Difference between revisions of "GnuCash"

Revision as of 21:34, 12 August 2023

GnuCash is the leading GPL'ed Desktop Financial Manager Application. Appropriate for personal and small business use, it is meant to be easy to use and full of features.

Installation

GnuCash has versions that run on Windows, macOS, and many different flavors of Linux and BSD.

Installation instructions for the different operating systems under which GnuCash operates are included at Installation.

Getting Help

If you have trouble using GnuCash, and the various documentation sources haven't helped you--or if you want to give some feedback, you can get help in several ways. See Getting Help for these options.

Available Documentation

Documentation for Users

GnuCash offers two primary instructional documents:

• [[[:Template:WebURL]]/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&doc=help The Manual]—reference for details of operating specific GnuCash menus, dialogs, and windows, and
• [[[:Template:WebURL]]/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&doc=guide The Tutorial and Concepts Guide]—a concise introduction to double-entry accounting and tutorials on using GnuCash to perform a variety of accounting tasks. It is highly recommended that new users read at least the Getting Started section of the Guide.

These are accessible via the Help menu in the program —Linux users have probably to install an additional package called something like gnucash-docs using their package manager— or from the [[[:Template:WebURL]]/docs.phtml Documentation page on the gnucash.org website]. The Manual is available in English, German, Italian, and Japanese; the Guide in English, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian.

PDF, ePub, and mobi formats may be downloaded from the [[[:Template:WebURL]]/docs.phtml Documentation page] where you will also find the documentation for earlier releases and a nightly build of changes made since the last release.

Nightly Builts

The work in progress from the git repository exist currently for the stable branch. PDF, ePub, and mobi documents can be downloaded from and html documents read online at build server.

The GnuCash wiki includes extensive information regarding all aspects of GnuCash, contributed by the developers and users of GnuCash. Information in the wiki covers a broad variety of topics, and includes detailed technical information, as well as information that applies to specific use cases. Of particular interest on the wiki are:

• The GnuCash FAQ, which contains a collection of frequently asked questions about GnuCash, including administration, accounting, and glossary questions, and
• Using GnuCash, which collects real life experiences using GnuCash. You may find (user) solutions here that are not covered by the documentation.

Third Party Documentation in Several Languages

can be found in Documentation.

Documentation for Developers

The Application programming interface (API) for people who want to use the gnucash engine in their own project:

• maint, the stable branch and
• master, the new feature branch, which are daily generated from the sources using Doxygen.

Using the API shows how to use it.

In addition it may be handy sometimes to have an overview of which parts of the gnucash code depend on which other parts. Dependency Graphs explains how to generate a dependency graph for this purpose.

Getting involved in the GnuCash project

The GnuCash Project is a volunteer-driven organization. We need your help to ensure that GnuCash survives and grows, and we need your help to help others.

There are many ways to contribute your knowledge and experience. Before you dig in, you may want to check out the [[[:Template:WebURL]] GnuCash website] for the latest news.

Note: This part of the wiki is intended to become the main repository of GnuCash developer documentation. Some formerly static pages have been moved here from the [[[:Template:WebURL]] GnuCash website], but the move is not yet complete. Some remaining static pages may be out of date. Wherever a wiki article disagrees with a static web page on the Website, the wiki article here is more likely to be correct.

Here are a number of ways to get involved.

Mailing Lists

Subscribing to the mailing lists, and asking and answering questions there, is an excellent way to begin contributing the the success of GnuCash. See Mailing Lists for more.

Filing Bugs and Enhancement Requests

Occasionally, GnuCash will not work the way it was designed to work--or you have an idea for making GnuCash better. Improvements and fixes can be submitted using the Bugzilla bug tracker; more general suggestions can be made via the Uservoice pages.

Improving the Documentation

• Documentation Update Instructions. This page describes the process to change both the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide and the Manual.

Localization

• Translations gives an overview of this process.
• How to adjust or create new Account Hierarchy Templates.

Developing the Application Code

Policy

• Our Development Process
• Coding Standards
• Testing

Procedures

• Git access
• Building GnuCash from source code.
• Some notes about the GnuCash XML format for the XML Backend.
• The schema for the SQL Backend.
• Adding Preferences: How to add new preferences.
• Creating Custom Reports
• Python Bindings

Other Development Notes

• Reminders for the Project Administration

Future developments

• Our Release Schedule
• Future Roadmap

Historical Information

• Outdated WishList
• Budget History
• Credit Notes
• Old discussions about enhancement requests that have been implemented.
• Discussion about the License
• Special events
  • There was a Bounty Program in June / July 2013
  • GSoC Google Summer of Code