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Having tried a couple of different accounting/budgeting applications, this is what I always end up coming back to. As it just works when it comes to keeping track of finances.

However GnuCash really falls short if you have anything other than default locale settings. Want US language and EU number/date formatting? Syncing that across different OS'? GnuCash will probably struggle with it, you'll need to sometimes set locale, sometimes `LC_MONETARY`, sometimes system regional settings, sometimes all of it, and sometimes it still won't work.

I really wish they would move to a more user friendly settings system.

Also, the whole UI is extremely ugly, and the reports UI/UX could be better. But at the end of the day as a whole package it's still a lot better than a lot of alternatives, and more importantly it's not cloud based.

I hope that one day they'll rework the UI and perhaps adapt reporting, portfolio, etc to be more like something you'd see in banktivity (scroll down for screenshots) https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/




How coupled is the UI to the “engine”? Are there any alternative frontends to GnuCash?


No, they are tightly coupled. Decoupling is part of their roadmap, but doesn’t exist yet.


Yeah, I agree on reporting in particular--would be nice to make them easier to modify


A few years ago, I managed to add a new report to GnuCash (specifically, an invoice format requested by a consulting client), but it was difficult because I couldn't find documentation on the application-specific APIs. The Scheme part itself was easy and a great choice for this.


I also looked into building a new report and did not succeed because of documentation issues.


If you’re handy python, check out its python api. Another method is to have gnucash store it’s data in a MySQL database, and query that directly. But I agree that having more powerful reporting built would be nice.


Have you tried Firefly III?


Can Firefly III import data from brokerage firms like Schwab, Fidelity, etc?


It handles CSV well. Otherwise, no.


No. It doesn't support investment data at all.




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