic accounting packages? In summary, given that the market for electronic businesses and purchases (greater use of international currency, direct attachment to electronic settlement, near real-time risk management) is going to change, how do you think GNUcash should respond?

LL

Integer based currency type

A while ago I was hesitant to use GnuCash because I discovered that it uses floating-point numbers instead of integers to store currency values. What have you done to work around the round-off errors inherent in such a system, and do you plan to migrate to an integer based system? If so, when?

Do all those libs really do something?

Again, do all of those libraries really do something? How did it get to require so many packages? Did you start out with a Gnome system with a few other odds and ends, and just picked up from there, or was there a concious decision?

Multi-User

What is the future of multi-user gnucash? Is there a working group or something similar? How much of a priority is this?

It would seem that a corporate offering would best be accomplished with this feature, and ensure some cash flow for your company.

On a similar vein, are the multiple dependencies meant to create a decision where there will be healthy installation contracts for you? (It's a joke, BTW)

Re:Cricket?

Speaking as a bizness, up until about three days ago, we could switch to GnuCash but for a few problems:

Multi-User. This is the problem that the GnuCash team can actually attack and do something about. I'm looking forward to 1.6 to play with that. Unfortunately, that's only at home, because my business needs at least two more functions.

Payroll. There are 35 employees here, in two different states, with SIMPLE IRA, insurance deductions, etc, etc. A solid payroll module is a must, and must include federal, state, and local tax tables. GnuCash could develop this, offer hooks, and then sell the files on the side, or in some other way make part of this a value added. The real joy is that most of the information is openly available.

Direct Deposit. This is related to payroll, but is enough different to warrant mention separately. This week, we started gathering info to allow direct-deposit. This is the one area where GnuCash might have the greatest trouble, as this requires working with banks. Banks have rules, and letting a bunch of raggumuffins into their systems and doing all kinds of '1337 stuff isn't covered by the rules.

FWIW, even though I asked two questions (one jokingly) about the dependencies issue, I got them conquered in one or two evenings at home. But for various reasons (cough)wife(cough), I bought a copy of Quicken over the weekend. It looks nifty, and has tons of features, but not many that I would use.

Custom Reports

Is there any possiblity or chance that custom reporting mechnisms can be added into GNUCash? (I.E. A number of rules can be set up to group certain transactions into groups and generate different reports based on other sets of rules.) It is the one thing in the 1.4 release that I thought was needed. The reports that were there seemed limited and I resorted to copying data into gnumeric to generate the reports I wanted. Does 1.6 correct this, or am I still limited to a number of default reports? Is there currently work on this area, or if not where in the code can I best look to start to add this capablity.

Re:Online Banking Plugins?

According to this page [ofx.net], Open Financial Exchange (which Quicken uses) is "publicly available for implementation by any financial institution or vendor." Thus, the only thing standing in the way of this happening is a brave soul to code it up.

The specification can be downloaded here [ofx.net], bypassing the annoying requirement to provide information for their database before downloading.

money laundering

Money Laundering through Casinos [orlingrabbe.com]

How to Launder Money in the Futures Market [orlingrabbe.com]

Money Laundering 101 [orlingrabbe.com]

Documentation

Will the next major release feature some decent documentation? Extensive documentation is the only thing I miss from GNUCash. Having only recently come to live in the US, I have enough trouble understanding the local economics, so it would be good to have a nice tutorial for my personal finance management program as a starting point.

gnucash won't boot?

Could you please tell me why gnucash won't boot? I believe I have all the latest packages and libraries, and I've installed the the program like this:

boot=/dev/hda

vga=normal
default=gnucash
prompt
timeout=50
image=/usr/bin/gnucash
label=old_linux
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.2-22mdk.img
vga=794
read-only

I've rerun lilo, but now my computer won't boot. Is this a known bug, or should I post it to your World Wide Web site?

Thank you

Re:Small Business Accounting

If you don't mind, I'd like to tack on a few things to this good question:

- A small business release should be based on a SQL-compliant database such as PostgreSQL, inlcuding a client-server model. Is this in your plans?

- Have you considered adding simple invoicing to GnuCash (ala Quicken Home & Business) as an intermediate step?

- To add to the poster above, I could easily sell me & my clients 2-5 copies of a Gnu cash small business release, at $200 each, if it came up to the quality of Peachtree or better.

-Josh

modular architecture

One of the most important philosiphies of UNIX and UNIX-like systems is a modular architecture. Complicated structures can be easily assembled from prefabricated (and highly configurable) parts, usually with little more than some shell scripting as glue.

The opposite development paradigm (championed by klunky kitchen-sink packages like Microsoft Office) tends to be less reliable, slower, more expensive, more difficult to maintain.... you know the rest.

Applications like GnuCash seem to follow the monolithic paradigm. Would it be easier (or otherwise benificial) to break GnuCash up into a number of smaller, simpler applications? For instance, a database and a set of GUIs, with data analysis tools implemented as console programs. That way, with a little knowledge of shell scripting, you could put together a tool to generate virtually any report you wanted.

Many of the previous questions asked questions about the possibility of adding certain features to GnuCash (PalmPilot integration, online banking, XML interfaces for finacial tools...). If GnuCash were more granular, it would be very easy to make the system work with Other applications - easy enough that most Linux users could probably hack together what they needed to make it work.

The problem, of course, is that more granular architechures are often harder to use and configure for new users. UNIX mail, X, and network configuration were all things I agonized over as a new user, mainly because they are hybrids cludged together from very different bits of software.

My question is this - can you have the best of both? Can you make a usable application as large and complex as GnuCash, but still preserve the UNIX "one-function-per-program" design that makes it so extensible?

--

Illuminati & Mafia

I heard that GnuCash is the Accounting program of choice for the Mafia and Illuminati (the whole Trilateral Commission, I believe). My question is: Do you plan on adding features for efficent money laundering to help your best customers?

Checkprinting support

Is there any plans to integrate check printing support on standardized forms?

Have you thought about legal issues?

In this litigious society, have you spent much time thinking about possible legal issues around GnuCash? A lot of people get weird when money's the issue, and I can imagine someone trying to sue because:
- A bug in GnuCash caused an incorrect balance and thus overdrafts on the account.
- A bug caused private information (such as a bank balance) to be exposed to people it shouldn't be.
- A bug in online banking caused money to be lost, mistransfered, etc.
Obviously, bugs are possible in all software, but it seems like the intended audience for GnuCash is slightly less technical and perhaps thus less tolerant of bugs.

These same problems are faced by the commercial venders too, but they have armies of lawyers to help them out. I don't know how an open-source project would handle a lawsuit against it, and I'm wondering what you guys have thought about on this issue.

Taxes

Moreso than simple home accounting software, I'm interested in electronic tax filing. Any plans to integrate GnuCash with any existing filing services, or to integrate tax features into the program (if there are any, I apologize for overlooking them)? As tax preparation and filing are services many of us are comfortable paying a fee for (especially online), I don't wonder if there isn't a revenue stream in there somewhere, as well.

Cool stuff, but...

Is anything being done to make GnuCash competitive with Quicken and other products? The tour at the web site [gnucash.org] depicts a competitive feature set, but there's more to it than auto-incrementing check numbers: I, for one, would rather use the GPL'ed alternative, but most consumers will look for convenience-related features - for example, integration with their favorite online bill-paying service.

Though my question is about GnuCash specifically, I guess it does address the larger issue about how Open Source projects compete for market share and mind share with the products of well-capitalized corporations that can form strategic partnerships that (despite the shortcomings of Closed Source software generally) offer real value to consumers. Any thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time to respond,
- Brad Heintz
--

Online Banking Plugins?

Online banking is a great feature that I would love to see incorporated into GnuCash. I realize that there are probably a ton of obsticles to making this a reality, so here is my question:

Would it be possible to incorporate some sort of perl plugin to GnuCash that would go out to a bank's web site, access the banking account information on the site, access the relevant data and then format it in a way that could be pasted into the existing GnuCash data?

My bank, Region Bank, allows customers to access their checking account via a web browser. I hate to see this resource going to waste.

Why the GPL?

I'm not sure if this will be a very popular question, but I'm always interrested in why people have chosen the GNU GPL.

Developed under the GPL, you have no need to worry about obsolescence: GnuCash will be there for you.

The GPL expresses many ideals, and there is a differing philosophy between Free Software the Open Source. Perhaps that's a bit broad, but what are your ideals and how do they relate to the GPL?

Re:Online Banking Plugins?

Ah yes, online banking. To the developer's of GNUCash, you may want to look into my company's options CheckFree.com [checkfree.com] as they handle some of Region Bank's as well as many other bank's online banking needs (although we're not all inclusive of every 'online banking' functionality, just mainly the payment processing stuff). Please email me and I'll see what I can do to get you talking to the right people. (I'm just a lowly software tester ;) ).

I'm not trying to plug my company too much here, mainly I too would like something as solid as Quicken2k for Linux as I am finding I enjoy using Linux much more than Windows as of late. I haven't totally ditched Windows for just this reason (lack of a really solid financial tracking tool). I've heard of GNUCash recently, but haven't yet had the chance to try it out. My question is:

Since this is under the GPL license, and a lot of online banking is under proprietary licenses (my company, banks, PayPal, etc.), do you think that any type of medium can be worked out to incorporate the two licenses into a fully functional online banking type product. (I realize you're not a lawyer, but just wanted to know if any of your developers have explored this type of difficult question, and come up with answers and/or solutions).