Which Personal Finance Software to use?

wmb194

gsmh said:

wmb194 said:

The one you're suggesting is free, so how much development can anyone really put into it? AceMoney seems to be a one-man band and the one time fee for all future updates is a business model which usually fails.

I've noticed many users of this forum just don't get the opensource concept. It is way more than 'free software' and pretty much the whole internet runs on (free) Unix based systems, developed by opensource developers. Major players such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, MacDonalds, NASA and many more run their systems on an opnsource product, Linux. To be dismissive of it is to show ignorance.

A list is available here: https://www.tecmint.com/big-companies-and-devices-running-on-gnulinux/

No, I get open source* fine, but not all open source is equal. What we're talking about here is a simple relational database for a type of software that relatively few people have much interest in so I highly doubt there's an army of people working on it and  is why Microsoft stopped developing it. For me, Money still looks like it still does it better.
*Free but not always free if you want the best support e.g., I've worked for companies that have paid plenty of money to Red Hat.

Reckless_Saving

Still an active MS Money user 20 years later, use the 99 edition, found also the sunset edition has the same functionally.  When the sunset edition came out I did have a slight concern that all my data was tied to this one application, Money Manager Ex was the closest I found to matching MS Money’s functionally but in the end I was put of by little niggles that didn’t work for UK based transactions and it became apparent that the open source community was too small to make any headway in developing the app so decided not to invest my time in transferring over.

Fast forward to the last couple years and I came across http://sunriise.sourceforge.net/ to backup my raw MS Money data to csv, I’m then using JupyterLab to write processes using python, sql, spark dataframe to create plain English csv datasets of all my MS Money transactions which I can analyse and easily port into other modern applications like Power BI Desktop.  It’s enforces to how good MS Money is and that gaps it can’t do like pensions and complicated share options can be managed and merge outside of the app.

At sometime point long term I’ll get this into GitHub for others to share, be good to see what other do with the data outside of the app, share of charts, tables.   

gsmh

wmb194 said:

*Free but not always free if you want the best support e.g., I've worked for companies that have paid plenty of money to Red Hat.

That's the beauty of opensource - companies are free to add value and charge for things like support. They are expected to inject back into the free source. Clearly a big company would be paying rather a lot for support. Apple's macOS is based on BSD Unix, as I'm sure you know. Home users can dispense with the charged support and use the product for free, relying on the community for support. Every time I have seen opensource (I use the contracted term deliberately) software mentioned on here certain members have a go at it and denigrate it just because it's free. That's what I object to and why I feel they don't understand.

cloud_dog

gsmh said:

MS Money is not being actively developed and is a obsoleted product.

Really?

I'm not aware 'they' have invented any new financial functions or capabilities that MS Money doesn't support.  If someone could port MS Money to Android then I'd go with that.

colsten

gsmh said:

wmb194 said:

The one you're suggesting is free, so how much development can anyone really put into it? AceMoney seems to be a one-man band and the one time fee for all future updates is a business model which usually fails.

I've noticed many users of this forum just don't get the opensource concept. 

I am not on some sort of technology / philosophy band wagon. I just need relatively straight-forward spreadsheet functionality, coupled with some logical grouping of data, a few reports, and reading of current fund & share prices. MS Money / AceMoney does all of this.

The very last thing I want is to be subjected to ideas of people who don't even bother to gather user requirements - of which all the modern account aggregators are prime examples, and I wouldn't be surprised if the OpenSource crowd had never gathered user user requirements, either, as they generally exist to satisfy technology egos.

gsmh

cloud_dog said:

Really?
I'm not aware 'they' have invented any new financial functions or capabilities that MS Money doesn't support.  If someone could port MS Money to Android then I'd go with that.

I understand this is not a tech forum, but sometimes I'm not sure whether a user is taking the mick or being serious. If an application/program is no longer supported and developed, there is a chance the OS and/or hardware will move on and it will no longer work. I had some amazing interactive software to reach GCSE students about flooding and flood management. It was based around Excel macros; development was ceased and as MS Office developed it left behind the functionality the macros required and one of the best flood models available simply stopped working. Microsoft is admittedly better at supporting legacy software, Apple has no such qualms and will cease functionality at the drop of a hat. For starters there will come a time when Windows, like macOS, goes 64bit only, which will effectively prevent a lot of older software from working. If you're happy to keep running the hardware and OS you have then there won't be a problem, but I personally wouldn't do that just to keep a finance package working. Companies do it, many banks run the most antiquated software because if it ain't broke, and all that. I understand IBM's OS/2 is still working hard in a few ATMs and support was dropped by IBM in 2006, a few years after it stopped developing the OS. Of course, any company can buy in support for almost anything but eventually systems will need upgrading and we all know how badly that can go.

colsten

cloud_dog said:

gsmh said:

MS Money is not being actively developed and is a obsoleted product.

Really?

I'm not aware 'they' have invented any new financial functions or capabilities that MS Money doesn't support.  If someone could port MS Money to Android then I'd go with that.

Exactly.

It's not as if anyone has discovered, or is likely to discover or invent, any new mathematical laws. Money into an account, and money out of an account, still works as a debit to one account and a credit to another, and it will always work like that.


I agree with you, if there was a better user interface, in the form of an app, I might be interested. But I am not craving for one, and I am not prepared to pay for one.

Eco_Miser

gsmh said:

 If an application/program is no longer supported and developed, there is a chance the OS and/or hardware will move on and it will no longer work. I had some amazing interactive software to reach GCSE students about flooding and flood management. It was based around Excel macros; development was ceased and as MS Office developed it left behind the functionality the macros required and one of the best flood models available simply stopped working.

Stopped working, or only worked on old versions of the software?

gsmh said:

 Microsoft is admittedly better at supporting legacy software, Apple has no such qualms and will cease functionality at the drop of a hat. For starters there will come a time when Windows, like macOS, goes 64bit only, which will effectively prevent a lot of older software from working. If you're happy to keep running the hardware and OS you have then there won't be a problem, but I personally wouldn't do that just to keep a finance package working. Companies do it, many banks run the most antiquated software because if it ain't broke, and all that. I understand IBM's OS/2 is still working hard in a few ATMs and support was dropped by IBM in 2006, a few years after it stopped developing the OS. Of course, any company can buy in support for almost anything but eventually systems will need upgrading and we all know how badly that can go.

But MSMoney still works on Windows10.

So it is not yet obsolete.

It may stop working with Windows11, and presumably its users will then switch to AceMoney or other alternative. But that is a bridge to be crossed when they come to it.

Personally I like opensource software, and not just for the price.

gsmh

Eco_Miser said:

Stopped working, or only worked on old versions of the software?

Only worked on old versions of the software. The problem was that it was on a school network which was on a rolling update cycle. There was no way I could insist that the network stay as it was just so I could use my software. Even a security update can break something, particularly if it was using a particular hook or API which is now deemed a security risk. If the developer is no longer active it falls by the wayside. If I find I am using unsupported software I will try and find an actively developed equivalent maybe to use alongside initially so a transition is easy.

dunstonh

MS Money for me.  Used it for decades.     Every few years I look at modern alternatives but nothing works as well.