FREE. I love that word. It’s almost as good as Open Source. GNUcash is financial-accounting software for personal and small business all under an open and free GNU GPL . The only problem with a lot of open/free software is that you get what what paid for…

Right off, you’ll probably have to whip out the documentation and actually read at least some of it to get started. What I wanted to do was to keep track of expenditures and also draw from an advance.

I created a customer through Business > Customer > New Customer

Then, I create a new invoice Business > Customer > New Invoice

I posted the invoice and then paid it. Back in the Main Accounts tab, the Accounts Receivable has this Lot Link mess:

Then, there is no EASY way to delete an invoice (or customer) after it’s been created. I went and unzipped the .gnucash file by renaming the extension to zip. Then, I searched by the invoice number in the XML file with a text editor and deleted all occurrences, hopefully getting the right blocks between the < >.

Printing the invoice was ugly too. There is no way to do more than a basic format.

I’m still experimenting with using GNUcash to manipulate a cash advance with a client… let’s see how that goes!