Recommend me Financial Software

Long time Money user and with support gone, I'm looking for a new package to transfer to. The programs needs to cover the basics plus some investments and ideally be able to generate a cash flow forecast.

I've tried the demos I could find: Mint, Moneydance, SplashMoney, and Fortora. Any others? Or should I just resign myself to going with Quicken?

MoneyDance? Not sure about Cashflow forecasting, though...

EDIT: Is it possible to be Tannhauser'd by an original post? Curse me and my weak speed reading skills. Sorry, I got nothing.

Didn't Intuit (Quicken) buy Mint? So in the long run, I'd see Mint and Quicken converging.

I can't imagine Mint and Quicken converging since Mint is a free, base-level internet-based financial program, and Quicken is a far more robust and detailed software (that I'm aware of). Mint is for people who are bad at math, like me-- I hope they don't over-complicate it...

Yeah, Mint is now owned by Quicken and is their free option. Quicken really seems to be the only show in town that will handle investments as well as the basics.

Quicken is the way to go IMO. Even with its various frustrations, its still the best program for home financial bookkeeping that I've found over the last two decades.

WipEout wrote:

I can't imagine Mint and Quicken converging since Mint is a free, base-level internet-based financial program, and Quicken is a far more robust and detailed software (that I'm aware of). Mint is for people who are bad at math, like me-- I hope they don't over-complicate it...

While I'd originally have agreed with WipEout, everything I've read indicates that the traditional Quicken package will likely be going more towards the Mint end of things, particularly now that the former Mint CEO is in charge of the product line. Some discussion of that in this article).

I'm still not sure how I feel about a more web based Quicken personally. While I like thin clients and the cloud for most things, my old-fartiness rears up when it comes to my finances and I want them nice and safely locked away in my personal offline vault.

I'm still baffled at how a company with a name like "Intuit" can have such horrible, counter-intuitive user interfaces. I write software for a living and using Quickbooks (which is neither quick nor a book) is an exercise in frustration every single time.

--edit to quote:--

Teneman wrote:

my old-fartiness rears up when it comes to my finances and I want them nice and safely locked away in my personal offline vault.

Then ignore the fact that every single aspect of your finances is exposed in some way or another on the web, even without using Mint.

baggachipz wrote:
Teneman wrote:

my old-fartiness rears up when it comes to my finances and I want them nice and safely locked away in my personal offline vault.

Then ignore the fact that every single aspect of your finances is exposed in some way or another on the web, even without using Mint. 8-)

I realize you're being partly sarcastic, but this isn't entirely true. Sure, there are records of most of my actual accounts and holdings scattered about on the web. But not all in one place or necessarily directly associated with me. More importantly, what's out there is just the top layer, not the sordid details.

For instance the fact that I have $10 quadzillion in a savings account at First Bank of Dontiwish may be exposed to the net through the banks online banking system. The fact that $1 quadzillion of that is designated for college savings and the other $9 quadzillion for the acquisition of goat porn isn't. Er, or wasn't. Where's that delete post key again?

I was going to post basically this thread, but turns out there already is one, even if it is 2 years old.

Does anyone have any recommendations for personal financial software in 2012?

I don't need investments, for now. I just want to be able to manage my credit card, checking account and savings.

I'd like something that will let enter items manually and let me import CSV files from my credit card and bank, and preferably not end up with dupes.

I also want something that will let me tag each transaction with a category or something, so that I can see how much I'm spending on groceries vs eating out vs entertainment, etc, and give me some pretty graphs, by month, over time, etc.

I'm using MoneyWise on my phone for the moment, but I want to know if there is something better available.

I used GnuCash for a while to great effect. Using free software I saved a lot of money learning that I don't have the ability to maintain decent records of my purchases and I'm generally too lazy to backfill the months and months I ignore it.

If your bank has a heavy online presence, they may have a way of doing this already online. USAA, for example, is very good at this even without software, and I'm pretty sure they offer CSVs if you have it.

Excel?

baggachipz wrote:

I'm still baffled at how a company with a name like "Intuit" can have such horrible, counter-intuitive user interfaces. I write software for a living and using Quickbooks (which is neither quick nor a book) is an exercise in frustration every single time.

The Quickbooks web experience is absolutely awful. I suspect the installable app is more intuitive, but I've never tried it. Quicken is really pretty good for normal stuff, but falls down a bit if you're doing a lot of transfers between accounts or serious trading. I find Mint to be easier to use than Quicken but has the disadvantage of being online. YMMV.

I have not used it (due to an aversion to double-entry accounting), but Buddi may be of interest. It looks to be less complicated than GNUCash. Still running a decade-plus old copy of quicken myself. One of these days I'm going to break down and code up something basic. That day has not yet arrived, nor is it looking near. If anyone finds something novel that's offline, without double-entry, and with reconciliations, please chime in.

There's also some text file processing scripts out there for the command line oriented.

Garden Ninja wrote:

I was going to post basically this thread, but turns out there already is one, even if it is 2 years old.

Does anyone have any recommendations for personal financial software in 2012?

I don't need investments, for now. I just want to be able to manage my credit card, checking account and savings.

I'd like something that will let enter items manually and let me import CSV files from my credit card and bank, and preferably not end up with dupes.

I also want something that will let me tag each transaction with a category or something, so that I can see how much I'm spending on groceries vs eating out vs entertainment, etc, and give me some pretty graphs, by month, over time, etc.

I'm using MoneyWise on my phone for the moment, but I want to know if there is something better available.

YouNeedABudget or YNAB seems to have a lot of what you are looking for. It's obviously geared towards budgeting and tracking how well you are doing against the budget. But it allows for CSV import, manual entry, tagging transactions and then getting pretty graphs and reports.

My credit union partners with Quicken for FinanceWorks which has replaced my excel spreadsheet and MS Money prior to it.

We've used YNAB for a year or so, and I find it works very well. I don't have the newest version (4.0) so I can't say if they've added it, but 3.x doesn't sync directly with banks. It will import bank downloads in a variety of formats.

It also syncs with iPhone and I wanna say they've got an Android app as well.

muraii wrote:

We've used YNAB for a year or so, and I find it works very well. I don't have the newest version (4.0) so I can't say if they've added it, but 3.x doesn't sync directly with banks. It will import bank downloads in a variety of formats.

It also syncs with iPhone and I wanna say they've got an Android app as well.

4.0 adds Dropbox based syncing as a big feature - which in combination with the mobile apps has been great for tracking progress against budgets on the go. I don't think much has changed on bank imports but then again I've never used it.

I have to admit though that I got 4.x as a free upgrade as I bought 3.x just a few months before 4 came out, so I probably am over valuing the sync features then if I had to pay to get it.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Sounds like YNAB is on the top of the list of things to try at least.

I've been using Dropbox to sync between LAN machines but still have to manually sync with iPhones. It's a relative pain, but given the other pains YNAB obviates, it's okay.

Do you have multiple mobile devices, and if so, do you find synching conflicts are frequent? That's the main worry I have with 4.x.

I'm not sure what you'd like it to do but I've found Mint helpful for just keeping on top of things.
What features do you hope to find?

muraii wrote:

I've been using Dropbox to sync between LAN machines but still have to manually sync with iPhones. It's a relative pain, but given the other pains YNAB obviates, it's okay.

Do you have multiple mobile devices, and if so, do you find synching conflicts are frequent? That's the main worry I have with 4.x.

I just have my (android based) cell phone. Not sure on dropbox syncing, since I don't really use it, even though I have an account. I can't recall any issue with syncing GMail contacts though. If I add a contact through the website, it shows up on my phone within 5 minutes typically.

Rahmen wrote:

I'm not sure what you'd like it to do but I've found Mint helpful for just keeping on top of things.
What features do you hope to find?

In the short term, I want to make sure I stay on top of my expenses so I know my balance. In the long term, I want to be able to set a budget and compare against my expenses, and use that information to adjust my spending habits if necessary.

For actual feature set, I posted a rough list upthread, but let me expand on it a bit:

  • Multiple accounts, with the ability to hide accounts by default. I have a Checking account, a Credit Card that I basically use as a debit card, and savings. I want to hide Savings by default and treat as a money pit. Put money in there and pretend it doesn't exist.
  • I want to be able to enter stuff manually throughout the day, but also load the actual transaction information from my banks. That could be manually importing data from CSV files, or if there is a way to auto sync things, that would be awesome (I use Wells Fargo and Chase, if that makes a difference). I also would like it to spot and resolve conflicts between manual entries and import data. If I enter $X on Y date at Z place, I'd like it to know magically that they are the same transaction, even if it clears a few days after it goes in, or at least give me a way to merge them manually.
  • I want to be able to assign categories to each transaction so that I can see, long term, how much I'm spending on groceries, for example. If I can split a transaction and assign each piece to a category, even better. For example, the other day at the grocery store I got an item that I mentally bucketed into the "Entertainment" budget, rather than groceries, but it was a single transaction.
  • I want different ways to filter and view the data. For example, filter to a certain time frame like, current month, or next 45 days, or just show Groceries.
Garden Ninja wrote:

In the short term, I want to make sure I stay on top of my expenses so I know my balance. In the long term, I want to be able to set a budget and compare against my expenses, and use that information to adjust my spending habits if necessary.

I used to just use a spreadsheet, but since I got it in a bundle, I just started using Money ($39). Multiple accounts, enter transactions manually or automatically import them from your (US) bank, categories, scheduled payments, multiple budgets, reports; other stuff I don't use (like investment tracking).

Seems to be doing the trick, and easier to manage than a made-from-scratch spreadsheet, keeping track of our money coming in, money going out, what we've budgeted, what we're actually spending and where it's being spent. (And since it's not a spreadsheet I made, I can't cheat it <-- very important now that money is tight.)

YNAB looks really useful too, but ironically since I have Money, I can't justify $60 out of the budget for it.

Mint is free and allows everything but manually entering things throughout the day. In my case we use a debit card for most everything so the transactions coming across from the bank nightly. It also will pull from multiple sources (e.g. 401k, investments, etc) which I find handy for an overall picture.

That said if you need to watch things close enough that you are worried about an overdraft fee, paid software would pay for itself pretty quickly if you use it properly for the manual entries.

muraii wrote:

I've been using Dropbox to sync between LAN machines but still have to manually sync with iPhones. It's a relative pain, but given the other pains YNAB obviates, it's okay.

Do you have multiple mobile devices, and if so, do you find synching conflicts are frequent? That's the main worry I have with 4.x.

Whups - this thread isn't in my favorites, so I lost track of it for a bit. To answer the question, I do have multiple mobile devices but I also run two budgets and each device normally syncs to only one budget. That said, I have often switched between budgets on both devices and haven't ever had conflicts. In fact, there was one instance where YNAB hung and threw an error message asking me to restart the app. Once I restarted the app, it showed a message saying there was an issue with Dropbox not responding quickly enough and so it had rolled back to an slightly earlier version. When I launched the app after the crash, it prompted me to relink to the budget and proceeded to redownload the entire budget file.

Garden Ninja wrote:

For actual feature set, I posted a rough list upthread, but let me expand on it a bit:

  • Multiple accounts, with the ability to hide accounts by default. I have a Checking account, a Credit Card that I basically use as a debit card, and savings. I want to hide Savings by default and treat as a money pit. Put money in there and pretend it doesn't exist.
  • I want to be able to enter stuff manually throughout the day, but also load the actual transaction information from my banks. That could be manually importing data from CSV files, or if there is a way to auto sync things, that would be awesome (I use Wells Fargo and Chase, if that makes a difference). I also would like it to spot and resolve conflicts between manual entries and import data. If I enter $X on Y date at Z place, I'd like it to know magically that they are the same transaction, even if it clears a few days after it goes in, or at least give me a way to merge them manually.
  • I want to be able to assign categories to each transaction so that I can see, long term, how much I'm spending on groceries, for example. If I can split a transaction and assign each piece to a category, even better. For example, the other day at the grocery store I got an item that I mentally bucketed into the "Entertainment" budget, rather than groceries, but it was a single transaction.
  • I want different ways to filter and view the data. For example, filter to a certain time frame like, current month, or next 45 days, or just show Groceries.

[list]
[*]YNAB does allow you to setup a rule to automatically transfer funds from one account to another. However, I don't think you can hide an account by default. You can only hide categories within a budget.
[*]You can enter transactions manually, import a CSV file and also reconcile your credit card balance with the statement. These are all separate bits of functionality though and I'm not sure if it will spot duplicates.
[*] You can categorize transactions and split a single transaction into multiple categories - I use it all the time for purchases at the grocery store like you mention.
[*] The reports allow you to go by category and time period.

YNAB has a demo version that isn't gimped and runs for 34 days - download it and try it out for a few days, I think you should be able to tell pretty quickly if it will work for you or not.

The one thing that may sway opinion on YNAB: it's an Adobe AIR app. I've gone through a few hoops to get it working on my Linux machine, and am happy to have done so.