Alternative to MS Money - 'Different question' to all previous similar threads........

don9999

I know, I know...there have been lots of previous threads on similar topics. 

Some saying they continue to use MS Money and lots of alternatives being used and suggested - Gnucash, Ace Money, YNAB etc. etc.....

Like many people, I have been using MS Money for over a decade and currently using the Sunset version - am reasonably happy with it despite it being old and un-supported etc.

However, I would much prefer to have an application that worked on proper accounting principles (double-entry book-keeping) to allow me to easily separate 'expenses' from 'cash'.
eg. I have many credit cards that I manage 90% of my day to day spending, the other 10% via a bank debit card, or cash.  But of course, in terms of 'cash flow' only the 10% is in real-time, the other 90% (credit cards) is only once every month or so when I pay the bill.  I can't find an easy way of separating the 'expenses' from the 'cash movements' in MS Money especially when it comes to reporting.

Now Jiosoft 'looks' promising as it claims to be 'Accounting Software for Home and Business'.  So does it use double-entry book-keeping?  I don't know - it's not clear from their web site, and there is no demo/trial offering - you just have to take a leap of faith and buy it for £35.  I'll write and ask them...

One option that 'looks' really good is GnuCash, which DOES operate on double-entry book-keeping principles.  I've spent the last few days trying to transfer Money to GnuCash - is verrryyy slow as you have to export each MS Money account separately (and I must have almost 100 accounts).  And then, the import into Gnucash often crashes, and even when it succeeds needs a fair bit of manual fixing to get the accounts to balance. 

There are several weaknesses to Gnucash that are preventing me from moving permanently from MS Money:

* There doesn't appear to be anywhere to record a 'memo' against an entry as you can in MS Money
  For example, I have a £200 expense on my AMEX credit card to ATS for 'Car:Tyres'.  Fine.  But in MS Money I can also enter a memo to the effect '2 x Michelin Primacy 3 tyres for SMax'.  This additional information does NOT get copied to Gnucash :-(  But is very useful to do a search some time later perhaps on 'Michelin' to find when I purchased similar tyres in the past, where from and how much I paid.  Similar for computer items, or gifts etc.. where I can enter in the MS Money memo field some more information.
Yes, in Gnucash, I 'could' add this to the Description field eg. 'ATS - 2 x Michelin Primacy 3 tyres', going forward, but there doesn't appear to be a way of transferring this information during the MS Money to Gnucash transfer, so I would lose all my historic information :-(

* Gnucash is opensource and is 'supported' - this 'should' be a positive compared to MS Money!  However, it doesn't look simple to raise any queries or investigate any issues - everything appears to be done via old-fashioned IRC chat.  Doing a search on any Gncash problems and you are faced with masses of un-formatted textual questions/replies which are extremely difficult to follow - they look like forum conversation from 20+ years ago.......
And Gnucash DOES appear to crash quite often - certainly when importing data!  (BTW I have a new 16-core AMD PC with 16Gb memory, Windows 10 etc... so isn't the hardware).

* Gnucash doesn't 'look' as slick as other packages like AceMoney Moneydance etc....  Nor even MS Money for that matter.  Not a deal breaker, but would have hoped for something that looked a little nicer.  To look into an account it opens up another tab.  You can't then right-click to go 'back' to a previous screen, like you can with MS Money etc...  You have to switch to the previous tab.  Again, not a deal-breaker, and there may even be benefits of having multiple tabs open at a time - I haven't used it enough to determine that yet.

So........would be interested to hear of others' experiences.....

Not necessarily comments like 'I use YNAB/Ace Money/Moneydance/etc... and it's brilliant' - we already have lots of threads like that.

But I 'would' be interested to hear other people's experiences of:

* Gnucash - especially with regards to the limitations I have experienced over the past few days, and

* Jiosoft - does it really use double-entry accounting principles

*  Any other applications that operate on double-entry book-keeping principles like Gnucash

Cheers,

Don

wmb194

don9999 said:

However, I would much prefer to have an application that worked on proper accounting principles (double-entry book-keeping) to allow me to easily separate 'expenses' from 'cash'.
eg. I have many credit cards that I manage 90% of my day to day spending, the other 10% via a bank debit card, or cash.  But of course, in terms of 'cash flow' only the 10% is in real-time, the other 90% (credit cards) is only once every month or so when I pay the bill.  I can't find an easy way of separating the 'expenses' from the 'cash movements' in MS Money especially when it comes to reporting.

I don't recognise this issue. You assign expenses to a credit card account as you go along and then pay down the balance with a transfer from another account i.e. from Money's POV, not classified as either an expense from the other account or a cash-like deposit to the CC a/c. If an expense is in June and the transfer to reduce the balance is in July an expense report will still show the expenses as having occurred in June and will ignore the July transfer. Could the issue be with the way you are using Money?

LobsterMemory

I don't think that can be the issue, wmb, as it seems too simple.
I think OP might be wanting to see the transfer to credit card in reports.
If I'm right, another example might be a transfer of a pension contribution to a SIPP account. You'd want to see the contribution as an outgoing, but there's no corresponding expense in the SIPP.

If that's the case, no, Jiosoft doesn't do that. Quicken used to.

wmb194

LobsterMemory said:

I don't think that can be the issue, wmb, as it seems too simple.
I think OP might be wanting to see the transfer to credit card in reports.
If I'm right, another example might be a transfer of a pension contribution to a SIPP account. You'd want to see the contribution as an outgoing, but there's no corresponding expense in the SIPP.

If that's the case, no, Jiosoft doesn't do that. Quicken used to.

If this is the case then Money* can do this: open a report e.g., 'Monthly Income and Expenses', select 'Customise...,' then the 'Rows & Columns' tab in the dialogue box that appears and select the 'Include transfers to or from asset or liability accounts' radio button. You could then fine-tune it by choosing which accounts to include or exclude via the 'Account' tab in the same dialogue box.
I'd really delve into what Money can do before moving to something else, and Gnucash looks abysmal.

*Money 2005 UK. I presume Money Sunset is very similar.

Roger.Wilco

wmb194 said:

don9999 said:

However, I would much prefer to have an application that worked on proper accounting principles (double-entry book-keeping) to allow me to easily separate 'expenses' from 'cash'.
eg. I have many credit cards that I manage 90% of my day to day spending, the other 10% via a bank debit card, or cash.  But of course, in terms of 'cash flow' only the 10% is in real-time, the other 90% (credit cards) is only once every month or so when I pay the bill.  I can't find an easy way of separating the 'expenses' from the 'cash movements' in MS Money especially when it comes to reporting.

I don't recognise this issue. You assign expenses to a credit card account as you go along and then pay down the balance with a transfer from another account i.e. from Money's POV, not classified as either an expense from the other account or a cash-like deposit to the CC a/c. If an expense is in June and the transfer to reduce the balance is in July an expense report will still show the expenses as having occurred in June and will ignore the July transfer. Could the issue be with the way you are using Money?

@don9999 - I don't know MSMoney at all - but I have used GNUCash extensively for personal finances for the past 10years.

I don't know the features of MSMoney - but what I think your are looking for is not the specific software but actually to use the Accrual Accounting methodology not the Cash Accounting Methodology.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accrualaccounting.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashaccounting.asp

Normally only large businesses need to use use the Accrual Accounting methodology; small businesses and personal accounts usually use the Cash Accounting methodology.

I personally use a combination of Cash & Accrual Accounting principles for my own accounts.

I don't know MSMoney - so maybe you only need to set appropriate Asset, Liability, Expense accounts and change the way you record your transactions?

I will in a later reply - respond to your GNUCash questions... though, I cannot provide any feedback regarding importing from MSMoney as I've never done so.  I also cannot help you regarding running GNUCash on Windows - as I run GNUCash on Linux.

cloud_dog

wmb194 said:

*Money 2005 UK. I presume Money Sunset is very similar.

Sunset is the last available version but, is the US version.

wmb194

cloud_dog said:

wmb194 said:

*Money 2005 UK. I presume Money Sunset is very similar.

Sunset is the last available version but, is the US version.

Yes, but when I looked at it it seemed to be a localisation difference rather than anything fundamental. Its capabilities appeared to be the same as the 2005 version.

cloud_dog

Yes, functionally it is the same, although it might be missing some components to the last available UK 2005 version, which may not be of any relevance to people, such as Home Inventory, but nothing super critical.

dgp1000

I used to use Money 2005 but I moved to Moneydance https://infinitekind.com/moneydance about 10 years ago.  It doesn't have a sophisticated look, but does work and does all that Money 2005 did. It's also regularly updated. From what I remember it was able to import Money data. A bonus is it runs on all platforms and there is a free app which gives you limited functionality on a phone or tablet which synchronises with the main programme on your PC or laptop. It does do double entry and can be tailored to suit most people's needs. I haven't given any of the others you mention a go as Moneydance does what I need.

Roger.Wilco

I have used GNUCash on both Windows & Linux on & off now for about ten years and still use it daily though now on Linux.  Though, it is not without its quirks and issues.  Many quirks related to the age of the codebase and the components used over the years to provide some of the features (components like eguile & perl).

don9999 said:

...

One option that 'looks' really good is GnuCash, which DOES operate on double-entry book-keeping principles.  I've spent the last few days trying to transfer Money to GnuCash - is verrryyy slow as you have to export each MS Money account separately (and I must have almost 100 accounts).  And then, the import into Gnucash often crashes, and even when it succeeds needs a fair bit of manual fixing to get the accounts to balance. 

I've never imported any data into GNUCash (except for importing an old GNUCash data file) so cannot provide any feedback from my experience regarding importing from MSMoney.  Though, Google searches show that this is a fairly common experience.

* There doesn't appear to be anywhere to record a 'memo' against an entry as you can in MS Money

  For example, I have a £200 expense on my AMEX credit card to ATS for 'Car:Tyres'.  Fine.  But in MS Money I can also enter a memo to the effect '2 x Michelin Primacy 3 tyres for SMax'.  This additional information does NOT get copied to Gnucash :-(  But is very useful to do a search some time later perhaps on 'Michelin' to find when I purchased similar tyres in the past, where from and how much I paid.  Similar for computer items, or gifts etc.. where I can enter in the MS Money memo field some more information.
Yes, in Gnucash, I 'could' add this to the Description field eg. 'ATS - 2 x Michelin Primacy 3 tyres', going forward, but there doesn't appear to be a way of transferring this information during the MS Money to Gnucash transfer, so I would lose all my historic information :-(

Specific to importing from MSMoney - don't know - sorry cannot help.  The GNUCash data file is just text based XML so depending on how MSMoney stores data within a file it may be possible to either write yourself or seek assistance to write some python to transfer the notes.  Though, this is not an off-the-shelf solution and would most probably take longer than just manually adding them.

Though, the memo field depends on the type of account set.  For example Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable have memo fields.  In standard accounts if you enable "View->Double Line" there is a Notes field.  I personally have "View->Auto-Split" enabled and put any notes in the proceeding grey sub-descriptions below the main description.

* Gnucash is opensource and is 'supported' - this 'should' be a positive compared to MS Money!  However, it doesn't look simple to raise any queries or investigate any issues - everything appears to be done via old-fashioned IRC chat.  Doing a search on any Gncash problems and you are faced with masses of un-formatted textual questions/replies which are extremely difficult to follow - they look like forum conversation from 20+ years ago.......

GNUCash is a volunteer effort - therefore, the user support infrastructure is not as developed as a commercial entity.

IRC is for those people so inclined and the project's developers.  IRC is 20 years old - but it works and works well and is not beholden to Facebook or Google. I understand that it is not for everyone.

Most of the discussions regarding issues or queries are done via the GNUCash project's email list.  I'd advise to signup to a free account from yahoo/google etc.. before you do - don't use your main personal account - as the volume of emails at times can be many. In reality - its just like a forum - but you email your post to the mailing list and those that answer - you get reply emails.

I've been able to get help when I've needed it.  Its just a different way of working.

* Gnucash doesn't 'look' as slick as other packages like AceMoney Moneydance etc....  Nor even MS Money for that matter.  Not a deal breaker, but would have hoped for something that looked a little nicer.  To look into an account it opens up another tab.  You can't then right-click to go 'back' to a previous screen, like you can with MS Money etc...  You have to switch to the previous tab.  Again, not a deal-breaker, and there may even be benefits of having multiple tabs open at a time - I haven't used it enough to determine that yet.

GNUCash GUI is based on the GTK+ libraries which for Windows are ported from UNIX/Linux.  So how GNUCash looks on Windows relies on how the GUI elements are translated and drawn by Windows.  I do remember when I was running GNUCash on Windows it did look a bit "Fisher-Price".  Though, at least on Linux GTK+ supports themes so I have set and run GNUCash with a dark theme which looks OK to me.

I run GNUCash with 28 tabs open all the time and don't find it a problem - again just a different way of working.    My browser as I type this has currently 50+ tabs open...  (it just how I work) you may work differently.

• Accounts
• Accounts Summary Report
• Balance Sheet Report
• ...
• Assets Reports
• Net Worth Reports
• Investment Reports
  
• Income Reports
• Expense Reports
• ...
• Main Bank Account Journal
• Daily Bank Account Journal
  
• etc...

Not sure if it works on Windows - but using right-click on the arrows to the left/right of the tabs will send you to front or back tab.  After getting use to this - I wished this shortcut was available on every multi-tab program.

My bug-bear with GNUCash are the reports: the standard reports are OK and usable - but creating custom reports are not for the faint-of-heart and require extreme patience and some limited programming skills.  The GNUCash project are aware of this - and have on their new features roadmap - but I'm not holding my breath as it will take some time to fix.

But I 'would' be interested to hear other people's experiences of:

...

* Gnucash - especially with regards to the limitations I have experienced over the past few days, and

...

With GNUCash - you get what you pay for...   I think it is great for something that is free but I do admit that it is rough around the edges.  The GNUCash project is active and are working to fix things.  Though, it is a volunteer effort and as there is only a reasonably small number of key contributors - it takes time.  Currently, a lot of the effort is going into moving the project away from out-of-date components and libraries - though all that is under the hood and not user visible.

I've been using GNUCash for about ten years and it works for me.  In fact there is a feature I use everyday that when I started using GNUCash was unique to GNUCash like having accounts of multiple currencies including investment stock accounts and being able to report on yet another different currency.

If my father asked if he should use it - I'd probably have to say no.  Though, if some of my work colleagues asked if they should use it - I'd probably say yes.  Depends on your use case and ability to deal with the GNUCash ecosystem.

getmore4less

However, I would much prefer to have an application that worked on proper accounting principles (double-entry book-keeping) to allow me to easily separate 'expenses' from 'cash'.
eg. I have many credit cards that I manage 90% of my day to day spending, the other 10% via a bank debit card, or cash.  But of course, in terms of 'cash flow' only the 10% is in real-time, the other 90% (credit cards) is only once every month or so when I pay the bill.  I can't find an easy way of separating the 'expenses' from the 'cash movements' in MS Money especially when it comes to reporting.

You can just report on categories.
 
MSMoney  can be set up to model  the way money flows through the various accounts.

Set up the  CC as accounts I  also have multiple cash accounts one per currency and one for each utility to track the credit/debit status.

Every spend on these is categorised(split entry if needed), 

The payment to  the CC/cash accounts  from the bank is a money transfer.

The account reporting give the overall picture of the net asset status and can do forecasting if future transactions are set up based on the budget part of MSM.


Then run reports on categories as needed to get the expenses and budget tracking

This separates the where the money is from the where the money is going(gone).

eg I use the CC for a Tesco shop.

Single entry on the CC account as a spend but split transaction(meat, booze, other food, lottery ticket,...)
The CC balance(negative) reflects the amount spent but not gone out as real cash yet.

Then when the CC bill gets paid there is a money transfer from the bank account to the CC

The key is setting the categories you want to track then  using transactions(split if needed) to capture the spend categories into the actual transaction that will appear on a statement.

Split transactions can also include money transfers, if I uses a debit card with cash back there is a money transfer to the cash account included with the spending on that transaction  

BY using the Payee you can do reports like how much have I spent on Booze in Tesco in March.