Today I have a GnuCash tip for you which will clearly demonstrate GnuCash at its finest.

I always frustrated when I wanted to find a particular transaction in Microsoft Money or Intuit's Quicken. Neither of them had the flexibility to take what I knew about a transaction and use that information to pinpoint the transaction or transactions I wanted. I particularly disliked Microsoft's implementation. Microsoft Money's Find Transaction function was so lame I avoided using it entirely.

To find a transaction in GnuCash, just hit Crtl-F. You don't have to be in any particular location in the program. You can find any transaction from anywhere you want to start looking. Another way to get the Find Transaction dialog is to choose Edit, and then Find from the main menu. You get this dialog box:

Let's have a closer look at GnuCash's Transaction Finder for a minute.

See the Add button in the upper left? If you click that you get additional criteria on which to search for transactions. Want to find all the electric bills in excess of $35 you paid last year out of your checking account? No problem. GnuCash handles that easily.

When you execute a search, GnuCash presents your results in a special Search Results account tab.You can go ahead and modify any of the transactions you see in your Search Results pseudo-account. The changes you make to transactions here are reflected in the original transactions in whatever actual accounts they live in.

GnuCash's Transaction Finder is scary good. The first time I used it, I was blown away. I used to avoid it like the plague in Microsoft Money. It's become one of my most used and most powerful tools in GnuCash. In a GnuCash to Money or Quicken comparison, GnuCash's transaction finder blows the other guys out of the water.