I know these two programs are very similar. I am just really wishing there was a chart or something explaining the differences.

I am working on freeing myself from Apple and eventually using all Free Software. I have been using Quicken Mac 2007.

I am not an accountant and don't care about being rigid and dogmatic just because of some traditional thing like double entry. However, I am self-employed so I do have business expenses and some complexity. In other words, I need good tools, and if double entry is the right thing to do, I'm not necessarily opposed, but all I really want is to have an easy understandable and reliable accounting. Whatever works best, regardless of what is traditional.

Truth is, Quicken was never perfect, but I made it work. I want something simple with good features. I like the undo/redo feature of Skrooge. I like the upcoming idea of tagging in KMyMoney (I like tagging in general for organizing). I'm not otherwise clear what the differences are.

I'm looking for advice or what questions I should ask myself to figure out which program to use.

(on a side note, I had trouble importing my QIF to test with Skrooge because of some date format error, but it imported into KMyMoney. If Skrooge seems the way to go, I might transfer the Quicken stuff to KMM just to then get it to Skrooge. On the other hand, I'm thinking of starting fresh rather than forcing it to function for my 10 years of old and not perfectly organized stuff from Quicken.)

Any advice would be appreciated. I'm just looking for some guidance and clarity here. Thanks!

Hi,

I don't want to give you my advice because I am the main developer of Skrooge and my opinion is biased.
Both tools are good. We developed Skrooge because we wanted something more user friendly with some specific functionalities (undo redo, properties, search & process, budget with automatic transfer, ...).

Be aware that, on Skrooge, we try to do regularly new version with new functionalities, most of the time, requested by users. So, if you need something missing, do not hesitate to request it!

In fact, you mentioned an error during the qif import. This is not normal. Could you help me to correct this bug by sending me a sample causing the error on my personal email (stephane (at) mankowski (dot) fr)?

Thank you in advance for your help to improve Skrooge.

Hi,

The QIF import issue is solved in the beta version published in my ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~s-mankowski/+archive/beta

Thanks, I appreciate this. I'll give it a try and let you know if there are other issues. Cheers

I'd like to report to everyone that I am now a happy Skrooge user! KMyMoney's lack of undo was maddening. Otherwise, while they are both good programs, Skrooge is far better in my experience. It is really easy to sort and search and combine things, such as combine Payees that were slightly differently spelled or worded. There are all sorts of other benefits. I don't need the true double-entry style of KMyMoney. The accounting without that is still the same accounting.

There are a great number of other reasons that I find Skrooge much better.

I am recommending Skrooge to others and look forward to using it for years to come. I'll also do what I can to provide feedback and help it continue to grow!

The main issues are simply that users need to figure out how the program works, as the precise details aren't all completely obvious, but it's still one of the easier and more robust programs out there.

Cheers and thanks so much!