ossblogger.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

You may want to check other free money management software for your Windows here if you think this post is irrelevant to you.

We work hard to make money. But we never work as hard to manage the money that we make. That is why, some of us “finished” their hard earned money even before the end of the month.

Most of us spend more than we could earn. And most of the things that we spend on to are not necessary. Try differentiate things that you are planning to buy next by labeling it to either “needs” or “wants”. You may then realize how much have you spent on unnecessary things…

If you think that you spend most of your money to the things that you “want”, and end up broke before the end of the month, then you should track your spending habits with some of the best free money management software around.

FreeCoins
For me, FreeCoins is one of the best free and open source money management software for Palm OS (which I use with my Treo 680) that I have used so far. There are other proprietary software to manage money in Palm OS, but I don’t think it is necessary for me to spend money when you could get something that is compatible and free like FreeCoins. Although the development of the program/software stopped on May 22, 2006, the program has been running smoothly, and I have been using it to budget and track my monthly spendings.

The only thing that FreeCoins can’t do for me is to import/export the database files to .QIF or even .CSV, as I planned to integrate it with Gnucash and jGnash, 2 of the best money management software which you could install in your Windows.

FreeCoins is a full-featured accounting program (similar to GnuCash) for the Palm OS released under GPL.

Some of the features in the program are:

• available in multiple languages (French and German at the moment)
• Manual
• Integrated calculator for speed-entering transactions
• International number format support
• accounts structured in trees
• Autocompletion for speedy entries
• double entry bookkeeping
• cleared/uncleared transactions (can be viewed separately and the views can be remembered)
• separate cleared/uncleared/available balances
• transactions can be scheduled (very useful for direct debits/standing orders)
• totals for the current account, current category and all accounts in all categories

I just hope that the development of the software could continue, as to improve the usability of the software in the future.

drizad :: Apr.12.2008 :: Accounting :: No Comments »

I have been using jGnash for the past few month to manage my financial statement. However, I have not been very keen to use the software properly, (I just installed it as a trial and error basis) until last week when I realize that I have to do something to get the most out of my jGnash.

Yesterday, I decided to try to import all my financial statement that I have, mostly online statements, into jGnash. It looks easy at the beginning by just exporting the statement to QIF file, and import it directly to jGnash; but it actually not. Most of the time, I have to run “trial and error” before I could get the correct data field transfered into jGnash. A lot of issues occurred along the process, but fortunately, I could manage it after cracking “the geek brain” out of me.

These would be the challenges that I face during the process:

1. I would like to import my Google Adsense income statement to jGnash. Unfortunately, Google can only export the data as a comma separated value (CSV) file. As I need the data to be transferred straight to jGnash, I would have to do either manually (which will be very time consuming) or just convert the CSV file to QIF.
2. Importing my Paypal statement into jGnash is not as straightforward as it looks like. Although Paypal can export my statement to QIF, the file that it produces does not seems to be able to be “compatible” during the importing process.
3. The worst issues that I faced was my Maybank2u.com account. It’s my online bank and credit card account. It seems that I could not export the statement out easily, as they don’t have “export” feature, let alone CSV or QIF converter! I have to print the statement out (as PDF), and have to enter the data manually. Maybank will charge me RM10 if I were to request my bank statement printed out, have to wait for a few days before the statement ready, and have to go to the specific Maybank branch here in Kota Kinabalu to get the statement. Sigh…
4. Similar thing happened with my E*trade account. I could not export the statement out directly to jGnash, and they provide a PDF files of my monthly statement to be printed out. Another additional burden to enter the data manually into jGnash.

The solution for *some* of the challenges that I face above:

1. On exporting CSV file into jGnash: Use CALC2QIF to convert CSV file to QIF. You have to have Open Office installed in your computer first before you install CALC2QIF, because CALC2QIF is a macro for Open Office. It can convert almost all Open Office Calc data into QIF for easy import to jGnash.
   1. The installation for CALC2QIF is very straightforward. Download the ZIP file, extract it and just click calc2qif.sxc.
      

      

   2. It will automatically open your Open Office Calc with a security warning, saying that you are opening a document with macros. You don’t have to worry as the macros you are running is safe.

      

      

   3. You can choose where you would like CALC2QIF situated. I prefer it to be as one of the features in “Top Menu”.

      

   4. To convert your CSV file with this macros in Open Office, just click on the “calc2qif” tab on the main menu. A window will open and show the parameters that can be changed. You should arrange your data according to column that is sorted by type of field.
2. I use the step above to transfer my Google Adsense statement to jGnash, as Google just provide .CSV file download for the report.
3. For Paypal, I think there was some *bugs* with jGnash. The QIF file that Paypal produce does not seems to be behaving properly while in the process of importing. During the second stage of importing, at “2. Modify QIF transactions”, the changing of “Account” could not be done. I end up exporting Paypal statement to CSV and convert it to QIF with CALC2QIF…

   

4. For my Maybank2u.com and E*trade account - I have to transfer the data manually…

drizad :: Nov.14.2007 :: Accounting :: 1 Comment »