It's the end of February. I've been using the free open source personal finance software, gnucash, for nearly 3 months now. I thought today would be a good time to show you how I intend to use gnucash to manage my personal finances, in particular how gnucash handles my budget.

The image you see here is a screen capture of my budget category report in gnucash. You can see the full sized image by clicking on it or my clicking the Read more link below. The data itself isn't important. I set the reporting date to December-06, which was the month I started using gnucash. Some numbers represent the full month. Others do not. As you can see, this is only a partial view of the entire budget.

What is important is the layout, clarity and utility of this elegant gnucash report.

Layout and clarity
The arrangement of my gnucash budget report is very straightforward. Under the account title heading are listed the major budget categories. Immediately beneath each and offset to the right are the subcategories which combine to make up the total for each major category.

For instance, notice how the major category Charity contains two subcategories, Cash Contributions and Volunteer Expenses. Notice also how their individual subtotals are listed, and how they sum up to the total for the Charity category on the highlighted line beneath.

The Dining and Entertainment and General budget categories do not have subcategories. Their totals therefore are simply listed in the far right column.

If you've ever opened an annual report and looked at the tables in the back, you've seen this layout. This layout for your own budget categories is not only the generally accepted presentation; but also the most clear and concise way to communicate the relationships between budget categories and their sub-categories.

Utility
This gnucash budget category report is not only clear and concise, it's downright useful as well. Each of the category titles is actually a hyperlink to the category account listing in gnucash. I have found hyperlinking directly from the gnucash budget category report for two reasons:

1. Drilling down. The links allow you to go directly to each account to view the details behind the number presented. If you see some amount that looks out of line, or you have a question in your mind about where that $1,000 charitable contribution went, one click gives you the answer.
2. Transaction entry. I can use this report as the launching off point for entering transactions if I want to. One click on the Dining and Entertainment link takes me to that budget category account and I'm ready to enter a transaction in that account. I find that extraordinarily useful.

Three months in, I'm still very pleased with what gnucash is doing for me and my personal financial management tasks. I'm very impressed with the range of capabilities this free open source personal finance package delivers. As a means to manage my budget, I have not found a better personal finance application for the job than gnucash. As I have said before in previous gnucash reviews, it takes some getting used to; but once you see it the light comes on and you wonder why you ever paid real money for those other personal finance applications.