GnuCash and CLI Ledger (was Re: Meeting Minutes Published - April 29, 2010)

["Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn ebb org>]

Brian Cameron wrote at 19:33 (EDT) on Tuesday:

>  * GnuCash automation.
>    * Paul already has an action item to work with Germán to find a
>      solution for GnuCash automation.
>    * ACTION: Rosanna will send emails about the state of GnuCash
>      automation to Paul so that he is in the loop about the state of
>      affairs.

I haven't been following the stuff with regard to GnuCash automation
issues in previous Board minutes, but I thought I'd share a suggestion.

For Software Freedom Conservancy, we used GnuCash for the first few
years, but found, as perhaps you all are, that getting the needed
reports out of it required a lot of work coding up new reports in Guile.

I decided ultimately to switch to a tool called Ledger:
          http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger/

It's ASCII and command line based, and the 2.x series versions of it can
actually read in GnuCash data.

This might be able to help your automation: even if you stick with
GnuCash itself, using a version of Ledger that supports I/O on GnuCash
files might be able to generate the reports and spreadsheet import you
need more easily.

Just my $0.02 having been through a similar problem.  HTH.

-- 
   -- bkuhn
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