Personal financial software is a very handy tool that you can use to control your finances, plan your budget and manage your investments. There are a lot of free options available online, however, the problem is that there are also a lot of options that don’t provide much value. So here are some reviews of the best free personal financial planning software available right now.
Learning about free personal financial planning software can help you to plan your finances effectively. These free financial planning apps are easy to use and provide an effective way of staying on top of your expenses and income while showing you how to manage and control your budget.
If you are like most people, then you are probably wondering right now what the best personal financial planning software is. I’m sure you want to put the maximum amount of capital toward your financial freedom, but you probably don’t want to break your bank or take out a loan doing so. That’s understandable because there are so many contracts and terms associated with debt — especially when it comes to loans. That’s why it is great that there are some free options available for you to use as well as some other great less expensive choices.
Free personal financial planning software is a priceless tool for analyzing your financial situation and creating a plan for how you can save money, make more money, spend smarter, and achieve your financial goals. While most financial planning software is not free to use—or even to try out—there are a number of free options available that may help you reach your financial goals.
What is Financial Planning Software?
Financial planning software helps businesses to take control of their finances. It allows you to monitor your income & expenses, plan budgets, and move towards achieving your financial goals. It helps in curbing unnecessary expenses, allocating funds for the right purpose, and ensuring that your business is making a profit. Businesses, whether small, medium, or large, need accurate financial planning to succeed.
A financial planning software helps in finding answers to the questions like –
What Does a Financial Planning Software Do?
Financial planning software is much more than simply managing money accurately in the business. It evaluates the current financial position to predict future goals, values, and business plans. Also, it monitors and optimizes business processes in an organization and helps in analyzing the key areas that need improvement in terms of cost-cutting and funds allocation. Below are some prominent benefits of deploying the best financial planning software in business –
Benefits of Financial Planning Software
These are the benefits a financial planning software can offer, provided it includes the powerful features and capabilities as mentioned below –
Must-Have Features of a Financial Planning Software
Automation of General Accounting Procedures
The financial planning software you choose should be capable enough to streamline basic financial processes for your business like accounts payable/receivable, cash flow, purchases, general ledgers, payroll, etc.
Supports Global Financial Processes
Every country follows different laws and guidelines pertaining to finance, and so their financial processes differ. The financial planning software you select should support multiple languages, currencies, and country-specific laws and guidelines.
Tracking Income & Expenditure
Financial management software should be able to track and monitor your company’s income and expenditure across different divisions and locations in an accurate manner. It should be able to streamline the entire cash flow management to provide a real-time view of the financial status of your organization.
Strategic Planning
The use of financial planning software that allows you to prepare accurate strategic plans based on market conditions, acquisitions, liabilities, predicted expenses, profit & loss, etc., can positively impact the financial status of your organization and allows it to grow at an exponential level.
Real-Time Custom Reports
The financial planning software you select should have the ability to provide real-time custom reports showing the exact financial position of the organization, which can help in preparing accurate financial plans that prove to be successful.
These are the must-have features of financial planning software, but it is also essential to consider your business requirements before you select your financial planning software. So, here is the list of the best 8 free and open-source financial planning solutions with required details and a comparison chart making your selection process an easy task. You can consider deploying one of these financial planning tools in your business, helping you to meet your financial goals without making huge investments.
Financial Planning Software
#1 Firefly III
Firefly III is a free and open-source financial planning software that helps you in keeping track of your expenses, income, budget, and everything related to your funds. It can even track your incoming and outgoing pertaining to your bank accounts, shared household accounts, and credit cards. It is a wonderful financial planning tool used for organizing money as it works on a basic principle that if you know where your money is going, you can stop it from going there.
(firefly-iii.org)
Key Features
- Works based on double-entry bookkeeping concept
- Allows managing the different types of accounts (savings, current, credit cards, loan, etc.)
- Ability to manage transactions using categories
- Can generate and view income & expenditure reports
- Facilitates 2-factor authentication for security
- Allows easy navigation through records
- Enables a historical view of the transactions of the past month or year
If you have already used Firefly III, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#2 GnuCash
GnuCash is easy to use, powerful, and the best financial planning software that allows you to track your income and expenses, stock, and bank accounts. It is quick and intuitive to use, just like a checkbook register. Based on professional accounting principles, it ensures to deliver of accurate reports and balanced books. As it is freely licensed under the GNU GPL, it can be customized for personal and small-business financial planning needs.
Key Features
- Based on the double-entry accounting system
- Includes check-book style register
- Allows creating recurring transactions
- Provides customizable reports
- Can display graphs for your financial data
- Allows users to compare account transactions with the bank statement
- Supports different currencies
- Can run on different operating systems like Windows, MacOSX, and Linux
If you have already used GnuCash, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#3 Skrooge
Skrooge powered by KDE, allows you to manage your personal finances. It is one of the best tools used for entering, monitoring, and analyzing your expenses. It can work on multiple platforms like Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, and Solaris. It can also support multiple currencies from all over the world. It can save your time spent on data entry, as it is capable of importing data from spreadsheets, and even the bank’s website.
Key Features
- Allows managing the multiple payees
- Includes infinite category levels
- Allows you to import transactions from the bank’s website
- Helps in managing budgets by applying rules
- Allows you to track expected refunds
- Can generate periodic reports showing the financial position of your business
If you have already used Skrooge, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#4 KMyMoney
KMyMoney is an open-source and free financial planning software that ensures to keep your finances in the correct order. It is user-friendly software, and so even a non-technical person can manage their finances seamlessly. It can support different account types and help in differentiating income and expenses based on categories. It allows reconciliation of bank accounts and can import/export the data to the “QIF” file format.
Key Features
- Uses the term account to represent assets and liabilities
- Allows grouping of accounts based on the bank, broker, credit card, etc
- Facilitates adding the list of payees and the users can view the transactions done with each payee
- Allows adding categories and sub-categories for income and expenses
- Can add tags to group several accounts as required
- Helps in tracking investments
If you have already used KMyMoney, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#5 Buddi
Buddi is a free and open-source personal finance and budgeting software just perfect for people with no finance background. It is available in multiple languages, and as it is open source, you can customize it or add some features as per your business requirements. This free financial planning software can run on almost any computer which has Java 1.6 or higher installed. It can work on any operating system, including Windows, Macintosh OS X, Linux, and many others.
(buddi.digitalcave.ca)
Key Features
- Extremely easy to use software
- Can split a single transaction into multiple budgets
- Can generate versatile features
- Allows you to categorize the income and expenditure
- Helps in comparing budget with actual expenses
- Requires Java Runtime Environment to work
If you have already used Buddi, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#6 HomeBank
HomeBank is a free and open-source personal finance software that is easy to use. It can help analyze finance and budget in-depth using powerful filtering tools and appealing charts. It can be translated in around 56 languages and can work in almost all common devices using operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and was ported by 3rd party to MacOSX.
Key Features
- Can import data easily from Intuit Quicken, Microsoft Money, and other software
- Can detect duplicate transactions while importing
- Can import bank account statements in the form of OFX, QFX, QIF, CSV
- Allows automatic cheque numbering
- Can assign category/payee to the transactions
- Can manage different account types like the bank, cash, asset, credit card, and liability
- Can schedule transactions
- Can generate powerful reports with charts
If you have already used HomeBank, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#7 Money Manager Ex
Money Manager Ex is an open-source and free financial planning software. It is a cross-platform and easy-to-use software that can organize finances and keep track of incoming and outgoing finances. Being extremely user-friendly software; it is preferred by many small and medium businesses to manage their financial transactions accurately.
Key Features
- Includes intuitive and quick interface
- Can manage different accounts like savings, credit cards, stock investment, assets, etc.
- Can send reminders relevant to recurring bills and deposits
- Allows budgeting and cash flow forecasting
- Can generate reports with graphs and piecharts
- Can import data from CSV, and “QIF” formats
- Includes non-proprietary SQLite Database with AES Encryption
- Available in 24 different languages
If you have already used Money Manager Ex, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#8 Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a free financial planning software that can help you in having full control over your finances. You get a 360-degree view of your money and get to see all your accounts and investments in one place. It also includes planning and analytical tools which help you in forecasting your business’s financial future and planning your budget, investments, and expenses in advance to ensure the sustainability and growth of your business.
Key Features
- Provides an accurate and exact view of your net-worth
- Helps in organizing your spending and savings
- Allows setting up a monthly spending target
- Helps in monitoring the cash flow
- Allows tracking your retirement savings
- Helps in monitoring and managing investment portfolio
- Stores financial data with high-end security
- Can generate customized reports showing real-time figures
Why Is It Critical to Plan your Finances?
The role of financial planning is highly significant as it helps in tracking the financial performance and planning the investments that affect the future financial position of the organization or an individual. It is almost not possible for anyone to be financially stable and achieve long-term goals without having an accurate financial plan in place.
Conclusion
Free personal financial planning software is the best way to get started on your path of financial freedom. This free software can help you plan your short and long-term goals, organize your bank accounts, track your stock investments and even do taxes online. Free online personal financial planning software is a wise choice if you are putting off filing your taxes for later or need some help with budgeting for the future.
Free Personal Financial Planning Software, is a standalone and online personal finance software that helps you manage your money. It’s designed to be the best and most feature-rich free personal financial planning software available on the market today.