Money Managing Software: how useful/safe is it?

jimjames

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

The reports and budget control are, to me, the real value. I set up an annual budget, by detailed income and expense categories. It is this aspect where I spend most of the time. Having all this historic information gives you powerful information with which to 'fix' your spending budget for the year. In all the years I have used it, I have never been over budget on spending. This is because I refuse ever to change the annual total. To me that would be 'sacrilege'.

Have you ever thought of becoming Chancellor? They could do with this kind of discipline! Or maybe govt needs to use Quicken to run their accounts...

Mine only goes back to 1995 but its very useful to be able to check at a glance what house insurance cost last year for example. By doing this I realised the premium had gone up £150 and with a quick phone call cut this by £120. Searching for paper copies would have taken more time and may have meant I didn't actually do it.

Loughton_Monkey

chris_m wrote: »

Only 1972, can't it handle values in LSD then?

Sadly no!

I had no money prior to 1972 (when I left University) and so software would have been of little help! Mind you, I could have put my 'Student Loan' on it if I had access to one.

In my case, however, I had to have a "free" grant put into my grubby little hands every year by the Government. Not for me the 'luxury' of a massive student loan with which to start off life!

You have to feel sorry for today's students. They only receive the most 'dumbed down' p!ss-poor education these days. But at least they receive this first class 'lesson' from the Government about loan interest, emigrating, avoiding work (so as to avoid paying it off).....

Ignoramus

Thanks for all the feedback!

It is a toss up between spreadsheet and software then... I'm naturally more inclined towards spreadsheets as I tend to like generic technologies better for reasons mentioned above, but what made me think seriously about Gnucash (and presumably other software) was the ability to import downloaded bank statements and (after some tweaking) automatically identify most of the transactions. It only took me 3 hours or so last night to import 5 years worth of statements!

What I hoping to do is spend some time working out some easy to explain, easy to maintain system with all the appropriate accounts and budget items and then present it to whoever needs it. It doesnt matter so much if setting it up is complicated as I'll be doing that, but the system needs to be straight forward to maintain.

It's a pity there doesn't seem to be any ability to work out your tax through these programs though, that would have been a life saver. Also can most of these programs export account, budget, expenses etc data into spreadsheet formats? I blindly started using Gnucash presuming that it would but I'm not sure how easy that's going to be anymore.

ChiefGrasscutter

I use quicken 2001.
It was always surprising to me that Quicken decided to withdraw from the UK market.
I can only surmise it was because not enough UK persons were interested in managing their finances properly by buying the program - well there's a surprise!

I do dimly recall though that they changed their licencing in later editions such that in effect you only 'rented' the program for 1 year rather than bought it. - much like paid for anti-virus subscriptions I suppose, where the program stops working if you don't renew.
This would have been a major change from the usual system of buying a program and then choosing whether or not to upgrade in later years/editions - possibly at reduced cost to an existing registered user: this can't have helped encourage people to use it.

chris_m

ChiefGrasscutter wrote: »

I do dimly recall though that they changed their licencing in later editions such that in effect you only 'rented' the program for 1 year rather than bought it. - much like paid for anti-virus subscriptions I suppose, where the program stops working if you don't renew.

My Quicken 98 was a freebie - probably off a magazine cover disk. I must have registered it with them at some point because I remember they sent me an update to ensure it was Y2K compatible, still free.
Ten years on, it's still working fine and I've had no invitations to upgrade or anything.

donkingkong

If you haven't already please will you all take a look at Xero.com Personal (https://www.xero.com/personal). We're using the Business package for our business having using Quickbook for untold years and this company is slowly revolutionizing the accounting industry. Xero recently secured investment from Peter Thiel (PayPal co-founder and investor in Facebook, LinkedIn and more) too so they're not some fly-by-night operation.

pmduk

Regardless, of whether you use Software or Excel, the most important thing is to learn to record all of your transactions.

Hopefully you can recognise and make a note of future, repeating transactions. They are often the ones that cause unexpected problems when they get debited unexpectedly. Making a list of direct debits and recurring payments can be a great help in avoiding these problems.