Money in lots of accounts... How do you keep track?!

Vortigern

IronWolf wrote: »

How do Quicken and MS Money work with accounts that require these stupid secure keys to get onto online banking?

I've never asked MS Money to log in to any bank account and I'm not sure whether it can do it. It can however handle the transaction/statement files produced by some of the banks (i.e. it imports .QIF files)

buffman

evenasus wrote: »

At the moment we have 22 savings accounts on the go.
At the click of the mouse, I can view any of the transactions/deposits/transfers/closures/interest payments/tax paid, whether dead or alive accounts made since 1994.

Not only that, but with Quicken I can also see how much each year I've spent on (e.g.) holidays over the past 20 years!

Vortigern

junglejame911 wrote: »

My thoughts exactly. Why pay for extra software to essentially count your money?

Who's paying? MSMoney can be downloaded free. Is Excel cheaper than this now?

evenasus

buffman wrote: »

Not only that, but with Quicken I can also see how much each year I've spent on (e.g.) holidays over the past 20 years!

Yes, it's good for that too.

I just had a look at what we've spent on Barclaycard in the last 20 years :eek: £201,293.86 :eek:

I hasten to add, that the bill is paid off every month without fail.

IronWolf

Vortigern wrote: »

I've never asked MS Money to log in to any bank account and I'm not sure whether it can do it. It can however handle the transaction/statement files produced by some of the banks (i.e. it imports .QIF files)

So its not really that easy to update if u have to get files from the banks yourself?

innovate

It is as easy to update a money manager as it is to update Excel. May be a tad easier even since you don't have to first determine what data you want to capture.

Some packages allow you to download transactions from a current account, though as not all the money managers are supported now, not all banks are supported. I found manual reconciliation easy enough to do.

Where money managers come into their own is when it comes to reports. You could, of course, create your own queries and graphs in Excel but why re-invent the wheel? The reporting options in MS money are very flexible. But if they don't suffice, you can still dump your data into Excel and do your own.

MS Money is brilliant for current accounts and savings accounts, and I would never trade it for Excel. Though I do have a SS to record things such as bonus expiry dates etc.

When it comes to investments, I found MS money pretty useless, and I have all my investments in Excel.

Gromitt

IronWolf wrote: »

So its not really that easy to update if u have to get files from the banks yourself?

I never use the files I can download from banks anyway, I want to compare what I think are my transactions with my actual transactions. All regular payments are automatically made for me, the rest I enter when I have made them (eg. Cash withdrawals, receipts from shops, etc). When I receive my online statement I compare the totals with mine and if they don't match something is wrong and I investigate.

The only thing I automate are downloading share prices, I find that quite useful.

block10

I like the sound of the sync to android / IOS feature in Quicken 2013/14. Wish a similar feature was available in our region to enable management of finances on the go.

JustAnotherSaver

evenasus wrote: »

I can view any of the transactions/deposits/withdrawals/

So it will tell you if you've bought a bar of chocolate with your card for example?
If so, how does it do that? Do you have to input that manually?

That's something i COULD do with Excel, but i don't as it'd be too time consuming. I wouldn't want to have to save all my receipts & then enter it all in.

evenasus

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

So it will tell you if you've bought a bar of chocolate with your card for example?
If so, how does it do that? Do you have to input that manually?

That's something i COULD do with Excel, but i don't as it'd be too time consuming. I wouldn't want to have to save all my receipts & then enter it all in.

I wouldn't have bought a bar of chocolate with a debit/credit card.

A television, washing machine, dishwasher, kettle sort of purchases.

All I have to do is to click search - enter, for example television, it would list any transaction with a television on it.
So I would then see what date it was bought, where from and how it was paid for.