Alex uses GnuCash, and while it's double-entry based, it's all very automatic. You set up categories that make sense to you based on your spending and income, and it automatically handles the double-entry - you don't have to do any of it. It's just like entering into quicken, it just looks different. You can actually import your quicken files in and it'll create everything for you, too (with very little neatening required after, but isn't there always?)
I'm going to have to get used to GnuCash once we've moved, after some dozen years of using Quicken, but having poked at it a little bit, it isn't bothering me, it's looking relatively comfortable. It's also looking very stable, after about 5 or 6 years of Alex using it.
GnuCash doesn't seem to have some of the same report types and nifty automated budgeting tools that Quicken has, but since I've never particularly found Q's budgeting tools all that accurate, I don't mind the latter, and the reports that GnuCash seem to be missing are some of the ones that a reasonably competant person with an emacs (or VI) installation and a text file could probably put together relatively easily.
Re: Lesson
I'm going to have to get used to GnuCash once we've moved, after some dozen years of using Quicken, but having poked at it a little bit, it isn't bothering me, it's looking relatively comfortable. It's also looking very stable, after about 5 or 6 years of Alex using it.
GnuCash doesn't seem to have some of the same report types and nifty automated budgeting tools that Quicken has, but since I've never particularly found Q's budgeting tools all that accurate, I don't mind the latter, and the reports that GnuCash seem to be missing are some of the ones that a reasonably competant person with an emacs (or VI) installation and a text file could probably put together relatively easily.