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What is GnuCash?
GnuCash is on-premise accounting software that allows small businesses to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. It is primarily designed to assist contractors and business owners with digital invoicing and internal billing.
Key features of GnuCash include financial calculations, balance-sheet creation, multiple currency accounts and vendor management. The scheduling module lets firms set up recurring transactions and send automated reminders on due dates. With the Income/Expense account tool, users can categorize cash flow and generate a profit and loss report. Further, the portfolio feature monitors stock markets and compiles relevant information from online sources.
GnuCash supports the open financial exchange (OFX) protocol and imports Quicken i... read more
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User Review Highlights
4.48
44 Reviews
Ease-of-use
out of 5Customer Support
out of 5Value for money
out of 5Functionality
out of 5"This includes bank accounts, and stock portfolios. And the ability to run reports that turn my accounts in to pie and bar charts is very helpful as well."
"As there is a large community of users, one can stay assured of the latest updates as well as forum support."
"I use it for my personal budgeting and am really happy I was recommended this app. The interface is similar to Excel ,which almost eliminates the learning curve."
"Maybe it is not so complete and somebody could miss some features."
"It requires a lot of time to set up initially ,especially if you are using it for a business. Is also hard to integrate on mobile."
"Some questions are difficult to find answers in the documentation."
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How much does GnuCash cost?
Completely free of use. Possibility to support by making donations.
Free trial
Not Available
Free version
Available
Which features does GnuCash offer?
Core features:
Approval Process ControlAutomatic BillingBank ReconciliationBudgeting/ForecastingExpense TrackingGeneral LedgerIncome & Balance SheetInvoice ProcessingMulti-CurrencyPayroll ManagementShow more features +
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How easy is GnuCash to use and deploy?
GnuCash supports Desktop deployment options, including: Windows, Linux.
4.48/5 out of 44 Reviews
Showing 1 - 5 of 44 reviews

Tim
Verified reviewer
Company size: 1 employee
Industry: Music
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.
July 2019
Best open-source accounting solution for home and small business
It has been a rock solid tool for managing transactions and monitoring fiscal health in the short and long term. I've tried a few different data store backend options (including mysql, postgresql, and XML file) - I landed long term on the XML file storage because it has had the least issues.
Pros
I was appealed by the low barrier to entry, including free download and installation, as well as strong documentation for an administrator that prefers to configure my own software.
Cons
Still haven't solved the multi-user limitation. We generally work from two different computers with a network file share, and often one user will forget to close the application, keeping the file lock in place. The UI still feels a bit dated, even with recent updates since version 3.0. I am okay with this because double-entry accounting is a well-established process and less change is ultimately better. But the menu structure layout is like the late 90s early 00s desktop application era and, in my opinion, can and should be improved upon.
Reasons for choosing GnuCash
n/a
Jason
Company size: 1 employee
Industry: Publishing
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.
August 2019
Great accounting software for individuals and freelancers
Overall, I have nothing but high praise for it. Especially as a small business owner and freelancer. Older versions of the software used to crash when running specialized reports (eg pie charts of expenses) used to sometimes crash, however I have not experienced any such behavior as of the the latest versions of 3.0 and up (currently 3.6 as of this review.)
Pros
It was very easy to setup all of my accounts, and track my expenses and income across them. This includes bank accounts, and stock portfolios. And the ability to run reports that turn my accounts in to pie and bar charts is very helpful as well.
Cons
While I found 99% of the software to be easy to use, and despite having used the software for several years now, I still find it difficult to do split-transactions. Instead I find it easier to just make 2 separate transactions manually, noting that they're part of 1 transaction. They really could improve this feature to make it more failproof and intuitive.
Reasons for choosing GnuCash
Those sites seemed like more of the same compared to Quickbooks, and I wanted something that I could use offline, DRM free, and could backup and use my data on my own machines.
Reasons for switching to GnuCash
I used to use Quickbooks, but made the switch after realizing it was only costing me money as it caused headaches since it only kept track of transactions, and not future transactions (e.g. it'd automatically categorize a Paypal transaction, but would not automatically deduct the transaction from the payment source.) Which wasn't very useful. Instead, by manually entering all of my transactions daily in to GNUCash, I am taking a much more active role in my financial health as I obtain an overall clearer picture.
Eric
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Computer Software
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.
February 2022
GnuCash is OK... until you need to hire a bookkeeper
I liked using GnuCash when my organization was small and I did all of the bookkeeping myslef. Once my company grew to the point where I had to outsource my bookkeeping, I switched to QuickBooks because most bookkeepers I found were unfamiliar with GnuCash.
Pros
GnuCash is free and open source. If configured to do so, it uses a central MySQL database, which makes it work like enterprise software, where various people in the organization perform bookkeeping tasks. That's huge. It's also self-hosted which means you keep your own database files locally. GnuCash is cross-platform which means it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Cons
The database isn't very well normalized. That means that if you want to integrate the data into other systems, it's more cumbersome than it should be. There is no good web front end; the only front end with a complete feature set is a desktop application. That makes sharing the data a bit more cumbersome than it would be otherwise. The worst thing is that it's hard to find bookkeepers, at least in the US, that are familiar with it. That makes it hard to outsource your bookkeeping.
Reasons for choosing GnuCash
GnuCash is free and open source, and I could integrate it with other software since the data is stored locally.
John
Company size: 2-10 employees
Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management
Time used: More than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
April 2017
GNUCash Review
GNUCash is an open source free package that works much like the for-profit Quicken program without the spyware (content guard) bundled in by Intuit. On the most basic level you simply fill in your checkbook register. If you want to learn a small amount, you can also download your bank statements in various formats, including Quicken format, and click File Import to auto-magically insert them into your checkbook register. I use GNUCash on my desktop, over my LAN to a server, and over Internet via my SSH connection. Those who delve deeper will find this is actually a double entry (professional) accounting system with any number of ledgers you desire to create. You can split transactions just as you would in a paper based accounting system to show all the elements for the cash flow on every transaction, or use any of the (perhaps 50) built in reports to generate a balance sheet, income statement, and other common accounting reports. In this sense it leaves Quicken in the dust and is far easier to use than QuickBooks. Also, GNUCash will leave your payroll percentages alone while Intuit has programmed QuickBooks to delete all your payroll percentages every time you use it after February each year unless you buy the free IRS Circular E from Intuit each year. The Intuit rep explained to me that I had no choice and was forced to buy this free data from them "because business owners are too stupid to enter the (6) percentages themselves". Yes, she actually said that. GNUCash is not a "pretty" program but it is extremely functional and free. The downside is some non-intuitive behaviour when splitting an already entered transaction (which you will eventually figure out), and the rather obtuse way in which you enter budgeting data - the budgeting report however is very straightforward and allows you to change dates and which accounts are included very easily. It also provides a paper trail after every session as a separate (timestamped) file for review or recovery purposes. If you want more privacy and less cost in your company (or personal) accounting software this is a great choice. If you want for-pay customer support instead of using a FAQ or video tutorials to get answers, don't care if a glitch could lock you out of your own data when ContentGuard decides you're suddenly "not authorized", think business owners are stupid, and prefer to buy every feature for hundreds of dollars each, then by all means buy one of Intuit's packages.
Pros
Simple, resembles check register and most people can use it effectively immediately. It is free and malware free. More interested users can scale up their use to include complicated accounting steps (year end closing, splits across accounts, etc) as much as they wish.
Cons
Some features, such as initiating a split, or finding the budgeting functionality, can be non-intuitive.
Anonymous
Company size: 11-50 employees
Time used: Less than 2 years
Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.
March 2018
It's a free, professional, accounting software, kind of usable for personal finance
Pros
I use it to keep my personal finance. It's also a professional tool so it has many features that I will probably never use, but they don't get much in the way. Double entry is a powerful tool when you get the grasps of it, making it possible to bind together transactions between more than two accounts. It can also track stock prices and it's possible to update them with some setup. Charts and reports are available and very flexible. It's free and open source, so you can trust it with your numbers. There are mobile apps that help you not bringing around dozens of receipts to remember where you've spent your money.
Cons
If you're not a professional accountant, you'll need some time to get used to "double entry", and I still get confused sometimes. The setup of stock prices update is definitely not easy (esp. on Linux). Charts and reports require quite some work to get the most out of them, the presets are not that insightful. The Android app I use (GnuCash for Android) is nice but the export/import procedure is annoying: in some cases, you even have to tell GnuCash which date format you're using, and you probably have no idea without checking in the XML file!
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