KMyMoney 0.9

[Thomas Baumgart]

Name: KMyMoney
Version: 0.9
Type: KDE Financial
Depend: KDE 3.4.x
License: GPL
Homepage: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=10180

Description:
 KMyMoney is the BEST Personal Finance Manager for
Linux Users, full stop. 

It operates similar to MS-Money, supports
different account types, categorisation of
expenses and incomes, reconciliation of bank
accounts and QIF import/export.

In order to stay informed about new releases of
the software, please subscribe to the user mailing
list of the project. To subscribe please visit   
https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/kmymoney2-user
 and follow the instructions presented.

Please report any problems to the developer
mailing list
kmymoney2-developer at lists.sourceforge.net or open
an issue on
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kmymoney2  as we
cannot check this site (kde-apps.org) on a
regular/frequent basis.

Changelog:
 The KMyMoney development team is pleased to
announce a major step forward for what has been
described as
"the easiest personal money tool out there", with
the first public availability of a new development
release, version 0.9.

This offers many new features and improvements
over the existing, stable, 0.8 series;
see below for just some of these.

It should be emphasised however that this is a
development release, and as such some of the newer
features may not be fully functional. Releases
like this are also termed 'unstable', so as such,
it is advisable when using it to ensure that you
maintain frequent backups of your files,
including your current (version 0.8) file. That
being said, most of the developers themselves
have,
of course, been entrusting their own data to this
new release for some time!

One aspect which (as is not uncommon for open
source software) is particularly lacking
is up-to-date documentation. Be assured that we
are working on this aspect, and any offers
of help will be appreciated. Now for the good
news.

New Features
------------

 - Charts. Many of the reports produced by
KMyMoney may now be displayed in chart form. Line,
bar,
   stacked bar, pie & ring charts are supported
where appropriate.

 - Budgets. A new budget feature allows you to
specify your future expectations of income and
expenditure,
   and then to compare your actual performance
against these. You can use your historical data to
   have KMyMoney create a basic budget for you.
Budget reports can be displayed as charts if
desired.
   Monthly budget overruns can be displayed on
your home page, but can be removed if you find it
   too depressing.

 - Forecasts. A forecast can be produced of the
future balances of your critical accounts,
   based either on regular scheduled transactions
or your historical data. (Sadly, we are unable
   to accurately predict the future value of your
investments!). Forecast charts based
   on historical data are under development.

Major Enhancements
------------------

Many enhancements have been made to existing
functionality, to improve your user experience.
Among the foremost of these are the following:

  - New 'wizards' have been produced to simplify
the setting up of new accounts, and complicated
    situations such as loans and mortgages. One
wizard in particular will guide first time users
    through the setting up of their new file, and
template lists of frequently-used accounts
    and categories are supplied, often tailored to
nationality.

  - Several new options have been provided to
enable you to configure KMyMoney to your personal
requirements.

  - Defunct accounts may now be marked as closed,
so that they no longer clutter up your screens,
    though they are still available for viewing if
required.

  - The views of the various ledgers have been
revamped to provide better performance, and more
    facilities for sorting and searching
transactions, including a 'quick search' option.
    A new multiple transaction selection function
will allow you to do some 'bulk' changing of
transactions.

  - A new, more comprehensive, transaction
autofill facility, based on payee name, has been
introduced.

  - Deletion of 'non-empty' payees and categories
is now allowed, with the transactions
    being re-assigned as required.

  - Changes have been made to simplify the entry
and maintenance of your regular scheduled
transactions.

  - Some new reports have been added, new levels
of detail have been included, and many of them
    have also been made more configurable. There
are also been a number of fixes related to
    multi-currency reports.

  - Warning messages can be displayed if the
balance on an account exceeds, or falls below, a
given value.

  - A summary of all your accounts can be seen in
the home page, including current net worth,
    income and expenses, and the total scheduled
income and expenses for current month.

  - If you use OFX or HBCI for online banking,
your setup has been made easier, and a manual
    transaction matching facility should simplify
reconciliation of your downloaded
    statements. There is support for new versions
of AqBanking and libofx, providing more
    flexibility and reliability.

  - And, not least of all, new artwork and
cosmetic enhancements may make your usage
    of the product easier and, we hope, more
pleasurable.

Coming along
------------

Work on provision of the ability to store your
financial data in one of the popular relational
databases
is in an advanced state. It was only withheld from
this release pending some performance
improvements.

As mentioned above, work on providing more
comprehensive budgetting and forecasting features
is also under way.

Translations
------------

Some translations of some of the texts and
messages used in this release into languages other
than English are already available. See the 'Help
make a translation' link at
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-devel.html
for details of progress on this.
(The status of this release will be roughly
similar to that of HEAD.)

If you have some fluency in any of the languages
which are not yet translated, or which have
a low percentage of completion, your help would be
welcomed. No great technical expertise is
required, though a knowledge of personal finance
terminology would obviously be useful. Initial
contact should be made to the developer mailing
list, see below.

Technical Issues
----------------

This release is still dependent on versions 3 of
the KDE Desktop Environment and the Qt toolkit.
Though it has been known to work in a KDE4
environment, the development (for building from
source code)
and runtime versions of these products must also
be installed.

Some caveats
------------

Once you have updated your file and saved it under
the new release, it may still be possible
to read it under the older, 0.8, versions, but
this is not guaranteed. Hence the warning above,
to preserve a backup of your current file.

If you are currently running a 0.8 version of this
product which you built from source code ('cvs'),
it is highly advisable to uninstall it ('make
uninstall', 'make clean') before installing this
release.

Bugs and Problems
-----------------

We are eager for as many people as possible to
help us by reporting any problems or bugs
which may be encountered in this release. Please
report them either to the developer mailing list
at 
kmymoney2-developer at lists.sourceforge.net, or via
the 'Report a bug' link at
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-devel.html.

The developer list can also be used for any offers
of help in documentation, translation or
programming.

We thank you all for your support.