This page is for small business owners and bookkeepers who started on GnuCash, got real value out of it, and have now hit one of three walls: payroll, tax-ready depreciation, or the need to hand a clean file to a CPA. GnuCash is genuinely free and a legitimate double-entry general ledger. It is not a payroll system, it does not generate Form 941 or W-2s, and it does not handle MACRS in the way the IRS expects. FreshLedger Pro costs $799 one-time (no subscription) and adds payroll, full MACRS depreciation per IRS Pub 946, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA. Bottom line up front: if your books are personal or hobby-scale, stay on GnuCash. If you cut paychecks, depreciate fixed assets, or file business taxes, the $799 pays for itself the first time you avoid paying your CPA to rebuild a year of payroll journals by hand.
Sticker price: GnuCash is $0. FreshLedger Pro is $799 one-time, plus an optional $99/year if you want the payroll tax tables refreshed for the new year. Over five years, GnuCash costs $0 in software and FreshLedger Pro costs $799 if you never buy a table update, or $1,195 if you buy the update every year ($799 + $99 × 4). Compare that to QuickBooks Online Payroll at roughly $90-$170/month, which is $5,400-$10,200 over the same five years. What's included on the GnuCash side: double-entry general ledger, invoicing, basic reports, multi-currency, and a community forum for support. What is not included on the GnuCash side: payroll calculation, 941/940/W-2/1099-NEC generation, MACRS depreciation schedules, Section 179 tracking, bonus depreciation, an accountant-export workflow, and paid support. What's included on the FreshLedger Pro side: the full Windows desktop application, double-entry GL, AR/AP, payroll with current-year tax tables, MACRS with half-year, mid-quarter, and mid-month conventions across all standard classes (5-yr, 7-yr, 15-yr, 27.5-yr residential, 39-yr commercial), Section 179 and bonus depreciation handling, year-end W-2 and 1099-NEC printing, and a free Accountant Edition copy for your CPA. What is not included: automatic bank feeds (you import OFX/QFX/QBO/CSV from your bank), a native Mac or mobile app, or real-time multi-user network access.
1. Payroll actually exists. GnuCash has no payroll module; the wiki suggests modeling paychecks as manual journal entries against liability accounts you set up yourself. That works until you need to file Form 941 quarterly, Form 940 annually, hand W-2s to employees in January, or issue 1099-NECs to contractors. FreshLedger Pro calculates federal withholding from W-4 (2020+) inputs, Social Security and Medicare with the employer match, FUTA, and state withholding, then prints the forms. Concrete example: a five-employee landscaping business spends roughly 4 hours a quarter reconciling a manual GnuCash payroll setup; FreshLedger generates the 941 worksheet from the same data in minutes. 2. MACRS depreciation is built in. GnuCash treats depreciation as a journal entry you compute somewhere else (spreadsheet, accountant, memory). FreshLedger Pro implements IRS Pub 946 properly: half-year and mid-quarter conventions for personal property, mid-month for real property, 27.5-year residential rental, 39-year commercial, Section 179 election with the income limit check, and bonus depreciation. Concrete example: you buy a $42,000 truck in Q4. FreshLedger flags the mid-quarter test, applies it across the year's asset additions, and produces a depreciation schedule your CPA can tie out. 3. Free Accountant Edition. Your CPA installs a free read/adjust copy of FreshLedger Pro, opens your file directly, posts adjusting journal entries, and hands it back. No CSV ping-pong, no "can you export the trial balance again." GnuCash files are openable by any CPA who happens to use GnuCash, which is a small population. 4. You own it. $799 one-time. No subscription that lapses, no "read-only mode" if you stop paying, no cloud vendor that can sunset the product. The file lives on your machine in a documented format. 5. Real support. Email support from the people who wrote the software, not a forum thread from 2014.
1. Price, obviously. GnuCash is free and open source under GPL. If your business is a side project, a single-member LLC with no employees, or a nonprofit with a $0 software line, that matters and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Five years of GnuCash is $0. Five years of FreshLedger Pro is $799-$1,195. 2. Cross-platform. GnuCash runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux. FreshLedger Pro is Windows-only; Mac users run it in a VM (Parallels, VMware Fusion, UTM). If your shop is all Mac and you refuse to touch Windows, GnuCash wins on that constraint alone. 3. Open file format and longevity. GnuCash stores data in an open XML or SQLite format you can inspect, script against, and migrate out of forever. The project has been actively maintained since the late 1990s and will outlive most commercial vendors. If long-term data sovereignty and the ability to grep your own books matter more to you than payroll automation, GnuCash is the honest answer. GnuCash is a real double-entry accounting system. It is not a toy. The areas it loses on are the areas it never tried to win: payroll compliance, tax-form generation, and integrated depreciation. For everything else, it is a credible ledger.
| Feature | FreshLedger Pro | GnuCash |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $799 once | $0 (open source) |
| Payroll | Included | Not included |
| Check printing | Included | Included |
| MACRS depreciation | Included | Manual entries only |
| Fixed asset register | Included | Manual (no module) |
| 941 / 940 / W-2 forms | Included | Not included |
| 1099-NEC | Included | Not included |
| Accountant package export | Included | Manual file share |
| ACH / direct deposit | Included | Not included |
| Recurring transactions | Included | Scheduled Transactions (manual posting) |
| Local data / no cloud | Yes | Yes (file-based) |
| Mobile app | No | Mobile companion (read-only) |
Switching from GnuCash to FreshLedger Pro is not free in time. Expect three real costs. First, data migration: there is no one-click GnuCash importer. You export your chart of accounts and trial balance as CSV, import the chart, then post opening balances as of your conversion date. Plan a weekend, or pay your bookkeeper for a few hours. Second, platform: FreshLedger Pro is Windows-only. Mac users need Parallels, Fusion, or a cheap Windows mini-PC. There is no native mobile app, so you are not entering expenses from your phone at a job site. Third, workflow: bank transactions come in via OFX/QFX/QBO/CSV download from your bank, not automatic feeds, and the file is single-user at a time, so two people cannot have it open simultaneously over the network. None of these are dealbreakers for most small businesses, but they are real and you should know them before you click buy.
You should switch to FreshLedger Pro if you are a Windows-based small business with one to roughly twenty employees, you currently run payroll manually or in a spreadsheet alongside GnuCash, and you have fixed assets you depreciate (vehicles, equipment, rental property, leasehold improvements). The buyer this is built for is the owner-operator or office manager of a trades business, a small professional practice, a single-property landlord scaling to a small portfolio, or a manufacturing shop with a real fixed-asset register. You have a CPA you trust and you want to hand them a clean file in January instead of a shoebox. You are tired of subscription creep and you want to pay once. You are comfortable on Windows, you do not need real-time multi-user, and you are fine importing bank transactions via the OFX file your bank already lets you download. If that is you, $799 is a rounding error against one botched payroll quarter.
You should stay on GnuCash if you are a sole proprietor with no employees, no contractors getting 1099-NECs, and no depreciable assets beyond a laptop you expensed under Section 179 in year one. You should also stay if you are Mac- or Linux-only and refuse to run a Windows VM, or if your business is a hobby, a side project, or a nonprofit where $799 is a meaningful line item. GnuCash is also the right answer if you are technically inclined, value the open file format, and your books are simple enough that manual journal entries for the occasional payroll-like transaction are not a burden.
One-time-purchase accounting software with built-in payroll, full depreciation handling, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA.
Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799One-time purchase. No subscription. Free Accountant Edition included.