Many people who are new to personal finance software don’t know where to start. Luckily it is easy and there are plenty of great options. The best free personal finance software will help you gain control of your spending and keep track of important financial milestones in your life.
Personal finance management tools are the foundations for a prosperous financial situation. These powerful programs can be used in addition to your current accounting or personal finance software solutions. Having an offline plan is an effective way to remain organized and improve your wealth management abilities. Personal finance software runs on the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux platforms, and most options available to users today offer critical capabilities that are fundamental for individual wealth management needs.
Free personal finance software is a variety of personal financial management (PFM) software available without charge. The best free personal finance software can help you keep your spending and budget on track, monitor cash flow and net worth, and perform other useful tasks. This article describes several alternatives that are suitable for all levels of users.
Best personal finance software is the top-rated, highest quality, and easiest to use software for keeping track of your personal finances. As times get more hectic in the 21st century and people find themselves working on multiple projects at once, maintaining their household finances can become quite a task. Even though there are many free financial software applications that do exactly what you want them to do and more, you may feel overwhelmed by all these options out there. So how do you choose the Best Free Personal Finance Software, especially in tough economic times that require all the smarts we can muster?
Spending tracker apps
Expense tracking apps are all the rage at the moment, with people downloading them by the tens of thousands. Each of these apps offer various levels of functionality, either syncing with your bank accounts or requiring a slightly more manual approach, but their end goal is the same: to give you a categorical breakdown of your monthly spending so you can decide how and where to make cutbacks.
Mint
Mint is a free online budget planner from Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Quickbooks. This app brings all of your financial data together, showing you an overview of your budget, spending, bills, and credit score. You can create your own budget, set goals and reminders, and sync your data between web and apps. Security is enhanced by encryption and multi-factor authentication. You can also use Mint to track your investments and portfolio.
Access Mint via the web or phone apps for iOS and Android.
GnuCash
GnuCash is desktop software; its features include tracking bank accounts, stocks, income, and expenses. GnuCash is based on double-entry accounting for balanced books and you can run a number of reports to see your financial data. GnuCash also offers small-business accounting tools that let you manage customers and vendors, handle invoicing and bill payments, and even payroll.
GnuCash is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, BSD, and Solaris. There is a companion app for Android that will let you track expenses on the go and later import them into the desktop software.
AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite bills itself as the best Quicken alternative. You can manage your budgets, track your finances in multiple currencies, keep an eye on your investments and analyze your spending habits. You can also do online banking. As this is the lite version, you’re limited to two accounts; the full version supports unlimited accounts.
AceMoney Lite is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital offers free financial software for tracking investments and planning for retirement, in addition to its tools for cash flow, spending, budgeting and net worth. Personal Capital’s focus is on investments, showing you the performance of your portfolio over time and helping you make decisions for the future, so its budgeting components aren’t as robust as other software.
If you’re not an investor or prefer fine-tuning your budget to get a broad view, Personal Capital may not be the best fit. However, if you want to save for college or retirement, its free tools will show you whether you’re on track.
Personal Capital can be accessed via the web or apps for Android and iOS.
Buddi
Buddi is an open-source budget software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems and has been translated into multiple languages. Buddi can encrypt financial data with a password, and it’s designed to be easy to use even if you have no financial background.
Features include budgeting, tracking accounts, and personal finance reports, but you will have to enter transactions manually. Free plugins add more features, and the online user manual is easy to read and use.
Buddi is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Free Budget Spreadsheets
If you don’t need fully featured personal financial software and you’re just concerned about keeping a budget, there are some great free budget spreadsheet templates you can use with Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc or Google Sheets. Just download and open them in your spreadsheet software to get a handle on your cash flow.
Raiz
Availability: iOS and Google Play.
Formerly known as ‘Acorns Australia’, Raiz is a micro-investing app that allows users to invest in a portfolio of ETFs (exchange-traded funds) through spare change ’roundups’, recurring investments, rewards and lump sum deposits.
Although it’s primarily an investment app, it also has features that are helpful for saving. Not only can you utilise the micro-investing or recurring deposit features as a tool to save via investments, but it also has a free ‘My Finance’ feature within the app that provides personalised insights into your spending. This feature can categorise your spending into things like food or utilities and breaks it down on a month-to-month basis.
The investment platform of Raiz might come with fees ($2.50/month for accounts under $10,000 and 0.275% per year for accounts $10,000 or more) but it costs nothing to simply use the savings feature.
With more than a million downloads across all of Australia, Raiz is one of the more popular budgeting and savings apps out there.
Key features of Raiz:
- Roundup technology, allowing you to either save or invest every time you spend through your linked transaction account/s.
- Lump-sum and recurring investment options, easily allowing you to invest more money at the touch of a button
- Your money can be invested in one of six diversified ETF (exchange-traded fund) portfolios.
- Cashback options are available after spending money with linked brands
- Personalised insights into your spending, including categorisation
- Savings tips sent via push notification, based on machine learning that can also predict your future spending
- A chatbot is available for you to ask questions like “how much did I save last month?”
- Bank-level security to protect your information and money
Pocketbook
Availability: iOS and Google Play.
Pocketbook syncs with your bank account (as long as you give it permission to do so), listing every spend you make and sorting it into categories. The sort function isn’t perfect and you might end up with a few ‘unclassified’ spends, but you can easily go into the app and allocate these purchases to categories yourself, and it will then allocate every similar transaction accordingly.
With your daily spending sorted into categories, you can easily see where most of your money goes, and what you might need to cut back on. With over 350,000 downloads and a 4.3 rating from the Apple App Store, this app has proven extremely popular with Aussie savers.
Key features of Pocketbook:
- Sync to Australian bank accounts
- Automatic categorization for more than 80% of all transactions
- An easy to use interface with weekly, monthly and six-monthly overviews
- Views of your recent transactions, incomes and upcoming bills
- The ability to set safety spending limits
- Push notifications for when you spend too much or get too close to your limits
- Bank-level security and encryption
Source: getpocketbook.
MoneyBrilliant
Availability: iOS and Google Play.
MoneyBrilliant is a very similar app to Pocketbook – it connects to more than 200 financial institutions in Australia and syncs your spending to categories. What it also offers that Pocketbook doesn’t is that it syncs ALL your money, including superannuation and investment portfolios. MoneyBrilliant also has a tax deductions function, finding potentially tax-deductible expenses based on your occupation.
Unlike Pocketbook, however, MoneyBrilliant is not free – it costs $9.90 per month after a 30-day trial period. But this hasn’t stopped it being downloaded more than 50,000 times from Google Play and earning a 4.5-star rating on the Apple App Store from more than 3,000 reviews.
Key features of MoneyBrilliant:
- Sync to Australian bank accounts – including superannuation and investments
- Automatic categorization for transactions
- Automatically finding the cheapest gas and electricity deals based on your usage data
- Set savings goals, budgets and track progress
- Track tax-deductible expenses
- Push notifications and personal insights
- Bank-level security and encryption
Source: MoneyBrilliant.
Frollo
Availability: iOS and Google Play.
Frollo is also very similar to MoneyBrilliant and Pocketbook, yet is newer and not quite as popular: estimated downloads are at 1,000+ according to Google Play but there are no official figures. Frollo offers free and secure synchronization with your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, superannuation and investments into an aesthetically pleasing interface that allows you to monitor your spending. Frollo also lets you take daily, weekly and monthly challenges to try and save money.
In April 2019, Frollo also released the ‘Frollo Score” feature, which gives users a score from 1 to 1,000 that tells them how they’re doing financially, based on their spending habits, debts and how much they save.
Key features of Frollo:
- Sync from Australian bank accounts – including superannuation and investments
- Automatic categorization for transactions
- Set savings goals and challenges
- Push notifications and personal insights
- Bank-level security and encryption
- Track tax-deductible expenses
- Push notifications and personal insights
- Bank-level security and encryption
While the spending tracker apps go into the fine details of every cent you spend, these budgeting apps can give you a broader overview of your financial health.
Goodbudget
Availability: iOS and Google Play.
An American app that’s also available down under, Goodbudget labels itself as a ‘budget tracker for the modern age’, yet it uses the old-fashioned ‘envelope’; method of saving: you set yourself limits for certain categories of spending and it limits you to only spending what you have.
For example, you can set monthly limits for groceries, coffee, shopping etc. To help make budgeting a bit sexier, Goodbudget presents all of your spendings in cool-looking pie charts, and of course, it links to your bank accounts.
Globally this app has more than one million downloads and has a 4.4-star rating from more than 18,000 user ratings. It is a paid app but the free version still lets you use up to 10 ‘envelopes’.
Key features of Goodbudget:
- Sync to bank accounts & expense tracking
- Export data to Microsoft Excel
- View your spending by category – a proven method
- Reports, such as an income vs spending report
- Schedule transactions and automatic envelope fills
Bonus app: Get Reminded
Availability: iOS and Google Play
GetReminded is a new free-to-use mobile app that claims it can help households save thousands per year by reminding them when household contracts and bills are set to expire (such as utility bills, car insurance and registration, subscriptions etc.) and reminding them to compare new ones. As GetReminded co-founder David Wareing told Savings.com.au, it can also show you a cheaper policy.
“They’re [the suggestions] obligation-free, but they’re really just there to help consumers to commence the shopping around process and not leave everything into the last minute,” he said.
GetReminded is a new app, only launching in 2020, but has already attracted more than 60,000 downloads and an average rating of 4.4 on the App store.
Key features of GetReminded
- Set reminders in multiple categories across all household costs (insurance, health, personal expenses etc.)
- Annual cost summaries for household contracts
- Simple, easy to use interface
- Free to use
- Multiple automated reminders ahead of time and when you need them
- Can recommend cheaper policies
Conclusion
When it comes to personal finance software, there are many options available. Free personal finance software is a great option for people who need to track their money and don’t have a lot of funds to spend on finance apps, but it can be difficult to find the best free personal finance software for your needs.
Personal finance software is an essential tool for anyone who wants to get their finances under control. With a good personal finance program, you can track your spending and saving, make budgets and stick to them, set short- and long-term goals and achieve them, easily create retirement plans and keep up with your investments.