Glossary

The Glossary explains some often used terms.

PLEASE NOTE: As of GnuCash 2.6.15, the Tutorial & Concepts Guide includes a glossary.

A

AqBanking 

a library, which implements the german Home Banking Computer Interface HBCI and Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard EBICS, besides OFX Direct Connect and Paypal. It is the successor of openHBCI. See AqBanking for use in GnuCash.

C

Chart of Accounts 

A listing of all the accounts available in the data file. The chart of accounts consists of balance sheet accounts (assets, liabilities, stockholders' equity) and income statement accounts (revenues, expenses, gains, losses). The chart of accounts can be expanded and tailored to reflect the operations of the company. The GnuCash chart of accounts can be selected from the File menu.

CSV 

Stands for Comma Separated Values. CSV files are used to store data in plain text. Each line of the file is a record and each record can be comprised of multiple fields separated by commas. More information can be found at Wikipedia

G

GAAP 

The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are the rules by which Business Accounting has to be done, especially in the U.S. and some other countries. For international standards see International Accounting Standards (IAS) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). You should also compare your locale standards like e.g. for Germany Grundsätze ordnungsmäßiger Buchführung.

GSettings

Since GnuCash 2.5 the tool to store the users configuration data. It uses the native data store of the operating system:

Linux

DConf since Gnome 3.0 dropped GConf,

MacOsX

Defaults. Use the command-line defaults(1) to modify prefs when GnuCash isn't running.

Windows

Registry.

H

HBCI/FinTS 

a bank-independent online banking protocol used by German banks. HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface) has been developed by the German Central Banking Committee ZKA (Zentraler Kredit-Ausschuss). The standard is publicly available and is used by approx. 50% of German banks, but nowhere else in this world. Since 2002 it is called „Financial Transaction Services“ (FinTS). In GnuCash it can be used via AqBanking.

L

LibOFX 

an Open Source library for OFX (see below). It was created by one of the GnuCash developers (Benoit Gregoire), originally to be the OFX interface for GnuCash.

M

MT940 

a financial information standard defined by SWIFT and used by several European banks. It is also used internally in HBCI. Unfortunately, you can't download the MT940 standard, but some banks (like this one) publish it on their web site.

O

OFX 

the Open Financial eXchange format. This is a financial information standard (i.e. a file format standard) documented at http://www.ofx.net/DeveloperSolutions.aspx

OpenHBCI 

was an Open Source implementation of the German HBCI. It was replaced in 2004 by AqBanking.

S

Scheme 

Scheme is a functional programming language based on a dialect of LISP. Reports in GnuCash use the Scheme programming language; thus, users wishing to customize reports must write Scheme.

X

xacc

Abbreviation of XAccountant.

XAccountant

The Motif based ancestor of Gnucash.

XML 

The eXtensible Markup Language can be seen as an abstraction of HTML. It is often used to store e.g.

• structured data like your GnuCash file or
• technical documentation in Docbook.