Software for Manging Finances?

Lakeuk

I'm using MS Money 99, it's the only one that ticks most of my needs - it still pulls in the share prices, although the exchange rates are always wrong.

I'm aware that at some point the share pricing aspect of Money with stop working, so occasion I try out some of the free alternatives but I've not found anything suitable - the interfaces don't look right or they too complicated to set up or too american

For the moment I've got a spreadsheet as backup that I use the excellent addin smf_addin to bring in the share prices

antispam246

It's all about excel for me. I'm probably what you'd call, incredibly anal when it comes to tracking finance, in the wider scope of people maybe not so much.

MS Excel gives me as little or as much as I need. I've tried other software but for 10 years i've stuck with excel. The layout again is really straight forward or it can be as complex as you want. Everything is easily linked together with workbooks and formulas. The key point is the freedom and scope to build it up as you want, potential is endless.

I started with a single excel sheet to record my transactions, I then started splitting them into sections by simply opening more sheets in the excel file turning it into a work book. So I have an excel file with multiple sheets for various transactions. One sheet is simple dedicated to ANY tranasactions, separate sheets use formulas to break these into key categories like "travel" "orders" "petrol" "post" etc..
Another excel file for savings with a separate sheet for each account, another file for banking and credit cards each account with it's own sheet when I simply regularly download transactions online and paste them into the appropriate account. Every financial aspect is covered. Then I have pages for totals and basic financial analysis using formulas, all I do is update the records and everything else is done for me.

I know exactly how much I'm spending, every month of every year in every category I've specified for the past 10 years. This gives me total yearly spending, total monthly spending again for every category I want to use. All out goings are recorded and totaled in as much detail as I need with the constant ability to expand upon this.

Sheets for savings are the same as above. I have separate sheets for cashback and surveys (payments), for debtors and creditors, for freebies, ebay sales, any other sales, direct debits/SO's, withdrawals, deposits, shopping lists, research lists for shopping for particular items and tracking price changes, house hunting nad market prices, stocks and shares, anything I mail gets recorded, all jobs ive worked and pay slips are recorded. It goes on and on.

Best thing is, with formulas and workbooks, all of this is automatically tied in to give some very tidied and detailed analaysis. It's not hard to learn abit of excel formulas that are relevant to your needs, only takes a google search and again, the potential is endless.

Toki

antispam246 wrote: »

It's all about excel for me. I'm probably what you'd call, incredibly anal when it comes to tracking finance, in the wider scope of people maybe not so much.

MS Excel gives me as little or as much as I need. I've tried other software but for 10 years i've stuck with excel. The layout again is really straight forward or it can be as complex as you want. Everything is easily linked together with workbooks and formulas. The key point is the freedom and scope to build it up as you want, potential is endless.

I started with a single excel sheet to record my transactions, I then started splitting them into sections by simply opening more sheets in the excel file turning it into a work book. So I have an excel file with multiple sheets for various transactions. One sheet is simple dedicated to ANY tranasactions, separate sheets use formulas to break these into key categories like "travel" "orders" "petrol" "post" etc..
Another excel file for savings with a separate sheet for each account, another file for banking and credit cards each account with it's own sheet when I simply regularly download transactions online and paste them into the appropriate account. Every financial aspect is covered. Then I have pages for totals and basic financial analysis using formulas, all I do is update the records and everything else is done for me.

I know exactly how much I'm spending, every month of every year in every category I've specified for the past 10 years. This gives me total yearly spending, total monthly spending again for every category I want to use. All out goings are recorded and totaled in as much detail as I need with the constant ability to expand upon this.

Sheets for savings are the same as above. I have separate sheets for cashback and surveys (payments), for debtors and creditors, for freebies, ebay sales, any other sales, direct debits/SO's, withdrawals, deposits, shopping lists, research lists for shopping for particular items and tracking price changes, house hunting nad market prices, stocks and shares, anything I mail gets recorded, all jobs ive worked and pay slips are recorded. It goes on and on.

Best thing is, with formulas and workbooks, all of this is automatically tied in to give some very tidied and detailed analaysis. It's not hard to learn abit of excel formulas that are relevant to your needs, only takes a google search and again, the potential is endless.

Would you be willing to share your (blank) spreadsheet for those that aren't so good with Excel or haven't got the time to set this up? I've got a reasonably basic one which pulls data from one tab to the next but have to manually enter a lot of data to get it right.

Thanks in advance.

jimjames

Lakeuk wrote: »

For the moment I've got a spreadsheet as backup that I use the excellent addin smf_addin to bring in the share prices

Is this the addin you are referring to?

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

I'm developing some software to handle my investments but getting prices has been a difficulty - this would appear to resolve it so many thanks for the suggestion.

antispam246

Toki wrote: »

Would you be willing to share your (blank) spreadsheet for those that aren't so good with Excel or haven't got the time to set this up? I've got a reasonably basic one which pulls data from one tab to the next but have to manually enter a lot of data to get it right.

Thanks in advance.

Honestly wouldn't have a problem but it wouldn't help as it's too specific to my needs. I've built it to suit me so the majority of calculations wouldn't apply to others. Many of the accounts pull and calculate information based on how that particular account is setup online.

If you have basic knowledge of excel, even if you don't all I could suggest is to start from the basics and as you gradually familiarize yourself with excel you build it up from there to suit yourself.

Whenever I'm unsure on how to do something, I just google it. This mostly lies with the more complicated formulas for example how to calculate totals for monthly/yearly totals from a specific category. There are plenty of help boards out there dedicated to these things.

Admittedly mine is messy but I understand it because it's built for me, I'm in the process of simplyfying it and at the same time making it more detailed. I'm almost at the point where I understand I'm probably over complicating things, simply because I've separated many things manually when I can simply throw all the information in together and let the formulas separate it in a much more automated fashion.

Once I've updated it, if I feel it could work for others I'll gladly share it.

innovate

brasso wrote: »

Moneydance for me.

Moneydance - -- a totally new one on me (might have been hiding under a rock for the last decade - if so, please help me to come out!!)

Can I import my MS Money stuff? Or can I import spreadsheets? (so I could export from MS Money - import into Moneydance?)

Is it free, or how much does it cost?

Does it integrate with current banks / download records from current banks?

bowlhead99

I'd never heard of Moneydance until this weekend when I finally decided to get some software to track the things I track in spreadsheets or through lots of logins. I realised that Money and Quicken, while still doing what they used to do - are probably not worth tracking down and installing if you don't have them already. There are now a few other newer names out there for nice modern software which is still being maintained by a development team! Problem is there are various online 'comparison reviews' which are probably just affiliate links on commission, which never makes research as easy as you'd hope.

I bought it today and spent the afternoon setting it up and loading in March's activities (am not going to bother backfilling the whole year). I have current accounts, savings accounts and credit cards in GBP and USD; a couple of UK sharetrading portfolios and a US broker account; plus some other misc. assets and liabilities to track. It seems to work well and getting it to go and refresh my exchange rates and share prices using one of the add-ins (haven't looked into them all yet) was an unexpected bonus. There are also some calendar/reminder tools etc.

You can import MSMoney or Quicken data as a QIF file and then import it - though this process is going to be limited to transaction/account histories and won't include contacts and calendar items etc. For an idea of what it will do, and other features generally, see the pdf user guide http://moneydance.com/userguide2010 (Money import is pg 50/51)

I didn't have a database to import from, but I was able to set up a new current account with the starting balance of 1 March and then logged into my internet banking, exported a date range as a QIF file (LloydsTSB allows you QIF or CSV) and simply imported it. I then did the same with my other Lloyds accounts. Manually went through tagging them with expense categories (easy to add your own categories and groups) and where the category was 'internal transfer' it created the other side of the double entry (i.e. credit one account debit the other) for me. This gave me a duplicate entry in one of the accounts (because I'd already downloaded the whole month from the bank for that account) - but when i clicked on the duplicate it recognised it and asked if I wanted to merge the downloaded transaction with the just-created one. Quite easy and intuitive.

I manually entered my Citibank UK transactions (don't think they have an export option on that website) but I don't have many - otherwise I would have copied to a spreadsheet and tried to make my own CSV to import. Citibank USA was fine as they have lots of export options. As with some other personal finance software there is the ability to have it login to banks and pull down your information for you, or intiate transactions, but this might only be supported by US banks. I haven't looked at it in any real detail (I'm reluctant to save logins and passwords in software like this anyway, and the manual import was pretty painless).

You can get a 20% discount code if you 'like' them on Facebook which makes the cost GBP 32.69.You only need "one license per household, no matter how many computers you install it on, operating systems you use, people who use Moneydance, or data files you create". If you have a US address you'll be able to get if for $39.99 after the discount. But cheaper still is to just get the trial version and see what you think of it. The limitation is you can only add 100 manual transactions before you have to register (which is simple, just key in the code they give you, and any data you already created is still there).

[Deleted User]

I agree with the Excel users. You can make spreadsheets as basic or as complex as you need them to be. Mine is quite straightforward.

The first tab has a detailed list of the money I have in various bank/building society accounts. I use another tab for money owing - mortgage etc. Another tab records the monthly accounts I pay into, and finally I have an overall portfolio sheet.

Simple! Excel has never let me down in the 10 years or so I have been using it to record my finances.