GnuCash Review: Pricing, Features, Alternatives

After installing the software, you’ll see a blank white screen. When you open GnuCash for the first time, you’ll have to set up your company’s books manually, and there’s no setup wizard to guide you. Once you set up your chart of accounts, all accounts and their balances will appear on the top left portion of the screen. Overall, GnuCash is complex software to use if you’re not an accountant.

GnuCash Dashboard showing the Chart of Accounts

GnuCash has a traditional interface, and the interface and user experience aren’t ideal. It’s quite outdated and could use a visual revamp. The small font size can also be a problem for some users. However, despite being difficult to use, GnuCash has good general features, like the ability to import and customize a chart of accounts, record adjusting journal entries (AJEs), and close prior accounting periods so that changes can’t be made.

Some of the general features we like to see that are missing from GnuCash are the ability to invite additional users and a method to share your books easily with an external accountant. Also, it doesn’t have an autosave feature, so if you find yourself entering hundreds of lines of accounting data, don’t forget to hit the save button often. But if you know how to program, you could tweak the source code to autosave your work.

To access the accounts payable (A/P) module, go to the vendor overview under the Business menu. GnuCash’s A/P module isn’t the most visually appealing as it utilizes a lot of windows when creating vendors, editing vendors, creating payment terms, and entering billing:

Creating a Bill

When using the A/P module, ensure that you have entered all jobs, items, and vendors before creating a bill—it would be tedious to do it all as you’re creating the bill. GnuCash also doesn’t have an auto-record function, so the software won’t record a new vendor automatically just by entering the vendor’s name in the field. Overall, we find the A/P module challenging to use, even for certified public accountants (CPAs). The navigational flow isn’t as streamlined as other accounting software programs we’ve reviewed.

However, what we like in billing is that you can assign billable expenses to customers to add them to the customer’s invoice at a later time. This feature is often present in paid accounting software programs but is a rarity in free software. Though the billing function doesn’t have the best form design, we’re still giving it credit for its advanced features.

Once you’re done with the bill, you can view billing details under the Entries section of the billing module. If you have recurring expenses, you can set recurring billing for that expense, and GnuCash will include it in its scheduled transactions tab.

Just like the A/P module, we’re giving the accounts receivable (A/R) module a low score in subjective ease of use. During testing, we found it challenging to use GnuCash. It has a steep learning curve, and it takes time to master the software, so we can’t recommend this for DIY business owners.

The A/R module is in the “customers” overview. You can manage your customers here, add new ones, and view their information. The dashboard only shows customer information. Outstanding balances aren’t readily available in the A/R module dashboard.

Creating an Invoice

The invoice form is similar to the billing form. Once the invoice is created, you can view invoice details in a separate tab. You can change the income account affected, quantity, price, applicable discounts, and taxes. After posting the invoice, you can print the invoice. Its design is traditional, and it has no attractive template or colors.

We can’t recommend GnuCash for invoicing because it doesn’t provide customization features. Instead, check out Zoho Books for its excellent invoicing functionality like adding logos, changing colors, and modifying font styles.

Even though it’s free desktop software, you can connect your bank account in GnuCash, and there’s a setup wizard to help you do so. Overall, we’re pleasantly surprised with GnuCash’s cash management features and consider it the main strength of the software.

For a free program, cash accounting in GnuCash is impressive. The reconciliation feature is excellent as it presents cash receipts and disbursements side-by-side. You can tick the box if the records match the items listed in your bank statement:

Reconciling accounts

If items that haven’t been recorded appear on the bank statement, you can exit the reconciliation window and create an expense entry for bank service charges. Don’t worry, because GnuCash will remember the items you’ve ticked, and you’ll also see recent transactions added. After you reconcile accounts, GnuCash won’t generate a bank reconciliation statement automatically—you’ll have to go to Reports to create one.

GnuCash doesn’t have project accounting features. Though you can add service items, it’s still not enough for project accounting—we want to see features that can track project progress and costs. We recommend Zoho Books for project accounting. In Zoho Books, you can create projects, allocate costs to projects, and create budget-to-actual comparisons.

Unfortunately, GnuCash skips inventory features. This is quite disappointing because inventory is an essential component of an accounting system, especially for retail businesses. If you need inventory features, we recommend QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.

QuickBooks Online is ideal for cloud-based inventory tracking. But if you prefer desktop software, QuickBooks Desktop has excellent inventory tracking features that can help you manage inventory stock levels and costs.

Adding sales taxes to invoices is convenient in GnuCash, and taxes are presented in the printable invoice. The only struggle here is that it’s hard to view sales tax liability in detail. We prefer seeing detailed sales tax liability so that users can see all transactions with sales tax plus sales tax adjustments from credit memos.

Reporting isn’t one of GnuCash’s noteworthy features. It can generate basic financial reports, but we didn’t find it useful enough for small business reporting.

GnuCash is hard to use for small businesses who wish to DIY bookkeeping. The only help available is to check the self-help information online. There’s no way to contact GnuCash by phone, email, and live chat. In addition, you’ll struggle to find third-party accountants who are familiar with GnuCash and able to assist you. Zoho Books is an excellent alternative software if you want better customer service.

GnuCash doesn’t have a reliable mobile app. While coders have introduced GnuCash apps for both iOS and Android, the apps don’t communicate with GnuCash on your computer and don’t contain all of the features, so we’re giving GnuCash zero points in this area.

There are limited GnuCash reviews from users. However, niche users have found it to be a great accounting software because it’s free and open source. Most reviewers recommend it for freelancers.

Here are the ratings of GnuCash on popular review sites:

• SoftwareAdvice: 4.48 out of 5 stars based on around 40 reviews
• SourceForge: 4.5 out of 5 stars based on about 110 reviews