Personal / Home Budgeting Software

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broken1

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Anyone have any recommendations? Right now I do it all in excel, but the volume is getting to me.

I am looking for something that can manage multiple accounts (current, savings and credit card), and is able to automatically categorize my expenditure (for example, every month Wesbank comes off...it needs to be able to recognize it as Car Finance and add a category automatically)
 
MS Money... although its been discontinued - I'm sure you can still get it.
 
Money Manager EX. Been using it now for about 5 years. Easy to setup and maintian.
 
I have a problem with MS Money, I import my statement from Internet banking and balance everything then next month when I import the next statement it doubles all the transactions that overlap. I thought MS Money would be able to pick up which ones are doubles and not add them but no.
 
Been using MS Money for a while but just changed to AceMoney. There's a lite version, but the commercial version if cheap enough to buy. I"m pretty impressed with it. Even imports my bond data from FNB. MSMoney used to give a error when importing it due to the data format.

Def worth looking into.
 
Just curious, I've never used financial software, I use excel for my budget, why is excel not good enough ?
 
I use this : http://www.youneedabudget.com/ . Perfect for personal use with an interesting "philosophy" on how to manage your budget . MS Money and Quicken is basically just a personal accounting type software without really giving you any "guidance" . Ynab adds pointers and goals on what to do after you got all your data set up.

wrathex said:
Just curious, I've never used financial software, I use excel for my budget, why is excel not good enough ?
Click to expand...

It depends on how technical you are with excel. Examples:

1. Can you import your bank statements/transactions directly into excel which a simply "import now" ?
2. Can you draw various trend graphs and pie charts ? Classifying your spending?
3. Can you do forecasting and budgeting [this includes adding "scheduled transactions" into the whole thing [i.e. paying off a home loan which is a fixed thing] ].

Yes, sure you can do it with Excel, but you need to program it all. Most people can't.
 
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diabolus said:
I use this : http://www.youneedabudget.com/ . Perfect for personal use with an interesting "philosophy" on how to manage your budget . MS Money and Quicken is basically just a personal accounting type software without really giving you any "guidance" . Ynab adds pointers and goals on what to do after you got all your data set up.



It depends on how technical you are with excel. Examples:

1. Can you import your bank statements/transactions directly into excel which a simply "import now" ?
2. Can you draw various trend graphs and pie charts ? Classifying your spending?
3. Can you do forecasting and budgeting [this includes adding "scheduled transactions" into the whole thing [i.e. paying off a home loan which is a fixed thing] ].

Yes, sure you can do it with Excel, but you need to program it all. Most people can't.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for explanation, I don't have a complicated budget, so excel is perfect for me.
 
wrathex said:
Just curious, I've never used financial software, I use excel for my budget, why is excel not good enough ?
Click to expand...

The thing thats the most useful for me is the import feature. On FNB you can export each of your accounts and import them into the app and classify the type of spending. Easy peasy.
 
diabolus said:
I use this : http://www.youneedabudget.com/ . Perfect for personal use with an interesting "philosophy" on how to manage your budget . MS Money and Quicken is basically just a personal accounting type software without really giving you any "guidance" . Ynab adds pointers and goals on what to do after you got all your data set up.



It depends on how technical you are with excel. Examples:

1. Can you import your bank statements/transactions directly into excel which a simply "import now" ?
2. Can you draw various trend graphs and pie charts ? Classifying your spending?
3. Can you do forecasting and budgeting [this includes adding "scheduled transactions" into the whole thing [i.e. paying off a home loan which is a fixed thing] ].

Yes, sure you can do it with Excel, but you need to program it all. Most people can't.
Click to expand...

I use http://www.nedbank.co.za/website/content/personalmoneymanager/ , free for nedbank clients. Can do all of the above, the only downside is it does not import statements from another bank.
 
AvOk said:
I use http://www.nedbank.co.za/website/content/personalmoneymanager/ , free for nedbank clients. Can do all of the above, the only downside is it does not import statements from another bank.
Click to expand...

That's nifty from Nedbank, i'm surprised banks don't offer these things instead of security software. In the USA these packages actually integrate directly with your online banking [so you don't download the statements, you connect from the software and sync] , but not here... (in fact MS Money and Quicken already connect to various USA banks to get your balance+transactions)

Anyway, what DID come out when using this software, if you classify all your transactions properly and SPECIFICALLY every single banking related cost [all those "atm costs, transfer costs, sms costs, notification costs, monthly card costs, DEBT costs " ] you will be quite shocked to see how the banks are screwing us. Because it's usually a R2 here and a R5 there , it's very hard to pick it up over a course of a month , but if you import your statements directly [instead of manually putting in transactions] all these other charges will pop right into view. <--- and THIS is the issue with using Excel, i did it too but i only put in transactions i actually did myself , not all those small banking charges .....quite disturbing once you realise this can be R300+ a month even if you are on package!
 
diabolus said:
That's nifty from Nedbank, i'm surprised banks don't offer these things instead of security software. In the USA these packages actually integrate directly with your online banking [so you don't download the statements, you connect from the software and sync] , but not here... (in fact MS Money and Quicken already connect to various USA banks to get your balance+transactions)

Anyway, what DID come out when using this software, if you classify all your transactions properly and SPECIFICALLY every single banking related cost [all those "atm costs, transfer costs, sms costs, notification costs, monthly card costs, DEBT costs " ] you will be quite shocked to see how the banks are screwing us. Because it's usually a R2 here and a R5 there , it's very hard to pick it up over a course of a month , but if you import your statements directly [instead of manually putting in transactions] all these other charges will pop right into view. <--- and THIS is the issue with using Excel, i did it too but i only put in transactions i actually did myself , not all those small banking charges .....quite disturbing once you realise this can be R300+ a month even if you are on package!
Click to expand...

Yep bank charges are sick if I look back to when I opened the account. I like the fact that I can export all my Nedbank statements, from when I opened the account in 2005. It's also intelligent enough to auto categorize some purchases from your card.(eg. PnP, clicks etc.) I moved my current account to a Nedbank savvy account and only pay R69 a month. (I see its 87 on there website, so not sure why I am only paying 69?? http://www.nedbank.co.za/website/content/savvy_account/index.asp)
 
Very interesting read. I was using Quicken, but the software is 2004 release so pretty old now and has been discontinued in RSA and replaced with Quickbooks, which is very business focused. Also this software does not seem very cloud friendly nor smartphone enabled so time to either migrate to the modern era OR start again.

I have had a look at Wave, pastelmymoney and the 22seven.

Anybody with experience on any of these?
 
Ace Money Lite

Free, imports from all banks via OFX and you can set up rules to auto-assign.

Basically I just import form the banks and 90% is done for me. Even has nice reports and graphs.
 
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