Managing your money successfully includes keeping a close eye on your expenses. One way to do that is to take advantage of free software and services. Free personal finance software can be surprisingly robust, helping you track spending, create and manage budgets, and run reports.
Whether your computer runs on Windows or macOS (or even Linux) or you do all your budgeting on your phone, you’ll find a no-cost selection below for tracking your finances and planning for the future. You can complete your financial toolset with free personal tax preparation software to keep more of your money in your pocket.
Microsoft personal finance software is nothing more than a finance software that provides you the right set of features and tools that help you to manage your funds, loan accounts and even prepaid card records.
MONEY MANAGER EX
Money Manager Ex is a free, open-source, cross-platform, easy-to-use personal finance software. It primarily helps organize one’s finances and keeps track of where, when, and how the money goes. It is also a great tool to get a bird’ eye view of your financial worth.
Money Manager includes all the basic features that 90% of users would want to see in a personal finance application. The design goals are to concentrate on simplicity and user-friendliness – something one can use everyday. Money Manager Ex runs on Windows and Linux and Mac OSX.
Manage income and expense transactions within these accounts
* Create your own categories and organize these transactions to track where your money comes or goes.
* Manage money transfers between accounts
* Mark transactions as reconciled, unreconciled or void to track them against your bank statements
* Manage Payee
QUICKEN DELUXE
With Quicken 2010, Intuit strives to make its flagship money management application easier to navigate and simpler to set up, thanks to spruced-up visuals and a refreshed start-up wizard. Although already a solid balance-keeper and financial assistant in previous versions, Quicken 2010 adds a few new features to visualize your monthly budget and assets.
The Quicken 2010 product family includes Quicken Starter Edition ($29.99) for tracking budgets and upcoming bills; Quicken Deluxe ($59.99), which includes tools to help you save up for a large purchase; Quicken Premier ($89.99), which helps track investments; Quicken Home and Business ($99.99); and Quicken Rental Property Management ($149.99). We evaluated Quicken Deluxe 2010.
Quicken’s core features continue doing what they’ve done for years: chiefly, importing your financial information to help you automatically and manually track your spending and savings. Not just a simple ledger for balancing your bank book, Quicken’s additional tools also help alert you to upcoming bills and to your overall budget.
Apart from the bill reminder and the autocategorization, it’s Quicken’s top layer, and select tools, that see the benefit of Quicken’s design changes. Scratch the surface, however, and many of the app’s second-tier tools–text-heavy calculators, planners, and lists with tiny font–feel as if they haven’t been updated for years. The old-school layout may not bother legacy users or those who aren’t put off by blocks of texts and charts, but others who have come to expect graphic representation of their data and clean design–say, the likes of former competitor Mint.com–may be inclined to shut the window and move on rather than wade through text.
Quicken Deluxe 2010 remains a useful, if not exciting, management app equipped with rich balancing and budgeting tools. As for the future of Quicken, Intuit’s recent acquisition of flashy online finance manager Mint.com could spell the merging of Mint’s online budgeting and reminder features. Mint’s exciting visual style could also draw younger users to future versions of Quicken, assuming Intuit goes that route, making future versions of the classic, but dated, money manager truly fresh.
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 payment, and even payroll. Despite the overall simplicity of using the program, the sheer number of terms and actions may require a dictionary for some people. Fortunately, GnuCash has an excellent tutorial that outlines not only the program, but also financial terminology as well. And novice users will appreciate the wizard that walks you through the setup process.
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
AceMoney offers tools for creating and maintaining budgets, tracking investments, and even online banking. And while it successfully let us do all of the above, we found that it lacked protection for sensitive information.
The program’s interface is very businesslike, and its simple, straightforward design makes the array of options easy to understand and navigate. Large commands at the top of the window let you toggle between seven categories, including accounts, portfolio, banks, payees, and reports. Although the data is presented in an easy to understand spreadsheet format, sample entries are included. A left-hand menu changes depending on which category is selected, and options are clearly labeled. With your portfolio, for example, you can opt to download the latest stock prices, or re-invest dividends. We were able to add banking and credit card information, and schedule bill payments with no problems, and we liked the calendar-style view of money in and out for the month. We also were able to quickly and easily view cash flow and transaction reports. We found a lot to like in AceMoney’s simple approach, but we couldn’t help feeling vulnerable entering data because the program isn’t password protected and doesn’t encrypt your private data.
AceMoney includes an online tutorial if needed, although the program’s Help file should answer most questions. While AceMoney worked fine, we like to have total confidence that our data is secure. We suggest you look for a financial management program that keeps your private data private.
ACEMONEY LITE
AceMoney Lite bills itself as the best Microsoft Money or 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.
The program has an eye-friendly interface that is also fairly intuitive to use. To begin, just open the application, click on the account button for your one account, and provide all of the particulars as prompted. Once your account is set, you can manage your budget and set up categories from a very long list of possibilities, which is helpful for reporting how you are saving or spending money. (You can also name your own category, which seems to work best if you just edit the name of an existing category you don’t plan to ever need instead of trying to figure out how to set a completely new category.) In some cases, you will automatically be taken to Yahoo Finance for information, where the information may or may not automatically repopulate your field in AceMoney Lite. You will need to consult the many Help menus to determine what is automatic and not, and how to make it so in the easiest way possible.
Although AceMoney Lite enjoys all of the features of the nonlite AceMoney, its disadvantage is that it is truly “lite” in that you can only manage one account. But for that one account, AceMoney Lite rivals well known (and often pricey) financial management programs in function and style, and is fairly easy to use, conserves your computer’s resources, and steers well clear of pesky adware. AceMoney Lite is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.
MICROSOFT MONEY SUNSET DELUXE
After discontinuing Microsoft Money Plus, Microsoft made Money Sunset Deluxe available for free. Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe replaces earlier versions of the software, but the only support for this software is online-only self-help. Also, there are no online services with this software: no online bill-pay, no data sync, no online quotes, no statement downloads. So be aware of its limitations and lack of future updates if you choose this option.
Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is only compatible with older versions of Windows.
FRESH FINANCE
Fresh Finance is the straightforward personal finance software for everyone, simple yet powerful. Easily manage your personal finances, such as balancing the checkbook, keeping track of credit cards, bill reminders, budgeting and more. Generate reports to see where your money is going, and make tax time easy. The streamlined user interface has an easy learning curve, and you will be up and running in a matter of minutes.
CONCLUSION
Microsoft Money is personal finance software available for both Windows and the Mac operating system. It allows users to manage their finances effectively and create budgets, arrange bills and keep track of spending. It is a personal finance program that helps you manage all your financial records including the checkbook, the bank account, credit cards, investments, taxes and retirement funds. It can also help you devise a savings plan for big-ticket items such as home improvements and take-it-with-you emergency fund. The program has good data entry tools and budget management features.