Chapter 2  Introduction

2.1  General

Grisbi is a free accounting program, developed in the C language with support for GTK 2, originally for the GNU/Linux platform. There is now a build on Windows, Mac OSX, FreeBSD, packages for different Linux distributions, and other possibilities to discover on Grisbi or Sourceforge.

The basic principle is to allow you to classify in a simple and intuitive way your financial operations, whatever they are, in order to be able to exploit them in the best way according to your needs.

Grisbi emphasises simplicity and efficiency, without excluding the sophistication needed by more advanced users. Future features will always try to meet these criteria.

2.2  Features

Translators Note: In this translation, the French word tiers in general has been replaced by the English word Payees, however the French version of Grisbi also caters for small business use. In the French version any third party i.e. a creditor or debtor could be implied by the word tiers/payee. Warning: French business accounting rules may be incompatible with the rules of any English speaking territories, Grisbi should be used only for personal financial record keeping outside of France.

2.2.1  What Grisbi knows how to do

• Software developed by French programmers, so in full compliance with the logic of French accounting
• Simple and intuitive interface, with full-screen display control
• Multi-account and multi-user management
• Local Settings Management (Dates, Decimal Separators and Thousands)
• Bank accounts, cash, assets and liabilities
• Multi-currency management, with support for exchange rates and exchange fees
• Credit card management (immediate or deferred debit)
• Description of transactions with: date, valuation date, fiscal year, Payee amount, currency, category and sub-category, budget allocation and sub-allocation (for analysis of expenditure), note, entry number (assigned by Grisbi), part number, account number, bank reference
• Budget classifications and attribution with automatic recall of operations and sub-operations for a given Payee
• Clear Credit and Flow fields option for auto-complete
• Calculation of the balance according to the date of the transaction or its valuation date
• Transfer between accounts, including different currencies, with automatic cross posting
• Scheduling operations with automatic or manual validation
• Deadline monitoring
• Moving and Cloning Operations
• Cloning scheduled operations
• Shading of different periods in the scheduler
• Analysis and financial reports thanks to the powerful report templates module
• Several pre-formatted report templates available and customizable
• ??Tiers virtuels créés par les états??
• Printing of ??états??
• Simulation of loans and depreciation tables with printing and data export
• Estimated budget with charts on forecasts and historical data
• Credit card management (immediate or deferred debit)
• Business Accounting with Chart of Accounts
• Account order by drag and drop in the account list
• Import files in the following formats: QIF, OFX, Gnucash or CSV
• Importing category files into budget allocations
• Export files in the QIF or CSV formats
• Choice of custom icons for your different accounts
• Icons in the SVG formats
• Even more context menus on the right mouse button (navigation pane)
• Numerous keyboard shortcuts for good ergonomics

2.2.2  What Grisbi does not know yet

• Automatic breakdown of loan repayments
• Internet reconciliation

2.3  Software Evolution

2.3.1  Development and versions

Grisbi is software in active development, any feedback (idea, bug, documentation…) is welcome. You can send it to the relevant lists referenced in the 2.4 Contacts section or on the Grisbi site.

You can, if you have the taste of adventure, download the versions in development on the Grisbi content management system based on Git. Indeed, the code of a new versions of Grisbi is typically frozen several weeks before its final release, in order to allow the development team time to check and eradicate the latest bugs. During this period, the format of the account file no longer changes, and you can, with a minimum of precautions (frequent backups, etc.), benefit from the latest improvements several weeks in advance, and also participate in debugging.

Finally you also have access to all the evolutions of the code after version 0.3.2 (the version from which we set up a CVS on the Grisbi site.

Note that as of version 0.6, even numbered minor number versions (e.g. 0. 8) are stable versions, whereas odd number minor number versions are unstable and should not be used under normal conditions; therefore only stable versions are mentioned here.

2.3.2  What’s new in version 0.6, since version 0.4.5

• Revamped GUI
• GTK + 2 library support for a nicer environment and simplified porting on Windows
• No more dependencies on Gnome
• Native Windows version (thanks to François Terrot)
• Native UTF-8 support
• Printing reports by LaTeX
• Export reports in HTML
• Improved user interface:
  • message enhancement, users can select "ignore",
  • improved management of segmentation errors,
  • improvement of the preferences window,
  • pop-up menu on the list of operations,
  • ?? amélioration des items ??;
• Completely clickable list of accounts with summaries
• Global configuration in XML (thanks to Axel Rousseau)
• Rewrite of the file import:
  • support for the QIF ,OFX, Gnucash or CSV formats
  • incremental import,
  • automatic reconciliation;
• Beginning of the Italian translation by Giorgio Mandolfo
• ?? Taux de change cachés sur une session pour éviter de les ressaisir ??
• Support for text attributes (bold, italic, large, small) for states
• New logo with mascot Grisbi on a Euro sign (thanks to André Pascual)
• Editable animated waiting logo
• Completely case-sensitive lists of characters
• Improved entry of bank details
• Keyboard support for Payee ??trees, categories and budget allocations??
• Clickable automatic term maturities
• ??Échéances ventilables??
• Transactions convertible into instalments
• Operations that can be moved to another account

2.3.3  What’s new in version 0.8

• Budget module in the basic version
• Credit simulator and amortization tables with the possibility to print and export the data in a spreadsheet
• Amortization table for liability accounts with the ability to print and export data in a spreadsheet
• Local Settings Management (Date Format, Decimal Separators and Thousands)
• Embedding custom icons in the accounts file
• Shading of different periods in the scheduler
• Cloning scheduled operations

2.3.4  What’s new in version 1.0

• Graphics on forecasts
• Credit card management (immediate or deferred debit)
• Business accounting with a Chart of Accounts
• Grisbi icon in the SVG formats
• Even more context menus on the right mouse button
• Importing category files into budget allocations
• Changing the account display order by drag and drop in the account list
• Calculation of the balance according to the date of the transaction or its valuation date
• ??Clear Credit and Flow fields option for auto-complete??
• View unused payees
• Full-screen display command by function key <F11>
• Keyboard shortcut <Ctrl> <T> for the call of a new operation
• Direct access to the user manual through the menu Help or the keyboard shortcut <Ctrl> <H>

2.3.5  And for the future?

Future releases (unstable 1.1 and stable 1.2) will still use the GTK version 2 library.

Future versions (unstable 1.3 and stable 1.4) will benefit from the new GTK version 3 library.

2.4  Contacts

Translators Note: Many of the following links are now out of date or invalid. These links will be fixed once the French version of the manual has been updated.

In addition to emailing the authors, you have several mailing lists you can contact us or obtain information through.

To keep abreast of developments in Grisbi, you can register on the Information list provided for this purpose. You will then receive an email at the release of each new version.

If you want to participate in the development of Grisbi, there is a development list.

If you want to regularly compile the latest version of Grisbi’s code from Git, you will find it advantageous to subscribe to the Git information list to be notified of the latest commit.

In addition, we decided to undertake the internationalization of Grisbi and, if you wish to help us, you can first contact us on the development list.

Specialized lists will be created for each language as needed.

For now, only the English translation list exists.

To subscribe to one of these lists, simply go to the page http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/list replacing list with the name of the list you are interested in. Or go to Grisbi and look for Contacts there.

In addition do not hesitate to regularly consult Grisbi’s official website.

2.5  Authors and contributors

Cédric Auger is the basis of the project, and continues to be a developer.

Daniel Cartron wrote the documentation up to version 0.4.0, provided accounting advice and ergonomics, and created the first Grisbi site. His passion for ultra-compliant accounts files brings an undeniable bonus to the discovery of unpublished bugs.

André Pascual,

Linuxgraphic, is the author of our logo.

Sébastien Blondeel wrote the scripts to produce the different formats of the documentation and those related to the conversion of images to the appropriate formats. He is also the architect of the adoption of LaTeX for writing the documentation. In addition, his experience in electronic publishing makes him a valuable advisor and source of many suggestions.

Benjamin Drieu, developer for Grisbi and official packager for Debian.

Alain Portal, who was starting to get bored in RedHat packaging. His love of a job well done and his obstinacy make him, for the moment, a bug fixer. He also participates in the compilation of the documentation. He wants to start coding in the unstable version.

Loic Breilloux has updated the documentation for version 0.5.1 and will try to update the documentation for future releases.

Gerald Niel replaced Daniel Cartron in the role of webmaster and is therefore the creator of the new version of Grisbi. He is also responsible for Slackware packages.

Juliette Martin has the thankless task of proofreading of the documentation. If there are any mistakes, it’s certainly they were well hidden for escaping his attentive eyes

François Terrot joined the team to create Grisbi’s build for Windows.

Pierre Biava joined the development team in 2008.

DidierChevalier,William Ollivier and Mickael Remars have also participated in development.

Jean-Luc Duflot made a big update of the manual for the 0.6 version, which was needed since 2004, and continued on with the 0.8 and the 1.0 versions too.

Alain Letient tenaciously re-read the 0.6 manual and created its iconography, and also continued with versions 0.8 and 1.0.

Guy Lebègue, first for version 0.8, then with MichèleBondil for 1.0, created the business accounting option, which requires many specialist accounting skills.

2.6  Acknowledgments

Thanks to TuxFamily who has long made available to us all the tools we needed to develop Grisbi (website, ftp, CVS, mailing lists, etc.). Alas, the attacks inflicted by hackers in late 2003 - early 2004 on TuxFamily have forced us to seek a new web home. So today we thank SourceForge, the platform to which we migrated. We wish a quick and quick recovery to TuxFamily that is sorely lacking hundreds of free projects.

A big thank you also to all the contributors on the development list who helped Grisbi’s evolution through their suggestions, remarks and bug reports, as well as to the many readers of the User Manual, which contribute to make it a better tool.

2.7  Licenses

The program is subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License. Bug fixes and updates are not guaranteed. The manual is subject to the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

2.8  About this manual

This is version 1.0 of the manual, dated February 12, 2014, which corresponds to the version 1.0 of Grisbi software. This manual was written with the LaTeX text formatter.

It can be accessed directly in the Grisbi software via the menu under Help - Manual from the menu bar, in HTML format.

The tools needed to read the various manual formats are presented in the 2.8.3 section Reading software.

2.8.1  Introduction

Although Grisbi is designed to be as intuitive as possible and most functions are immediately understandable, a reference manual is needed. This manual has been designed according to the following principles:

• the most comprehensive possible, covering all the program features;
• to facilitate navigation through the manual its chapters are organized as closely as possible according to a uniform format: presentation of the chapter - description of the display, description of the functions,
• Editing recurring paragraphs from one chapter to another in the most identical way possible, to facilitate quick reading;
• search for information facilitated by numerous hyperlinks, an index and a glossary.

Here is a brief description of the different chapters:

• Preamble Introduces the English translation and explains the origin of the name given to this software;
• Introduction Introduces the software, the manual, their authors and contacts;
• First start Grisbi is the essential chapter to help you to start using the software;
• Home describes the main elements of the GUI and their manipulation with the mouse and the keyboard (shortcuts);
• Export and Import Accounts describes how to exchange data with other software;
• Data Management presents the options of the account files, backups and archives and their management;
• Account Management describes the properties of accounts, their management and the different types of accounts with their use;
• Account Operations describes the operations on accounts, the information and input fields used and their management
• Bank Reconciliation details the procedure for reconciling an account and managing reconciliations;
• Schedule describes the planning of future entries and their manipulation;
• Searches takes stock of data search possibilities;
• Payees, Categories, budgetary allocations and Exercises describe the management of this data;
• Credit Simulation describes methods and simulation management;
• Forecast Budgets describes the tools and procedures for budget creation and depreciation tables, as well as their management;
• Credit card management and their prediction describes the management of these cards, including deferred debit cards, and forecasting methods;
• Business Accounting presents two introductions for business managers;
• Reports and Report creation describe the management and creation of reports;
• Configuration of Grisbi details all the possibilities of setting the software;
• Maintenance Tools gives some tips to use in case of errors or bugs.

2.8.2  Typographical conventions of this manual

The following list defines and illustrates the typographic conventions used as visual aids for identifying particular elements of the text of the document:

• the interface components are window titles, icon and button names, menu names, and other options that appear on the monitor screen; they are presented as follows:
  

       click Back;

• the keyboard key label represents what is written on the keyboard keys; it is presented as follows:
  

       press the <Enter> key;

• key combinations are a series of keys to be pressed simultaneously (unless otherwise specified) to perform a single function; they are presented as follows:
  

       press the key combination <Ctrl> <R>;

• The commands that are part of an instruction and that must be entered are presented as follows:
  

       type grisbi to start the program;

• file and directory names are shown as:
  

       graybi-n.n.n.rpm and / usr / local / bin;

• the command lines consist of a command and can include one or more possible parameters of the command; they are presented as follows:
  

       rpm -Uvh graybi-n.n.n.rpm;

• any sequence of alphanumeric characters in blue, in the document in PDF or HTML format, is a hypertext link, referring to either an image, another part of the document, an indexed word or to the glossary (for PDF only);
• The words or groups of words referenced in the index are highlighted in the chapters as follows:
  

       referenced term for PDF format;
  

       in brown for HTML.

In addition, a Note underlines a particular point to take into account, while a Attention indicates either a very important point for the understanding, or an error not to do under pain of important damage for your data ; a Warning is to be respected.

2.8.3  Reading software

To read this document, we recommend the use of free software, which respects all your privacy and the confidentiality of your data; the following software has the features of hyperlinks:

• for PDF format:
  • Linux: Evince, Epdfviewer, Firefox, Ghostscript, MuPDF, Okular,
  • Mac: Okular, Vindaloo, Xpdf,
  • Windows: Evince, Firefox, MuPDF, Okular, SumatraPdf;
• for the HTML format:
  • Linux: Arora, Dillo, Firefox, Kazehakase, Links2, Midori, SeaMonkey,
  • Mac: Arora, Camino, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Shiira,
  • Windows: Arora, Firefox, Iron, K-Meleon, Midori, SeaMonkey.

In short, you have the choice!

These programs are all downloadable on their own website and are all under a license of free software, and you can also find them on the Framasoft site.