Best app for home budgeting?

richie453

I have been using it for about 4 months now and find it very good.

It is free to use. No effort as it uses "open banking" and therefore all you accounts and credit cards are linked up and can be viewed in one place.


A little bit of re-assigning to correct categories is required initially, but doesn't take long.


Only criticism from me would be that there aren't enough categories- but that's just a personal thing. Also just need to be careful of not counting transactions twice, if using credit cards and paying off via your accounts!


I for one would not be without YOLT!! :beer:

colsten

I had a quick look at Yolt this morning and it looks the most complete and usable of the new generation of aggregators. The list of supported companies is very impressive, and the speed of refresh looks good. Mind you, I only added two banks so far, with 8 accounts in total.

Alas, Yolt still can't touch Accountunity in three areas which I consider critical: logging into the actual accounts, presenting a high-level summary (account name/number and balance) in a simple list, and managing transfers between people's own accounts. My income and expenses in Yolt are hopelessly overstated as the movement of money between accounts (to meet min monthly deposits) is treated as actual income/expense, and I haven't yet seen anything that lets me exclude certain transactions from the totals. Yolt also doesn't appear to eliminate my need for AceMoney (MS Money equivalent) as it doesn't handle DDs and SOs in a simple way. Mind you, perhaps that's in the Budget function which I haven't yet explored.

Accountunity does fall short on the ability to budget, and to categorise transactions. AceMoney falls short on picking up data from the actual accounts, and crucially, it only runs on ancient technology which now creates an increasing number of issues.

My bottom line view is that Yolt is probably great if you have a small number of accounts, and/or if you only start out with a personal finance manager now. Anyone with lots of accounts, and investments thrown into the mix, is likely to have a looooong wait for something covering all their requirements. The encouraging news with Yolt is that they have built into the app an easy way to ask for enhancements and to make suggestions. I'll definitely play a bit more with Yolt - perhaps it will become my long-term personal finance manager.

EDIT: I did give Moneyhub a try for a month, too. Didn't do what I need it to do, and it definitely can't touch Yolt, so it is no longer in the running. Took one look at the HSBC and Barclays apps and discarded them straight away as they only supported a very small number of companies at the time. I have no idea whether they added since then.

colsten

Oh YUK!!! I think I have just gone right off Yolt.

You can only have the app on one device at any one point in time. As soon as you recover your data on a second device, it automatically deletes your account from the first one. I wanted to have it on my iPad and my iPhone - iPad for a larger display, and iPhone for convenience when on the road. In theory, you can recover the app to the other device if you need to, but this is a cumbersome process

Disappointingly, the app can also only be used in portrait mode on the iPad

BikingBud

Deleted_User wrote: »

Microsoft Money 2004 running on an old Windows XP machine.

And before anyone says oh that's insecure, well it's not connected to the internet or even my internal home network at all.

:rotfl:

Same here only real concern is how much longer the gerbil inside the laptop will keep running. May have to see if I can get another one just in case he expires:D

DCFC79

ports wrote: »

Hi. I'm new to budgeting but I'm a pretty good at excel. Would you be able to post a template of your spreadsheet (obviously without any personal details) to see what works for you? Thank you

No 1 needs to send you a template.


I have the months along the top and a name for each debit down the left eg car ins, Tax etc. If your good at Excel it should be a swizz for you.


Then you obviously do the calcs at the bottom for each month and take the final total away form your monthly pay.

dan91

Started using Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe (its free from Microsoft) as i wasn't comfortable giving banking info to the third parties found it really good generally just enter the details manually of what i have spent at the end of the day or every couple of days.

It says US but GBP ext works fine.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=20738

BikingBud

I was hoping for a simple freebie for Mac so i can dump the archaic mini notebook but I have not been able to find a standalone programme that is free, all want internet access or payment, not happy with either.

colsten

BikingBud wrote: »

I was hoping for a simple freebie for Mac so i can dump the archaic mini notebook but I have not been able to find a standalone programme that is free, all want internet access or payment, not happy with either.

Yolt runs on iOS so may be on Mac?
What's the problem with internet access?

No_6

Excel spread sheet is so simple, so why do you not use it.

MS Money is a excel spread sheet. that already works for
MANY Multiple Accounts.....so if you only have a couple !!!


you need to get MORE...….it will work
only on lappy or pc

cloud_dog

BikingBud wrote: »

Same here only real concern is how much longer the gerbil inside the laptop will keep running. May have to see if I can get another one just in case he expires:D

I run it quite happily on Windows10, well the 2005 UK last edition. I don't run the last 'Sunset' edition as that was the US version but the last UK 2005 version used to be available FOC on the interweb.

There was one small fly in the ointment with MS Money in W10 which I believe caused Money to hang when you exited. Unsure if this is still an issue with later editions of W10 or not but, the solution is to turn on automatic back-ups (when you exit Money), then when it prompts you to back-up you just cancel (or back-up should you wish).