Personal accounting software

iviv · 28 Mar 2012 at 15:22

I've been trying to keep a track of all my money through an excel spreadsheet, but its far too simple and too much effort to keep up to date, so I thought there must be some programs out there that are designed for people to just keep track of their finances. And there's a few available! Only problem is, I have no idea which are good and which aren't. I'm currently downloading gnucash to give that a try, but does anyone on here use something like this, and what program do you use?

Its not going to be used for anything complex, I just want to tell it what I have in which bank accounts, then stick in anything I buy with my debit card, cash I withdraw, make a note of everything I buy, just so I can keep track of how much money I have and how much I'm spending, simple things like that.

Thanks!

boosfuk · 28 Mar 2012 at 17:31

"Money Manager Ex" by Codelathe is the best I've found. Very simple to use and free!

prescott28 · 29 Mar 2012 at 10:26

Home Accountz is a very good program for this and it allow forecasts of what money will be left after a period, taking account direct debits and other regular payments. It has quite a lot of 'bells and whistles'.

the only downside is the registration process which is unconventional. After adding the registration code, reinstalling after, say, a reformat, involves copy back bits of its old directory and this only seems to work on the same drive on which it was originally installed.

lee1101 · 29 Mar 2012 at 10:28

Have a try of Xero. I havent used it much but from what I have seen it appears very good. Nice modern interface and plenty of functions. Its also very easy to use and fairly cheap

iviv · 29 Mar 2012 at 10:42

lee1101 said:
Its also very easy to use and fairly cheap

I'd rather have free over cheap, since it isn't something hugely important to me, at least not worth spending money on.

Home Accountz is a very good program for this and it allow forecasts of what money will be left after a period, taking account direct debits and other regular payments. It has quite a lot of 'bells and whistles'.

That only seems to be a 30 day trial, and you have to pay £32.50+vat for a license?

I'll check out Money Manager Ex though