While a detailed knowledge of plugins is not necessary to use KMyMoney, a basic understanding is helpful, as the concept is mentioned in many places throughout this handbook. When KMyMoney was originally designed, all features and functionality were implemented within the source code of the program. As more features and functionality were added to the program, a plugin system was designed, so additional functionality could be added in a way that did not require modification of any of the core source code files. When KMyMoney starts, it looks in a specific directory for any plugins, and it creates the appropriate menu and configuration entries for those it finds.

When the first plugins were written, even though their source code was included with the complete source code of KMyMoney, not all Linux® distributions included them in the versions they compiled. For some time, the handbook included instructions for checking this and for compiling them yourself, if necessary. At this point, many of the basic features of KMyMoney have been implemented as plugins, and they are included by all distributions, as well as the Windows®, macOS®, Appimage, and other versions distributed on the KMyMoney web site.

See the section on Plugins in the chapter on Settings for more information on determining which plugins are installed and active, and how to configure them.

If you wish to write your own plugin in order to implement a new feature, such as importing or exporting data in a custom format, you should use one of the existing importer or exporter plugins as an example. If you do so, please write to the developers' mailing list (kmymoney-devel kde.org), in case someone has already started a similar effort, and because your work may be of interest to other users.