Alternatives to Microsoft Money/Quicken?
applegrass
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For the last few years I've been doing my personal finance accounts in either Quicken or Microsoft Money. However, they're both starting to give up the ghost and since they're no longer being developed, I can't just get the latest version.
So I'm looking for an alternative piece of software that lets me personally input data, and still download statements from UK banks to reconcile them.
Got any recommendations?
So I'm looking for an alternative piece of software that lets me personally input data, and still download statements from UK banks to reconcile them.
Got any recommendations?
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You might find this list from Which? usefull too:
http://www.which.co.uk/money/bills-and-budgeting/reviews-ns/personal-finance-software/home-accountz-review/
Latest thing coming from the States is smart aggregation sites like mint.com which is run by the guys who built quicken. Hopefully these will get a UK translation at some point.
R.
They don't even seem to have a complete translation to their only international version, which is Canadian. Reading their community forum, it still spells cheques as checks, cannot cope with dd-mm-yyyy and does not import several of the banks or any investments.
Accountz is very quirky, and for goodness sake it recommends downloading each bank account individually as it cannot cope with inter account transfers!
IMHO there is a market in the UK for someone that can come up with a replacement for Quicken. For me it needs to import my existing data en block, manage multiple bank accounts, allow bank imports and auto reconciling, standing orders and direct debits, including variable ones, stocks and shares, and ISAs. I need to be able to run reports and do searches. It should run a tax report for me. Ideally it would allow a small business to create invoices and record payment of them. I have tried several since 2004 and still come back to the fact that Quicken XG 2004 does far more, far better, even with the stock update now lost. I can even do the occasional invoice for the odd bit of consultancy work that I do.
NOTHING I have found will import my old data - unless I export it as QIF files. But then, anything that imports the QIF files cannot deal with all of the inter account transfers.
I have over 15 years using Quicken built up a lot of old data that I do actually refer back to occasionally.
Switched to it myself from MS Money a few years ago. The interface isn't quite a nice but it's free and does everything I need.
So what is the alternative?
It is not Accountz, not gnucash, not BankTree, not Bank Genie, not Money Manager EX, not yodlee, not moneydance, not acemoney, not home accountz, not MoneyDashboard - its only a downloader and aggregator of bank data.:(
Just running gnucash in parallel with m$ money. No problem getting the data in with qif files, easy to set up recurring transactions and not worried about stocks and shares so looks like I'll stay with it. I've tried just about every other open source bit of software named previously in this thread and relatively they're crap.
Obviously each has their own experiences, but mine was the opposite of yours.
I found it easy to export accounts as QIF from MS Money and then import them into Gnucash.
I don't find it at all cumbersome to use, in fact the auto-complete function based on previous transactions is better than MS Money.
And it is great for my S&S ISA. I'll agree it's a little more tricky to enter prices than MS Money but once I got the hang of it, it's easy now.
The biggest difficulty with Gnucash for new users is understanding the basics of double-entry book keeping. But that's a problem with basic accounting, not the software itself. I was already familiar with the concept, so didn't have any trouble there. Maybe that's why I found the switch over easier than some others.
When i tried money, i had the same issue and thenfound it less user friendly (for me) than quicken. As you say, auto complete is great and its in quicken not money.
With quicken i download one file from my bank covering 4 accounts - all of the others i try need4 downloads.
Glad it works for you; i think i have been spoiled.
Quite possible.
I gave up on Money when Nationwide stopped supporting auto-download.
I've never bothered doing manual downloads. I prefer to manually enter my transactions based on what I believe I have spent, and then reconcile everything off against the statement once a month.
I think I had to do individual exports from MS Money as well, one for each account, to prevent them all being combined. The trick with importing in to Gnucash is to let the setup wizard create the basic account structure for you, including income and expense accounts, and then import old transactions in on top of that. You only have to assign an income/expense account to a payee once and it sorts it out after that.
It's been a couple of years now since I switched to Gnucash, so I can't remember the process exactly. But I do remember it didn't take me anywhere near as long as I thought it would - and that was transferring quite a few accounts, including data going back to about 1987.