GFP - Personal Finance Manager 0.8.1

The art of financial security is not taught to anyone while they are growing up.  When they finally become independent, matters concerning their financial health are severely crippled by their lack of skill in managing their finances.  There is an industry centered around this financial mismanagement that can be costly to the user.  Fortunately, there are programs that can do the same work, but for free.

GFP is an open-source program written in Java with a GUI provided by Java's swing library.  Since the program is using strictly it's own library and Java's, it is platform independent.  The purpose of GFP is to provide help on managing finances to users with limited financial knowledge and ability.  Using a limited number of input fields, much of the work is done by GFP in creating readable financial spreadsheets.  Even though it was last modified in 2007, GFP still receives many hits and downloads.

GFP can be downloaded from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gfd/

Screenshot of GFP's GUI

For a program to be classified as an open source software, the following prime directives must be fulfilled.  More information on these prime directives can be found on this page.

Prime Directive 1:  The system successfully accomplishes a useful task.
GFP successfully fulfills this prime directive.

GFP provides users an easy-to-use financial manager to manager their banks, assets, and credit cards.  Included among these features are report and chart generation.

Prime Directive 2:  An external user can successfully install and use the system.
GFP successfully fulfills this prime directive.

Download and installation was very simple for a non-developer.  Starting up the program is also relatively simple, as the user is first prompted to input their country and language, then to select their account book.  While it is not immediately obvious that the user should set up their account information first before they can start using GFP, data entry was very simple to input as all buttons are labeled or have descriptive icons.  A step-by-step guide on how to use the features is located on the top bar labeled help.

Prime Directive 3:  An external developer can successfully understand and enhance the system.
GFP does not fulfill this prime directive.

The source code for the latest release is provided here.  There is lack of a readme file that details the contents.  Documentation is not provided anywhere.  The code is formatted correctly and have proper indentation.  Looking at the source code itself, it is formatted properly and similar functions are in their own classes..  The source code is in Portuguese, which makes it harder for anyone who doesn't read the language to work on it.