Features
GnuCash is powerful accounting software. Below are details of some of the numerous features that GnuCash has to offer to its users.
Main features
Double Entry
Every transaction must debit one account and credit others by an equal amount. This ensures the books balance: the difference between income and expenses exactly equals the sum of assets and liabilities.
Checkbook-Style Register
The GnuCash checkbook-style register provides a custom, convenient and familiar interface to entering financial transactions.
The register supports common checking and credit-card transactions, as well as income, stock and currency transactions. The following features are also provided:
- The ability to enter split transactions
- The ability to mark a transaction as cleared or reconciled
- Autofill of entered transactions
- The ability to display multiple accounts in a single register window
- A summary bar that displays all of the relevant account's balance information
- Many options to customize the appearance and the display style
Scheduled Transactions
You can create recurring transactions with a high level of customization of amounts and timeline. You can also set an automatic reminder when a transaction is due.
An assistant that runs when GnuCash is started allows scheduled transactions to be postponed without canceling or entering them before the due date.
Reports, Graphs
GnuCash has an integrated module to display graphs of your financial data in the form of:
- Barcharts
- Piecharts
- Scatter plots
- Balance Sheet
- Profit & Loss
- Portfolio Valuation
- and many others.
Graphs and reports can be highly and easily customized in appearance and contents, in order to fullfill every user's need.
Statement Reconciliation
Account reconciliation allows the user to compare the transactions entered in an account against a bank statement. This operation is very useful to spot untracked transactions or data entry errors and ensure that your books match the bank's.
The GnuCash reconcile tool with running reconciled and cleared balances makes reconciling against bank statements an easy task.
Income/Expense Account Types
Income/Expense Account Types (Categories) allow you to categorize your cash flow. When used properly with the double-entry feature and equity accounts, these enable you to generate reports, such as Profit & Loss, that plain-vanilla systems cannot handle.
Advanced features
Small Business Accounting Features
Simplify managing a small business with Customer and Vendor tracking, Jobs, Invoicing and Bill Payment, and Tax and Billing Terms.
Using A/Receivable and A/Payable accounts you can even manage payrolls for your employees.
GnuCash gives you also a tool to manage your business' budget so that you can easily plan your financial strategy.
Multiple Currencies
Different accounts can be denominated in different currencies. Currency movements between accounts are fully balanced when double-entry is enabled.
Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolios
Track stocks individually (one per account) or in portfolio of accounts (a group of accounts that can be displayed together).
Online Stock & Mutual Fund Quotes
Get Stock & Mutual Fund quotes from various web sites, update portfolio automatically. Additional pricing sources are added regularly.
Data storage and exchange features
Experimental database support
GnuCash by default stores data in an xml format. Starting with version 2.4, GnuCash financial data can be stored in a SQL database using SQLite3, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Note this feature is considered experimental. It works for most of the common use cases but some corner cases have been reported to result in data loss. The GnuCash developers fix each issue as it gets reported. There is however no full test coverage so there may still be scenarios left that result in data loss.
QIF and OFX Import
If you are migrating from other financial software, GnuCash can import Intuit® Quicken® QIF files using a practical assistant.
GnuCash is also the first free software application to support the OFX (Open Financial Exchange) protocol that many banks and financial services are starting to use.
A transaction matching system ensures that duplicate transactions are accurately recognized and automatically deleted during file import.
HBCI Support
GnuCash is the first free software application to support the German Home Banking Computer Information protocol, allowing German users to perform statement download and initiate bank transfers and direct debits.
Other goodies
Multiplatform
GnuCash runs on many different operating systems including Windows, MacOSX and Linux.
Localization
GnuCash handles internationalized dates and currencies. The application's menus and popups have been translated to 61 languages, including Chinese, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and British English. Documentation is available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
Transaction Finder
A powerful transaction query dialogue can help you quickly locate a needle in a haystack.
Check Printing
Checks may be printed in standard formats on common check stocks. A customization GUI allows custom check layouts to be developed.
Mortgage & Loan Repayment Assistant
A guided dialogue for setting up loan payments as scheduled transactions.
User Manual and Help
GnuCash is very well documented: along with the application Manual, new users can take full advantage of the Tutorial and Concepts guide. This document gives background information on accounting principles and how they are reflected in GnuCash with many practical examples described step by step.