Personal Finance tracking application

Pat38493

Dear all, Any recommendations for an app or software to track my personal finances. My main objective is to track my real spending over a couple of years and see how it corresponds to my budgets. I would like to be able to categorise all spending using custom spend categories, preferably with at least 2 nested levels of categorization (e.g. Household / Utilities - that type of thing) and then be able to track and report on the information. I was looking into this and it seems like a lot of the apps and software available are US focused. It also seems like there are "classic" options like Jiosoft which work more like an small business accounting package, and then options like Emma which can download all your bank information but may be less flexible in use (and I am not really clear about their business model). I am not an accountant but in the past I spent quite a few years supporting finance systems from an IT point of view so I am comfortable with basic accounting concepts of double entry bookkeeping etc so I'm not frightened of applications which work in this way.

blue.peter

AceMoney does all that you want. I've had it for about 15 years, and recommend it. It's available in Windows and MacOS versions.

It might also be worth investigating MoneyManager EX. I'm not sure if it does as much as AceMoney (but only because I haven't looked at it in any depth), but it is free.

wiseonesomeofthetime

+1 for AceMoney. I have used since 2017 after changing to a MacBook from Windows and MS Money.

Pat38493

blue.peter said:

AceMoney does all that you want. I've had it for about 15 years, and recommend it. It's available in Windows and MacOS versions.

It might also be worth investigating MoneyManager EX. I'm not sure if it does as much as AceMoney (but only because I haven't looked at it in any depth), but it is free.

I did briefly look at Acemoney but it looked like it was US centric and based in Florida - you have not found any issues with this?

I guess it doesn’t have any kind of automated links to UK banks so you would have to input your information manually?

blue.peter

Pat38493 said:

I did briefly look at Acemoney but it looked like it was US centric and based in Florida - you have not found any issues with this?

I guess it doesn’t have any kind of automated links to UK banks so you would have to input your information manually?

I've not had any problems at all. It does all that I want, and works beautifully.

I don't use it to try to access my online bank accounts directly. I suspect that that could be a problem if I wanted to. I've input the basic information (account name and starting balance) manually, but that's not difficult. i don't bother to record sort codes or account numbers in AceMoney at all. I don't see any benefit to doing so. YMMV, of course.

blue.peter

PS - I'm pretty sure that AceMoney doesn't have the capability to handle 2FA, in which case it wouldn't be able to access UK banks at all nowadays. I think that you'd need something that can use Open Banking to do that now. I'm not aware of any software that has that capability as well as offering the other functionality that you want. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist - just that if it does, I don't know of it.

k_man

Another option is to do this in 2 stages.
Use an Open Banking app as the aggregator,
E.g 
MoneyHub, MoneyDashboard, Emma, Snoop etc.

and if further analysis is required, export transactions to AceMoney or MoneyManager EX, or even just a spreadsheet.

RG2015

blue.peter said:

PS - I'm pretty sure that AceMoney doesn't have the capability to handle 2FA, in which case it wouldn't be able to access UK banks at all nowadays. I think that you'd need something that can use Open Banking to do that now. I'm not aware of any software that has that capability as well as offering the other functionality that you want. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist - just that if it does, I don't know of it.

Just out of interest, how does open banking handle 2FA?

Sensory

RG2015 said:

blue.peter said:

PS - I'm pretty sure that AceMoney doesn't have the capability to handle 2FA, in which case it wouldn't be able to access UK banks at all nowadays. I think that you'd need something that can use Open Banking to do that now. I'm not aware of any software that has that capability as well as offering the other functionality that you want. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist - just that if it does, I don't know of it.

Just out of interest, how does open banking handle 2FA?

You authenticate yourself and the TPP (Third Party Provider) receives a token valid for 90 days, which can be refreshed by reconfirming (re-authenticating is no longer required as it proved too troublesome with drop-off rates of above 50%).

blue.peter

RG2015 said:

Just out of interest, how does open banking handle 2FA?

Good question. My understanding is that it doesn't. I think that it bypasses individual banks' 2FA altogether. AIUI, there's a direct IT link between the aggregator and the customer's bank. Thus, when I (as a customer) have logged in to my aggregator's app (using 2FA, I assume - I don't use it myself), it then goes off and talks directly to the banks that have my permission to give it info about my accounts with them.

However, I'm happy to be corrected: I have no doubt that someone here knows more about it than I do.

Sensory

blue.peter said:

RG2015 said:

Just out of interest, how does open banking handle 2FA?

Good question. My understanding is that it doesn't. I think that it bypasses individual banks' 2FA altogether. AIUI, there's a direct IT link between the aggregator and the customer's bank. Thus, when I (as a customer) have logged in to my aggregator's app (using 2FA, I assume - I don't use it myself), it then goes off and talks directly to the banks that have my permission to give it info about my accounts with them.

However, I'm happy to be corrected: I have no doubt that someone here knows more about it than I do.

When logged in to the TPP and you choose to connect your bank account, the TPP redirects you to your bank's app/website and you authenticate yourself (with 2FA). The TPP then receives a token that's valid for 90 days, which can be refreshed within the TPP's interface by reconfirming the authorisation (without needing to re-authenticate). An open banking platform like TrueLayer is used to facilitate the connection and provide the token to the TPP.