KMyMoney

In these difficult times, home accounting can indeed be very useful, as it allows us to keep track of where our hard-earned money goes and provides enough data to help us plan our family budget. Furthermore, home accounting gives a clearer picture of just how much we can afford to spend on a particular need -- food, clothing, recreation, etc. Essentially, managing our finances through home accounting can give us a much-needed feeling of financial stability because we know exactly how and when to spend our money.

To aid us in our desire to properly manage our personal financial transactions, a number of accounting principles and systems have been put in place. And as the world becomes more fast-paced and frenetic with each passing day, people are looking for faster and more convenient ways to put these time-tested accounting principles to use. Hence, several software development communities have come up with open source accounting software to address society's needs. One of these software that is currently gaining in popularity is KMyMoney.

KMyMoney is a personal finance manager that operates in a manner similar to Microsoft money. It supports different account types, expense and income categorization, and bank account reconciliation. Its primary objectives are accuracy, ease of use and familiarity of features. It promotes accuracy by using the trusted double entry accounting principles; thus ensuring that users' finances are kept in proper order. It employs systems that make it one of the easiest personal finance managers to use, even for non-technical users. Finally, software developers endeavor to provide all the essential features found in commercially available personal finance managers.

One of the features of KMyMoney, which is most appreciated by users is the fact that it allows you to use several accounts simultaneously, to schedule regular payments, and to receive reports about income and expenses either according to payer, category, or time period. Another one of the software's strength is that it can be easily installed on most Linux distributions because of its pre-built binary packages. KMyMoney also allows the user to choose a base currency for his entries and the choice of currencies come from a very wide range, from Mongolian Tugrik to Gold.

Stock brokers may also find good use of the software, since it allows users to keep a list of stocks owned or those you are planning to buy. The price information of these stocks is updated automatically from online sources, or if you wish to do so, you may also manually update the information. KMyMoney even has the capability to generate monthly and annual reports of expenditures, indicating what you spent and where it was spent. This is the most useful feature for you to know where your money went and allow you to cut down on unnecessary expenses.

In sum, KMyMoney draws strength from its intuitive interface and in the fact that it is very easy to learn and much easier to use than other personal financial management applications being offered today. In spite of this ease of use, however, KMyMoney is still relatively difficult for beginners to master. The developers indeed still have much to work on before they achieve their goal of making the software more accessible to non-technical users.