jGnash for Windows

The financial software market is so competitive that there's really no reason to settle for a mediocre program; there are plenty of great ones to choose from. Unfortunately, jGnash falls into that group of programs that just don't cut it. Although the program works, there are many things about it that turned us off.

We got off on the wrong foot with jGnash immediately; it took an extremely long time to load, and once it was up and running, it had a huge negative impact on our system's performance. Our litmus test for personal finances software is whether or not we can import transactions from our bank; there's no reason in this day and age to have to enter transactions manually. Although jGnash does let users import OFX, QFX, QIF, and MT940 files, it doesn't support CSV or XML files, two very common formats that are the only ones supported by our bank. The program's interface is plain and easy enough to navigate, but it's hard to tell at a glance whether a transaction is a deposit or debit; the transactions are neither color-coded nor separated into different columns. The program does come with a decent Help file that contains plenty of screenshots, which is always a good thing, but the program isn't difficult to use because of its complexity. Rather, jGnash is difficult to use simply because it's clunky and not particularly user-friendly. If it were the last personal finance program on Earth it would be OK, but there are many better program to choose from.

jGnash comes as a ZIP file and is accessible after extraction with no need for installation. We recommend this program with reservations.