Money management. It’s generally not very fun, but it’s something we all have to deal with.

There are several open source applications for finance management, GnuCash being one of the most well known and a very strong contender.

Over on the KDE specific side, we have KMyMoney, currently at version 0.8.7.

The ultimate objectives of KMyMoney are…

• Familiar Features. KMyMoney intends to provide all
  important features found in the commercially-available,
  personal finance managers. The current release is closer
  than ever to that goal and more improvements are already
  planned or being tested.
• Ease of use. KMyMoney strives to be the easiest open
  source personal finance manager to use, especially for the
  non-technical user.
• Accuracy. Using time tested double entry accounting
  principles KMyMoney can help ensure that your finances are kept in
  correct order.

After this home screen, you go through an initial setup process, which involves creating a new data file and answering some initial questions. For those unfamiliar with KMyMoney, this can seem a little daunting as it’s not clear exactly what some of the options mean.

Once you’re created, however, it is very simple to set up your various institutions and accounts and start entering data into the system.

My only major complaint interface-wise would have to be that the default toolbar doesn’t really contain enough buttons that you regularly would use to add new data and doesn’t change depending on the context. For example, if you go to the Payees section divider on the left, it’s not immediately obvious how to actually add a Payer to the list. It turns out you need to right click a blank space in that area and choose New, but I can’t see an easier way to access this.

Despite that, the application is very powerful, has lots of features and once you’ve got over the initial interface quirkiness and got to learn it a bit, can be a very formidable solution for money management.

Speaking of learning it, the user guide is available both from the Help menu in the application and it is available online in HTML and PDF formats.

KMyMoney is a KDE application, but should work fine anywhere where the KDE libraries and support packages are installed.