New personal finance software ... any tips?

FiatDino

When you say they don't have a 'UK-specific' offer ... does that mean simply that it doesn't cater for UK bank reconciliation etc. ... or that there are simply no £ signs and a very US centric viewpoint?  Maybe I should just download and try for a month. All the screenshots look very crisp - but as ever it's the manner in which you enter and reconcile the data that's the important bit.

Chordeiles

If I say I have been using MS Money since 2004, I've actually been using it a whole lot longer.  I sort of suspect that I got a much earlier copy from a cover disc on "PC world" or some such magazine, and the records show that Microsoft were giving away Money 95 as a plug for Windows 95.

Before that I had been using Quicken and I found it intolerably buggy, MS Money was a breath of fresh air at the time.  But don't take my 25-year old opinion of Quicken too seriously, a lot will have changed since those days !

Now I'm really happy with the transfer process from MS Money to AceMoney, somehow that does NOT seem to strengthen the argument to move to AceMoney right now.  But if I didn't already have a copy of MS Money 2004 that seems to work perfectly well, then I guess I'd be pretty happy I discovered AceMoney.

colsten

FiatDino said:

....  Maybe I should just download and try for a month. .....

Good luck with that. AFAIK, you can't download quicken w/o giving them your credit card details right away. They'll charge you in USD, too. If you find a site that allows you to pay in GBP, be careful as that would almost certainly be a scam. 

My view is that there are good reasons why nobody here is using Quicken. It might be a brilliant product but it's not marketed in the UK, plus we have many alternatives. Anyway, if you go ahead, please come back and post your findings

Chordeiles

Well I've been working with AceMoney more than a week now and I'm impressed.  I paid the money and am now a "registered user".

The only thing I really miss from MS Money is the calculator that pops up if you want to enter an amount that is made up of multiple values.  But I've now got used to keeping an old-fashioned calculator on my desk.

In general I love the way it works (as opposed to MS Money, and I had rarely complained about that).  Especially I like the way that future scheduled bills and deposits for the account one is working in are shown greyed out and can be applied from that account.

The way it does "reconciliation" is a bit alien after MS Money, but when one gets used to it one appreciates the sheer simplicity of the approach.

I wish it could schedule investment transactions (so I can anticipate dividends) but MS Money couldn't do that either.  And I fear that dividends aren't going to what they used to be, going forwards :-(

Not everything has been plain sailing.  The import of investment data from MS Money was a bit of a pig's ear (even though it had looked o.k. once I had sorted the first problem, see previous post).  My wife's ISA contained an investment that I had bought in a different account, in place of one that she really owns.  Inspection of the .XML file used in the transfer shows the export from MS Money was fine (both those investments recorded against the accounts where they should have been).  But hey, it had been a clean start I had wanted, so no real problem.

cloud_dog

Chordeiles said:

I wish it could schedule investment transactions (so I can anticipate dividends) but MS Money couldn't do that either.  

Just for clarity,  you can set up regular investments in MS Money.

Chordeiles

cloud_dog said:

Just for clarity,  you can set up regular investments in MS Money.

O.k., I see that now.  If I never noticed it before it's because I have no use for it (it was just dividends I wanted to anticipate, and Money can't do that).  I suppose that's one up for MS Money over AceMoney.

I've been using MS Money a lot in the past week (to fill in the gaps left by my "clean start" with AceMoney).  And I still like it a lot, even if I have no regrets about the switch to AceMoney.  I guess I have a "comfortable familiarity" with it.

But too often in MS Money find myself editing the previous transaction rather than starting a new one.  This is doubtless my own clumsiness (perhaps I just miss the "new" button on the transaction form).  But I never had a similar problem with AceMoney.  Probably because the transaction form disappears between each operation.

cloud_dog

I don't use form entry. Where I need to make a manual entry, I just start entering the data in the next available row (in the account).

Try turning form entry off.

Chordeiles

cloud_dog said:

Try turning form entry off.

That's a top tip, thanks.  Too bad I'm using AceMoney more than MS Money these days.
I start to question my decision to buy AceMoney when I see their support website is down at the moment.  And their user forum at https://forums.mechcad.net/ is also visibly broke today, which makes a subtle difference from every other day when it's less visibly broke.  In that I can't create an account, and emailing the contact address draws a blank.

inspectorperez

I see this thread has been going for a while now, so the main contributors so far may not be too interested in what I have to add to the discussions. But just for the sake of adding an extra option into the product choices, I thought I would just mention some software called Visual Accounts. I have been using this software for many years as both a personal and a business user. It is a one developer supported piece of software, but it is lightweight and very simple user interface with nothing too fancy. The business product retails circa £50ish and the personal product at £20ish. In my previous life I was an accountant, and a number of my clients had a preference for this software mainly because I think it was inexpensive, didn't require an annual license fee, and even if they didn't get things right "the accountant" could always make corrections at the end of the year. I am including a link with this post and I would just mention that I have no connection whatsoever to this company. I use it to record the historical data and it's export function allows me to export what I want into an excel spreadsheet which I use for budgeting and forecasting. I still use the business version also for my limited business interests these days. Happy to answer any questions if they are within my scope of knowledge.

https://www.visualaccounts.co.uk/