theKompany.com Releases Kapital, a Personal Finance Manager for KDE

Kapital is our personal finance manager package for KDE and Linux. It is meant to be in the spirit of Intuit Quicken or Microsoft Money, but without the bloat associated with those packages from years of justifying upgrades. Kapital has everything you need for managing all your personal finances. Kapital has been tested with various other window managers including GNOME, and will work with them, however our area of focus and support is currently KDE.
[Ed: This is commercial software, see below for price info.]

Kapital features include:

  • Check register for entering and clearing various types of transactions such as checks, deposits, ATM, EFT, etc.
  • Calendar for setting up scheduled payments, used in conjunction with a "Bill Tracker" alarm to let you know that bills are coming due.
  • Check and report printing, including graphics and logos.
  • Basic and advanced searching capabilities and online reporting as well as charts and graphs.
  • Predefined categories for transactions. Include sub-categories, and the ability for users to create and delete new categories.
  • New account wizard that goes through various types of budget scenarios like Single, Married, Married with Children, Single with Children, etc.
  • Import/Export features for Quicken QIF file format.
  • Budget Tracker. The user sets up a budget for various items, and alarms can sound when you come within a threshold, or exceed it for defined time periods, typically a calendar month. This would usually happen when you are entering a new transaction into a category and the amount causes it to exceed the threshold. You can also do charts, graphs and reports that show where you are in the time period for your budget so you can see if you are ahead, behind, or spot on.
  • Check Designer. This feature is very much in development, but you will be able to use a web page to design your own checks and then have them delivered to you as you would with any third party check printing company.
  • Create any type of account to manage. This can be a checking account, savings account, stock, investment, retirement, etc.
  • Online Banking. As we develop partnerships with financial institutions you will get to take more and more advantage of online banking -- with the ultimate goal of having the ability of paying your bills and sending money between various types of accounts all from your desktop.

What do you want to see? Let us know and we'll make your dreams a reality.

The initial release of Kapital will be available as a download by the end of February 2001. As soon as the enhancement requests dwindle to a trickle, we will then burn the CD packages and send the final product to everyone. You will still be able to download free updates until September thus protecting your initial investment for some time.

In consideration for early adopters of Kapital we will be extending a discount on all sales made prior to the actual availability date. Pricing follows for the Standard Edition:

  • $39.95 -- $24.95 if purchased during pre-sales -- download only, all electronic doc.
  • $49.95 -- $29.95 if purchased during pre-sales -- physical package with hard copy doc.

Purchasers of Kapital will be entitled to free electronic updates through September 1, 2001.

A Kapital mailing list for customers will be available as well as support queues. We will answer these support questions as time permits,
for priority response you should take a look at our support services.

You can order online and get more information here.

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Comments

by Craig black (not verified)

lol your right it was'nt in ispell. Acually i'm well read but I can't spell worth a damn.

Craig

by WorLord (not verified)

When you actually read and respond to something I wrote, instead of things I didn't even imply, maybe you and I can have an intelligent conversation about this matter.

--WorLord

by Craig black (not verified)

Sorry that was'nt ment as a critizism of you but of the idea that some people have.

(I think that this is where people's distaste for TheKompany's current tactic here springs from. (The one difference is that theKompany has taken a slightly different tack: some of their products are free, some aren't.)

I have yet to form an opinion on the matter, other then the idea that GNUCash works fine for me.)

Craig

by Jorge (not verified)

i think Suse is actually selling some administration Software linux based witch is not open source.

I am sorry about my english but what i ment was companies need to make money i order to afford their staff.
there different ways to do it
- software
- distros
- services
- etc..

i don't see anything wrong with it.

what i believe is if they are building a financial manager for KDE (and please see this as a example only) they should share some of the code like the report making part so that they give a bit back to KDE team.
In that they are using the efforts of thousand of people but not for free it's more like a trade

TheKompany<---> Kde Team

I prefer to see this as a trade process

One thing the more commercial software you get on kde the better as long as kde itself is free

i hope i made my point

by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

Let's look at some of the pieces in Kapital. It makes use of VeePee for user scripting as well as charts and graphs, and will be the engine that will support the online banking. We developed VeePee and gave that to the community. It will also use Kugar for reporting, again something we've given to the community. Both of those applications are going to go in core KDE from what I understand.

How much do we have to give away before it's enough?

by jorge (not verified)

Shawn i wasn't sayng you guys don't give back anything to the comunity.

I just wanted to make a point:
that's the to go

i personaly thin~k you guys are doing it

thank's for kugar
veepee
Crayon
kvivio
etc ...

by WorLord (not verified)

First, to point out some things I sure didn't say, and didn't even imply:

  • I am not opposed to the Kompany's attempt to make money.
  • I do not feel the Kompany has given "nothing" back to the community. Anyone with a modem shouldn't feel this way, either.
  • I do not believe closed-source/proprietary software is inherently evil.

    Now, to the one point I was trying to make:

    No one with any significant knowledge of Linux - not here on this message board, or in the Kompany's headquarters, or anywhere else - should be at all surprised by people bitching about this commercial release.

    Period, end of statement. The Kompany is bucking a trend; the typical M.O. for the "bigger names" in the Linux community is to charge money for improved, boxed, documented, and supported sets of software that can *also* be downloaded (without the perks) free of charge. The Kompany is not doing that, so people are bound to get confused and see this as some type of move to Make Linux Proprietary(C).

    While that supposition may not be accurate, it is going to be mightily popular. And I thought I should bring that up given the fact that the names Mandrake and SUSE were being dropped, supposedly as model examples of "linux people making money".

    That's it, and that's all. Any statements suggesting that we should all "work for free" or that "the Kompany is taking from the community to make money for itself" will be seen as the rash, ignorant comments that they are, and duly ignored as a result.

    I'm out like the fat kid in dodgeball,
    --WorLord

  • by Jorge (not verified)

    I don't think we should ignore any comments

    I believe that it's up to us people that understand the needs of companies like TheKompany and see their mission (money revenues included) as valid and good for the comunity, to help those who still believe that Kde is only for geeks.

    Make Kde easier but let it free as it is wrigth now
    Distros like Mandrake my favourite have been doing a very good job with Kde and i believe maybe not in the near future they could release some closed software (maybe network management who cares) but doesn't mean there not helping the comunity.

    I believe Thekompany is making good software and Shawn you guys have been doing a great job.

    It's all a matter of give and take.

    by Jorge (not verified)

    I don't think we should ignore any comments

    I believe that it's up to us people that understand the needs of companies like TheKompany and see their mission (money revenues included) as valid and good for the comunity, to help those who still believe that Kde is only for geeks.

    Make Kde easier but let it free as it is wrigth now
    Distros like Mandrake my favourite have been doing a very good job with Kde and i believe maybe not in the near future they could release some closed software (maybe network management who cares) but doesn't mean there not helping the comunity.

    I believe Thekompany is making good software and Shawn you guys have been doing a great job.

    It's all a matter of give and take.

    Hi,

    that all is very great of course. But I do not have any chance to purchase.
    Will there be a reduced version for free too?
    I do believe in KDE and theKompany if they would do so.

    Regards,
    Christian Parpart
    http://www.surakware.com.

    Slash dot still has not run a story about Kapital, but you all will notice how quick they posted a story about Ximian today. Lets all rush over there and submit stories about Kapital and let them know how we feel about there biased reporting!!! They can't ignore KDE!!!

    Craig

    They're not ignoring kde. They're ignoring theKompany. Different things, right? right?

    No there gnome centric. While the majority of Linux users prefer KDE you wouldn't know it by reading Slash Dot. We need to put the pressure on them by posting as much KDE material as we can. Kapital just falling into the KDE category.
    So lets keep up the pressure folks.
    Craig

    i disagree. would you advertise and be so passionate about the upcoming borland ide? after all it's for kde. falls in the kde category.

    Borland needs our support as well. They are a member of the kde league. However I'm not a programmer. I'm a end user. So no i wouldn't be as passionate about a ide as i am about a quality professional desktop application. I'm not sure Borland contributes free applications to kde like the Komapany does. Troll tech is also a good company and needs our support.

    Craig

    programmers feel the same about protecting free software. we like to dig in, modify, share.... just as much as you like professional desktop applications for kde. so you see, you need to be a little more understanding of other peoples agendas.

    Thats great I'm sure you liked The Kompany's kdestudio then. The better they do with there closed source stuff the more they'll be able to give us as far as there open source stuff.

    Craig

    That's because slashdot is owned by VA Linux, VA wants to keep Linux focused on the server area. GNOME is kind of a hacked together buggy mess that will never make a good desktop ever, the more people that associate linux with GNOME, the more people that will never use linux on the desktop.

    I am glade that everyone is showing their ideas this is as important as coding or translanting for KDE.

    Again thanks

    by Charles (not verified)

    How will updates be handled, considering that KDE and the open-source world in general moves so fast?

    Specifically, suppose KDE 3.0 and Qt 2.5 and glibc 2.3 (or whatever) come out in a year. Will a recompiled version of Kapital be available for those who have already bought it?

    I don't mind paying for new features in the future, but it drives me nuts to have 3 versions of every library installed just to make things run. That's one of my biggest reservations about close-source software

    by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

    yes they will.

    by Charles (not verified)

    I would hope Kapital can track and automatically vest stock options. Quicken does.

    Make this thing good, and I'm jumping ship! I won't miss the VMware/Windows/Quicken bloat.

    Until the KDE people make a 'free' solution to GNU cash people will keep using Gtk applications, as well as GNOME, which will keep people away from Linux. This dosen't help because the app still cost money. If people realy wanted KDE/Linux to suceed they would be alot more concerned with GNOME than proprietary applications. GNOME and Gtk apps are linux's only barier to the desktop, as long as there still being used KDE/Linux will never suceed.

    by Charles (not verified)

    John, you've got a point. Any time I introduce someone to Linux, they usually want to start with Gnome because there's an impression it's more free than KDE. And then when they find bugs and inconsistencies in Gnome, they get turned off on Linux entirely. So it hurts KDE.

    So freedom is important. But as RMS will point out over and over, "freedom" doesn't necessarily mean price. Your comment of "This dosen't help because the app still cost money" misses the point. Freedom means not having your rights taken away. The problem here (if there is one) is that Kapital is closed source, not that it costs money.

    Shawn, if you're reading this-- I will probably buy Kapital anyway, but if there was some way for it to be open source yet still have you make money, I'd be so excited I'd buy a copy for myself, my sister, and my mother. I (and probably many other people) have no problem paying money, but after years of Microsoft's rule, not having the source makes us all feel pretty helpless and vulnerable and stranded.

    (Of course, if you knew how to make money on open source, the rest of the open source world would be beating down your door and you'd be rich merely from consulting...)

    by Shawn Gordon (not verified)

    I've said this before, but I have no problem with people having the source, my problem is with people redistributing it. Someone on the dot recently suggested creating a license that gave the source to the customer, but limited what they could do with it. I've taken this suggestion very seriously and have been researching the possibilities ever since. However, it's better to say it's closed, then provide a limited open source license later, than saying it's open and closing it later. So that is where we are at right now.