I know you asked for free and Linux, but if you are serious about starting a business, you should consider Quickbooks. I think it's obnoxious, but I can take my Quickbooks file to any accountant and they can update, analyze, and/or correct it as necessary. You can find cheap older versions on Craigslist or eBay.
I despise recommending Quickbooks AND windows, but it's been the right tool, which is more important to me.
Good luck!
Eric
On Apr 26, 2012, at 8:39 PM, Nathan England <
nathan@nmecs.com> wrote:
>
>
> I appreciate the info and the quick lesson. I found the program extremely unintuitive, but double-entry accounting completely escapes me!
>
> On Thursday, April 26, 2012 19:07:20 Matt Graham wrote:
> > From: Nathan England <nathan@nmecs.com>
> >
> > > http://moneydance.com/
> > > Is by far the best, though it is not free
> >
> > The OP said he was looking for free stuff. I guess this might work if
> > you're willing to pay them whatever yearly fee they're charging now.
> >
> > > GnuCash is an accounting program but it is so complicated to use it
> > > is not worth the time or hassle.
> >
> > Seriously? I started using GNUcash in 2000, when the documentation was
> > barely there. I've never had any formal accounting training, and I figured
> > it all out pretty quickly. The double-entry bookkeeping that GNUcash uses
> > makes it really easy to see how much you've spent from date X to date Y on
> > (category of expenses), and it'll track stocks/bonds/mutual funds if you
> > install Finance::Quote.
> >
> > Take a look at the basic help,
> > http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-help/help.html , and see if anything
> > in the advanced help ,
> > http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html is interesting.
> >
> > The thing to do when setting up GNUcash is to start out your checking
> > account opening balance with the opening balance on the first of (month),
> > then just enter all the income/expenses from then til today that are on
> > your bank statement. Start your cash in wallet opening balance with the
> > bills in your wallet. *DON'T* try to enter everything you have records of,
> > just pick a start date.[0] Then spend 5 minutes every day recording what
> > you spent that day and what you spent it on. It should become second
> > nature pretty quickly.
> >
> > If you're going somewhere without your computer[1], one way to keep records
> > is to write down how much cash is in your wallet right before you leave,
> > and call that X. Then write down how much is in there when you get back,
> > and call that Y. Take (X - Y) and charge that to
> > Expenses:Entertainment:Travel [2] with a description of "trip to
> > $SOMEWHERE". Debit card/whatever charges will show up on your bank's page
> > and you can just enter those numbers when you get back.
> >
> > If you're really hardcore, you can read
> > http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/txns-registers1.html#txns-regis
> > ters-multiaccount2 , so you can split every grocery/restaurant bill into
> > "bill" and "sales tax". Then at the end of the year/month, you can complain
> > about how the government's wasting your $XXX.YY on $THINGS_YOU_DONT_LIKE .
> >
> > [0] Accountants, feel free to gasp in horror here.
> > [1] I know, that's crazy talk, man.
> > [2] The default setup should create a bunch of expense accounts like that.
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Nathan England
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> NME Computer Services http://www.nmecs.com
> Nathan England (nathan@nmecs.com)
> Systems Administration / Web Application Development
> Information Security and Consulting
> (480) 559.9681
>
>
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