Which software?

Fenners_2

Hi,

My wife I have recently decided that we need to dramatically improve our personal financial management. With two incomes we perhaps have been a bit uncontrolled with our spending. With a young baby now in the house, and the reduced income due to my wife working three days we have realised the error of our ways. The worst part I guess is that I am an accountant!!

We want to start budgeting and monitoring what we are spending, but I want to understand what software is out there to help us. We have Internet banking and I would like to able to link it all together. I could just use a spreadsheet/access database, but before I invest time going down this route I would like to get people's opinions on whether it is better to use a dedicated personal accounts package, and if so which one.

PROLIANT

c247 wrote: »

Have tried a software programme called Accountz which was not too bad, but requires quite a lot of effort to maintain. The best I have seen is Microsoft Money, and the templates make it relatively easy to maintain (after the initial investmnet of time to set it up)

And it only cost's £17 off Amazon.co.uk, I use it alot and it has some very clever modules, it also can connect directly to your bank if your bank supports it or if not then just download your statement in.qif or money file format.

RayWolfe

Microsoft Money is complete, not only for cash but also for investments.
Only problem is that it is no longer supported in the UK.
Works in VISTA.
Quicken is marginally better. Also not supported in the UK any longer. Does not work in VISTA, works fine in XP.

vix2000

Hi, I am running quicken 2000 on my vista laptop?????????

Baldur

vix2000 wrote: »

Hi, I am running quicken 2000 on my vista laptop?????????

You must be very lucky, judging by all of the reported problems, even with much more recent versions of Quicken under Vista, e.g. here.

vix2000

I know, I didn't even realise there was a problem. To be honest, I just put in the disc and loaded it, then transfered the back up files. Trouble is, I know eventually it won't work and don't know what I'll do then as I can't seem to get on with ms money.

RayWolfe

I had the same difficulty with MS Money ... I didn't like it at all. However, because of the Quicken issue, I have been forced to use it since January.
I now like it!
It's a bit like metrication, if we're forced to use it, it becomes second nature.

vix2000

Thanks. I think my problem is that I dont download info from the banks site, but update quicken manually from the online statement. I mainly use the calendar to forecast how much I need to cover future bills etc. Money looks a bit complicated to me. Can you tell me, when I open money and it asks if I want to open an existing quicken file, will the file still exist in quicken, please? If so, I might run money alongside quicken for a while until I get used to it. I might even attempt to download stuff from online banking!!!!!

RayWolfe

I do my input manually. I can't see the point of updating from a bank; that's far too late to enable me to manage my money. My use is all about the future.
I update share prices manually too ... but only once a month!
Yes the Quicken file remains intact after a Money conversion.
Running the two alongside each other is exactly what I did ... it helped enormously!
Good luck.

Quietgirl

I like RayWolfe, do all my accounting with Ms Money, I also enter it all manually. It has kept me on the straight and narrow for a long time. It takes some setting up but it is well worth it so you can see what your spending on various things, you can set a warning if your going over budget on a particular category. What I like best is the cash flow forcast so I can see exactly how much money I have at the end of the month before pay day. I also like that you can do various cash flow senarios, like ask it to forecast your cash flow for instance if you spend 50 quid on a specific date or suddenly started making regular spends on something.

CopperPlate_2

I use Moneydance for the Mac but you can also download it for various other platforms, including Linux, Windows, etc. It costs about £17 at last look and although not as advanced as Money in so much as the graphs and forecasting isn't so good, it is fine for me - I can keep track of the spending, produce reports to show spending over a period of time, etc. It's basic but after the problems I had with MS Money and HUGE files (30+MB at a time, despite archiving) it really became a pain. Also, I couldn't get an up-to-date version and then discovered they had withdrawn it from the UK market...so I had to plug away with an outdated version.

Moneydance allows you to download QIF, MS Money, etc files into it and automatically reconcile which is useful too.