Re: GnuCash performance is too slow

I use gnucash for the SLUG finances. I write my own reports from totals 
in gnucash to have them the way I want to present. I have a new folder 
for each year as a way of keeping data separate for each year. SLUG has 
100-200 transactions per year.
gnucash works well at this scale, but so does anything else including 
pen and paper.
Ken

Minh Van Le wrote:
>>> Hey is there anybody seriously using GnuCash for personal
>> finance management
>>> ?
>>>
>>> So far, I've found the Win32 GnuCash v2.2.9 unacceptably slow to
>>>
>>>   1. Start up
>>>   2. Generate reports
>>>   3. Enter register transactions
>>>
>>> on a P4 1.8 Ghz machine 750 mb RAM.
>> Shouldn't be a problem. If it is, you are using the wrong program
>> or there is
>> some other issue.
> 
> It probably has a lot to do with the 8280 transactions I've got, and about
> three hundred categories (which is converted to an "Account" under the
> GnuCash scheme of doing things).
> 
>>> Does GnuCash use a database backend ? because it seems to have
>> to rebuild
>>> reports or do a full table scan every time you make a simple report
>>> customisation or re-open a file.
>> I just had a look at the dependencies and there are no databases
>> obviously
>> listed. That would suggest flat file. Not always a problem in my
>> view... depends
>> on the size and shape of the job, doesn't it?
> 
> Yeah but I was shocked to see that GnuCash was so poor in compiling reports
> that took me virtually no time under Quicken. The flat file format must be
> the culprit. No serious accounting program uses flat files. I guess the
> solution here for GnuCash would be to split up files for each financial year
> in order to limit the amount of data in each file. (For GnuCash's
> exponential performance degradation per 1000 transactions, you might have to
> create a file for each month ! :P, which would be totally useless for
> reporting purposes.)
> 
> I don't consider 6 years worth of personal data a very sizeable or large
> job, especially when Quicken can do it in virtually real-time. Imagine if it
> were a business, with hundreds of recorded transactions per day ... it would
> kill GnuCash.
> 
> I had high hopes for GnuCash, because it would be something that I'd
> recommend to people who didn't want to fork out money. A tool I could use to
> help improve people's financial literacy. The screenshots looked good. But
> now I have to add a caveat that GnuCash is not viable long term due to its
> poor performance on critical essential things like Loading Up or building
> reports.
> 
> I saw a 1.8.x PostgreSQL database back-end version of GnuCash. But that was
> an RPM add-on, which apparently has no longer been supported since. These
> GnuCash guys seriously need a database backend. Their current way of data
> storage is just wrong.
> 
>>> There's also no transaction-level zoom'ing for reports and charts in
>>> GnuCash.
>> $ apt-cache show gnucash
>> gnucash - A personal finance tracking program
>>
>> I've never used it, but I never got the impression it was a hard
>> core accounting
>> program. I think the key word there is "personal".
> 
> Yeah I suppose.
> 
> If you've used Quicken before, you would really miss the transaction zooming
> features. Moving your mouse over a pie chart section, zoom in to see
> transactions that make up that section of the chart, then subtotal by
> category etc. GnuCash has poor reporting features.
> 
> I seriously don't understand how people can say that GnuCash is better than
> Quicken. And these are people who posted reviews on Slashdot and Linux
> Magazine back in 2002/3 ... when GnuCash was 1.8.x vs. Quicken 2002. 5 years
> later, GnuCash 2.2.x is still crappier than Quicken 2002.
> 
>>> Are there supposed to be additional/extended features that need to be
>>> plugged-in to GnuCash ?
>>>
>>> At this stage, my opinion is GnuCash might be barely Ok for 1
>> or 2 years but
>>> it's not scaleable enough at all for serious long term business.
>> If you want scalable, you could try ledgersmb. I've used it for
>> years and it
>> breezes through my work - postgres back end, web front end.
>>
>> I'm sure there are others too.
> 
> I'll check out ledgersmb. Sounds like it does things the right way to begin
> with. (Separation of the accounting client, interfaces et al. from the
> backend data store).
> 
> For personal accounting I'm aware of
> 
>   Linux
>   -----
>   GnuCash
>   KmyMoney
>   Eqonomize
> 
>   Non-Linux
>   ---------
>   MoneyDance
>   MS Money
>   Quicken Personal
> 
> I think there're also MYOB ports to Linux.
> 
>> FWIW, my accountant does just about everything on excel spread sheets!
> 
> Yeah I suppose.
> 
> I'm not an accountant. But I'm doing Accounting 1 & 2 subjects via Distance
> Education at CSU as part of a combined Business & IT degree.
> 
> I don't know what accountants do, but I'd be confident in saying that
> spreadsheets won't cut it for daily transactional business accounting,
> unless you're just pulling a few dozen totals from a financial package to
> fix up an End-Of-Year tax return.
> 
> GnuCash is hopeless imo.
> 
> Its got a nice spash screen and desktop icon design. That's about it.
> 
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