Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide

I had previously purchased QuickBooks Pro to handle my small business accounting and found it totally OTT (over the top)--too complicated and unwieldy for my basic small business needs. In an online search for something better, I stumbled upon Gnucash software which is free, downloadable from the web, and easy to learn (if you've used other business software); however, the 'help' provided isn't very good. When I had questions ('how do I...?'), I couldn't find the answers and, when I signed up to the Gnucash forum with postings sent to my inbox, I was deluged with incomprehensible questions/answers at MIT-level expertise, so I quickly unsubscribed. I'm just a simple girl who really likes Gnucash, so I was DELIGHTED to discover this book on Amazon. i don't know if it answers everything, but it's easy to read and I'm well pleased with it so far. It was expensive (I purchased the Kindle version, cheaper than the book), yet far less costly than buying more small business software that didn't work for me. Highly recommended.

I have just loaded GNUCash and came to Amazon to buy a book on the subject. Downloaded the free sample to see if I could live with his style of writing but was a bit disappointed to find the sample only showed the contents page so I must now buy this on trust. I'll write more and change the star rating after I've read the book.

Very comprehensive, but not quite what I needed. Excellent for small business. Difficult to load 10 years of data for home/personal finances, which is what I was trying to do!

Gnucash is a great accounts package but I have no experience of accounting so I got a "Bookkeeping for Dummies" book which was awful and confused me no end. This book, which I bought just to help with the package, actually taught me so much more about accounting than the so-called bookkeeping book did. Yes it's designed for American businesses and banking (the software and this book) but I have found it to be very easy to adapt - even with my very low level of expertise - and because of it's simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach I am now pretty confident in my bookkeeping abilities. I have been using it for a year now and the numbers in my Gnucash do match the numbers in my bank account / credit card / PayPal statements, so all is well. I would strongly recommend this software (which is free) but the book is an invaluable addition to it, totally worth the price.

Although based on a slightly older version of GnuCash, I found the book helpful. But be aware, it not suitable for someone who wants to use GnuCash for personal accounting. It really is only suitable for business use, which is what I bought it for.

This software was just what I was looking for. I used Quicken accounts for years, this program is even better

Les fonctionnalités Business sont mal documentées sur le web, ce livre permet de vraiment progresser. Peut être un peu cher, je prendrais l'édition électronique si c'était à refaire.

Nothing special. I was trying to read it few times but it's not easy to read. Basically you can find all this info on the Internet. I bought it only to support Gnucash and I hope I did.

We have a farm which is generating revenue from egg sales ("eggs from free-range, pasture-fed, spoiled rotten hens"), and we hope to sell other agricultural products as well. I wanted to move beyond the cash envelope and receipt shoe box in order to work towards profitability. Gnucash seemed like the way to go because it's free, open source and easy to use. It's also designed to fit US IRS tax forms. "Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting" is just what I needed. The author assumes no knowledge of bookkeeping and teaches the concepts while teaching how to use Gnucash. Given the subject matter, the book is surprisingly readable. I read the entire book before downloading the software, and was able to follow the book quite easily without hands-on experience. I wanted to be sure that Gnucash was right software for us, and have a good sense for which accounts to choose when setting up the bookkeeping system. Of course it's generally easy to make changes later, but I wanted to be able to envision how the system would meet our needs. The author is very good about covering how to recover from errors, including rare problems that the software doesn't facilitate. He answers questions you might have like, "Why not skip entering transactions and just import them from an electronic bank statement?" or "Why create budgets in Gnucash if I'm going to have to export them to a spreadsheet to do certain types of analysis?" The author also points out the reports that a tax accountant will want to see, the reports a bank considering a loan will want to see, and even how to go from a budget to a business plan. The only topic of interest to me that was missing is a concept I'm calling "petty owner investment". In the author's defense, no one else seems to talk about the issue. (This is really a suggestion for a second edition.) Our business is too small to justify a checking account or credit card. We buy things for the business out of our own accounts. If I buy things for the business and don't expect to be reimbursed, I must have to show contributions to owners equity to balance the expenses. Monthly credits to the equity account totaling all the stuff we bought? As someone who's new to accounting, I'm not too comfortable inventing concepts. All in all, an excellent, readable introduction to small business accounting as well as Gnucash.

Il libro non è troppo approfondito, ma cmq completo. Fa una buona panoramica generale sull'utilizzo e le potenzialità del programma, ma per la gestione di una piccola impresa (si può utilizzare per l'aspetto della contabilità, del fisco e della fatturazione) non va a sufficienza nei particolari, anche perché è pur sempre un'analisi dal punto di vista americano e non certo adeguata al nostro Paese.

I was looking at using GnuCash for our church's finances and this book has a chapter on non-profits so I thought I would check it out. The book explains concepts well and is very engaging for a technical book, which I appreciate. Much of this information is available for free with the GnuCash manual and the documentation there is pretty good but also fairly boring. This book gives some good examples and does it in a way which is NOT boring, so that's a definite benefit. It didn't spell out exactly the information I was looking for but gave me enough to formulate my own plan for our church finance structure. My only real complaint is the cost and part of it is because I believe ebooks should be significantly cheaper than printed books. Granted he isn't self-publishing so there are still publisher costs but $20 is too much (I paid $14 when it was on sale). Then again, the market for GnuCash books is probably insignificant anyway.