New personal finance software ... any tips?

colsten

blue.peter said:

Having said that, you might be able to export your old data files from MS Money and import them into AceMoney if you really want to do so.

I migrated from MS Money to AceMoney, a couple of years ago now. The conversion was painless. There are detailed instructions on the mechcad website for it - https://www.mechcad.net/import-from-microsoft-money/

colsten

Chordeiles said:

Maybe a bit ominous that the AceMoney Facebook page had been silent from December 2012 to December 2019.  But their support site at support.mechcad.net remained up yesterday, and responsive.

I read somewhere that the original owner/developer passed away and support went dormant for a while. Someone seems to have picked up the pieces now and several bug fixes have been forthcoming since.

Chordeiles

So I'm less than one day into my 30 day free trial of AceMoney.  First impressions pretty good, it can handle the 4 week interval (rather than calendar month) at which the DWP pay my state pension (so can Money 2004), but it can't handle the 30 day billing periods that Lebara Mobile inflict on us (neither can Money 2004).  The interface is pretty intuitive, but certainly not a carbon copy of MS Money.

I know I wanted a clean start, but I decided to convert my latest MS Money data as part of the learning process.

As colsten points out the instructions for converting MS money files are at:

  https://www.mechcad.net/import-from-microsoft-money/

It goes in three parts (three *.XML files) "Account transactions", "Investment Transactions" and "Scheduled Bills".

I tried it.  If at any point I wasn't following the instructions to the letter it was because my "UK localised" MS Money 2004 didn't quite fit their instructions.

First impressions of the result were hugely disappointing, but on closer inspection there is loads that it got right.  I'm suspecting the "Scheduled Bills" step, I'm guessing that the "Scheduled Bills.XML" file output from Money 2004 has the fields in a different order from the versions of MS Money that the developers of AceMoney examined.  Thus I have a flock of "Bank accounts" that are named after the "comment" field in a scheduled transaction !

I'll try some more, if it just means entering my regular bills and payments manually then maybe it ain't so bad.

On the other hand, I can't help thinking that MS Money 2004 does still work very well, and saves me about £40 ;-)

wiseonesomeofthetime

I am also an advocate of AceMoney 👍

Chordeiles

Ok, I debugged my transfer of data from MS Money 2004 to AceMoney.  Having carefully documented what I did I have now compared it to the AceMoney instructions and I can see little difference !  Undoubtedly part of the problem was trying to print the page (to PDF) from the AceMoney website (because the AceMoney website kept disappearing), and Chrome made a mess of saving the page.  Maybe another browser would have made a better job of saving this page.

In the event I had missed ticking the "Number" box in step 19, this offset all later columns in the transfer file giving the weird effect I mentioned, i.e. accounts named as the comments against scheduled transactions.

Now very happy with the way the transfer went.

FiatDino

Out of interest - does anyone know how long AceMoney have been 'working' on an iPhone app? At the moment I have settled on using MoneyWiz, but the import process is SERIOUSLY laborious (outside of refunds, it can't handle 'positive' expenses, or indeed 'negative' income, which is a real bore).  But ... the iPhone app is a delight, and makes day to day updating a breeze. I definitely could not live without some form of input/review functionality on an iPhone.  Also ... anyone know how good Quicken is in this respect?

colsten

FiatDino said:

Out of interest - does anyone know how long AceMoney have been 'working' on an iPhone app? 

Several years 😭

FiatDino

Thanks Colsten.  And what is the situation with Quicken ... every time I search it out, it seems they don't have a UK dedicated product (or it has been discontinued for support etc.).  This whole area of apps/software is really an absolute MESS.  Every single adult over the age of 16 in this country has money in some form or other, and most have a desire (in some form or other and in differing degrees) to track it / manage it .... and yet the offer is truely woeful! 

colsten

Quicken don't have a UK-specific offer. There are lots of others about - YNAB, Emma, Moneydashboard, Yolt to mention but a few - but none of those are IMO as simple and efficient as AceMoney or MS Money. Others will vehemently disagree - -  that's the beauty of choice. Everyone can choose what suits them best.

LobsterMemory

What a wonderful product Quicken was. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, it was too good to fail so you didn't need to upgrade. 
I wonder if they'd gone for a subscription model back in 2004, I'd have gone for it. I doubt it, but should have done.