
Ask HN: Double Entry Accounting Software for Personal Use - _uy6i
Does anyone have any suggestions for a double entry accounting software for personal use? I’m looking for something that is a step above Mint (also not thrilled about them having my financial info) and Quicken in that I’d like to be able to have a true balance sheet and accrual accounting, but don’t need all the bells and whistles of a quickbooks (plus cost of desktop is considerable and don’t want to do cloud based).<p>Why do I want to do this you might ask? Couple of reasons 1st is that I’d actually like to look at my financials from a 3 statement perspective on an accrual basis. For example
I often find myself buying plane tickets for the next few months all at once – mint&#x2F;quicken would look at this and say you just went way over budget for travel, but I’d rather book those as assets on my personal balance sheet, see the hit to my cash flow statement, and recognize the expense in the months that I travel. Also, given that I have considerable business expenses that I run through my personal accounts that I get reimbursed for, reconciling those items can be pretty annoying if can’t make manual journal entries.
For the record Wave accounting is the closest thing that I‘ve found, but would prefer something that runs locally.
Requirements:<p>1. has a true GUI (so no ledger&#x2F;hledger)<p>2. Runs on either windows or os x (would consider cloud based, but prefer not)<p>3. You can run reports (i.e. Income statement for x period, or payments in this category or vendor)<p>4. You can download bank&#x2F;credit card statements (automatically would be preferred, but would settle for manual)<p>5. Is being actively developed supported<p>6. it doesn’t have to support investment&#x2F;brokerage accounts
======
philiphodgen
I would not recommend Quickbooks, either online or the Windows or Mac version.
It will do what you want it to do, but it will also give you gray hair and
heartburn.

I would recommend repurposing Xero for personal use. It will give you the cash
or accrual method reports you want, and (in my experience) is less bad from
the user's point of view.

One recurring problem is that banks don't always play nicely with these
services. I am moving 10 companies off Quickbooks to Xero (four are there
already).

I watched my sister-in-law (a bookkeeper with multiple businesses on
Quickbooks) go ballistic because a bank had arbitrarily changed its systems
and Intuit has been unable/unwilling to fix the problem. Naturally, the bank
points the Finger of Blame at Intuit, and Intuit says it's the bank's fault.
Intuit suggests fixes that -- on its own website there is a warning about this
-- wipe out all of your historic data.

FWIW, I have seen people have intermitten problems with Citi credit cards and
Quickbooks. Not sure why. I personally have Citi credit cards on Xero and they
sync just fine.

Yeah, cloud. I know. Sigh.

------
homarp
GnuCash ?
[http://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml](http://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml)

~~~
rbcgerard
Thanks for this - this may fit the bill am trying it out now

~~~
cdvonstinkpot
FYI: I tried this years ago (2009), & found the Windows build to be
occasionally unstable- would randomly crash entirely & the process just died.
I feared eventual data corruption & decided against it for this reason. Dunno
if it's been resolved by now. Just saying.

------
argon81
I've had success with MoneyDance. Double entry, cross-platform, full featured,
customisable reports

