There are many times an accounting program could be useful, especially for someone similar to me. I own and operate a lawn mowing business, a computer repair and support shop, and write a weekly column. To collect the income, I have a checking account, a savings account, and recently opened a PayPal account. I found that keeping track of my income, expenses, and balances in my head was growing impossible. As a second nature reflex, I began to look for an Open Source program to come to my aid.

jGnash is a very simple accounting package that will take care of most of your personal and business needs. It has many features common among commercial finance applications, including Quicken. As is common among Open Source programs, it is highly customizable and configurable. You can get more information and download jGnash here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jgnash/

jGnash was written using Java, allowing it to be very cross-platform compliant. It supports all versions of Windows and *nix environments. Although I generally support cross-platform development, using Java for this type of application isn’t something I would have done. Java tends to make the program run a little slower (because it relies on the Java Runtime Environment heavily), which is very noticeably on older machines. This causes performance to drop slightly, as well as an increase in memory usage. This shouldn’t be a problem for more recent machines.

The user interface of jGnash is very simple and easy to get the hang of. If you are familiar at all with commercial finance applications, you should have no problem at all getting used to jGnash. It provides straightforward account management and customization. jGnash also allows for themes and different “look and feel” elements (basically, this means it allows you use skins) that are pretty neat.

If you have used Quicken in the past, or need to read a Quicken file, jGnash has built in support for QIF (Quicken documents) to allow for maximum flexibility. You can import files in QIF format, as well as save them in QIF, or convert them to XML or jGNASH file types. It also supports importing from GnuCash, for Linux users.

This program also makes use of various currencies, allowing it not only to be cross-platform, but truly usable internationally. It supports conversions and multiple currency accounts. One of the best features I discovered was the built-in encryption feature. I firmly believe in keeping my personal information secured and safe from unauthorized viewers. jGnash supports file encryption and password requirements that allow you to make the information you store as safe as possible.

A cool feature that is still being testing and reworked is a check printing and design feature. It allows you to design, customize, and print your own checks. It should be a great addition once a few issues I found are worked out.

jGnash has a full featured reporting system, allowing you to graph income, expenses, and day by day balance reports. Since information is organized into categories, the reporting system makes it very simple to see what area you are spending your money in. It displays the data in a very simple, easy to read graph, so you do not have to dig through your statements with a calculator.

Overall, I was impressed with the features of jGnash, and recommend it to those who can not afford a commercial finance application. Although it is still in development, jGnash does not yet compare to Quicken, because of performance issues and overall features. Compared to other Open Source finance management programs I have tried, jGnash certainly stood out as the best, in my opinion.