In this first delivery dedicated to the penultimate of the deadly sins and lovers of free software, it's the turn of free software for misers. This is an area where we have quite a few stocks to choose from, both in wealth generation and wealth tracking.
We could say that the free condition that accompanies many free and open source software titles. make it the golden dream of misers. Of course, this especially applies to home users, since in corporate environments other factors come into play, such as the costs associated with the change
Free software for misers
money tracking
In these times of electronic money, Donald Duck's millionaire uncle would find it difficult to dive between bills and coins. As compensation, it is much easier to know how much you have and what you spend on it. Of course the first option to do it is LibreOffice Calc, however, the Linux repositories provide us with a large number of specific tools. Let's list some of them:
GnuCash
This is a single-user free accounting software that works under the principle of double entry and other generally accepted accounting principles. Use a checkbook-like register to track both income and expenses. If you have your wealth in multiple currencies, allow the conversion. In addition, it allows the automatic reconciliation of bank transactions.
Some features include:
- Double match: For each transaction there must be a debit account and one or more credit accounts.
- Spreadsheet style record for entering figures and transactions with credit cards, as well as income, merchandise and currencies. You can enter split transactions, mark them as cleared, and customize their appearance.
- Ability to view multiple accounts in a single registration window.
- summary bar with the relevant details of the account balance.
- Recurring transaction scheduler with sorting by timeline and expiration notice.
- Generation of reports and graphs.
- account reconciliation against bank statements.
- Preset Categories to make it easier to track cash flow.
- Monitoring of stock investments.
- Database support SQLite3, MySQL or PostgreSQL (Experimental).
- Import and export in standard formatss supported by other financial software.
skooge
The name of this program is reminiscent of the greedy character from a christmas tale from Dickens (What? I'm not just a pretty face, I once read a book) while the K denotes his membership in the KDE project.
In this case we have a tool with higher performance than GnuCash, but that at the same time implies a level of difficulty and a slightly higher learning curve.
In addition to tracking income and expenses, we will be able to elaborate budgets and execute simulations on the possible results of different decisions. The program works with a tab system similar to that of browsers that allows us to easily access the different functions.
Some features include:
- Import of transactions in AFB120, QIF, CSV, MT940, OFX and QFX formats among others.
- Import of documents from KMYMONEY, Microsoft Money, GNUCASH, GRISBI, HOMEBANK, MONEY MANAGER EX and other personal finance applications.
- Generation of periodic and graphic reports.
- System of tabs and bookmarks for easier access to information.
- Classification of items in multilevel categories.
- Support for different currency units.
- Pre-programming of operations.
- Support for multiple payments.
- Files can be attached as pdf or images to operations.
- Unlimited undo and redo capabilities even when the file has been closed.
- Automatic processing of operations depending on the search conditions.
- instant filtering operations and reports.
- Budget download.
These two applications are just a sample of the wide availability of personal finance programs offered by the world of free and open source software.. They can be found in the repositories of the main Linux distributions.
In the next article of this series we will be dedicated to the (possible) generation of wealth using free software.