Software which can help you manage personal finances is known as finance software, personal finance software or open source personal finance software. Since ages financial experts have been recommending personal finance software for people who want to take control of their money. You will agree with them when you know why it is so important to manage your own money rather than leaving the job to someone else.
When starting a small business or going to school, you probably want a solution to keep track of your finances. On this website, you can find the best free desktop personal finance software – whether you are looking for Mac personal finance software, PC financial software, open-source personal finance software or mobile banking applications.
Personal finance software is a must for any budget-conscious individual to use. A basic budget or expense tracker is a great way to track income, expenses, and savings. There are a lot of great options out there to choose from when it comes to the best personal finance software packages.
Personal finance is one of the most important aspects in one’s life that need to be looked at with microscopic inspection and has to be managed properly in order to ensure financial stability. To help you take care of your finances, we will let you know of some free personal finance software that are easy to use and easy to incorporate in daily life. We will present a list that lists personal finance software free to download and use. These best free personal finance software will, without a doubt, make your financial life more stable and without complications. This list of free personal finance software is highly researched and reliable.
WHAT IS THE BEST PERSONAL FINANCE APP?
Many personal financial software programs mentioned are either completely free or suitable for those with a low budget.
Of course, the best software for you depends on your needs, but each category has a clear winner:
- All-Purpose: GnuCash is completely free
- Budgeting and Saving: Topia, Mint, and Buddi are entirely free; Albert is a good value for the money
- Investing: E*Trade offers lots of zero-commission trades, and Personal Capital provides free investment management for those with a low portfolio
- Taxes: TaxAct is free or affordable depending on your situation
- Bills: Prism is entirely free
1. Mint
Mint is one of the most popular personal finance free software of 2016. Its UI is an absolute treat to use, along with the loaded features of personal finance management that put it at the front of the personal-finance game. Mint shows you your financial situation in a broader sense; it shows your total net worth along with each and every minute detail of every transaction that you made so you can keep track of personal and professional expenses from a microscopic lens. It allows you to connect to your PayPal so you can monitor your online transactions as well. It uses visual images to illustrate your finances, and we believe it is the best feature of Mint. It is web-based and has apps for all major platforms.
2. Buddi
Buddi helps you perform major financial tasks like budgeting, tracking accounts, creating personal finance reports and some other nifty features. You enter your transactions manually, and let Buddi take the front seat to keep the record safe and secure and record monthly reports. Buddi is available on Windows, Linux and Mac, so you can use it on your different devices. It will become your perfect buddy. Buddi is a free personal finance software that keeps your financial data encrypted and is perfect for small financial tasks that one needs to perform daily. You can add more features by downloading more plugins.
3. AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite is an all-rounder financial software that focuses on investment tracking and allows you to have two financial accounts that can be managed with a single one. It lets you handle all your transactions, manage them, edit them at your will and balance them at the end. You can download these transactions whenever you want and produce monthly reports based on them. It lets you manage your accounts, your banks and payees. It also lets you schedule your payments. The full version of AceMoney has a lot of other options and costs $40.
4. GnuCash
GnuCash is perfect for individuals, homes and small businesses to keep track of their accounts. It is available on Windows, Linux and Mac, along with an Android app. It lets you add accounts, schedule regular payments, and add assets. If you have been using other financial software, you can import your data from them to GnuCash in QIF and dOFX formats. GnuCash is not as simple and requires that you know your way around basic accounting. Once you get familiarized with GnuCash, it will make your financial life a lot simpler by its regular reporting, financial advisory and data analysis to help you make wiser financial decisions.
5. Quicken
| Fees | – Starter package: $35.99/yr. – Deluxe package: $31.19/yr. – Premier package: $46.79/yr. – Home & Business package: $62.39/yr. |
| Best For | – Users looking for a simple software |
Quicken offers multiple financial planning software solutions, depending on what exactly you want to do with your money. The Starter version, for example, lets you view all of your accounts in one place, create a budget, track your spending, manage your bills and categorize your purchases.
The Deluxe package is the next step up. This takes everything the Starter version has and adds in the ability to formulate custom budgets, create and manage specific savings goals and manage and track your debt.
If you want to take an even deeper dive into your finances, the Premier version may be more appropriate. This version lets you do everything the Starter version does, while also adding in some additional features and tools, such as:
- The ability to track loans, investment and retirement accounts in one place
- Access to Morningstar’s® Portfolio X-ray® tool
- Automatic bill pay
- Market comparison and investment tax planning tools
There’s also the Home & Business version, which might be helpful if you need a streamlined way to manage business and personal finances. It’s also far and away the most detail-oriented package of the four that are available through Quicken.
6. WealthTrace
| Fees | – $239 to $319 for first year – $189 to $289 for renewal after first year |
| Best For | – Those looking for more in-depth analysis – Smaller advisory firms that want plenty of support |
WealthTrace is a financial planning program that both individuals and advisors can use. Individual users can choose from three package tiers: Basic, Advanced and Deluxe. The cost of the software ranges from $239 to $319 for the first year, with lower rates for subsequent annual renewals.
What WealthTrace offers in exchange for these prices is the ability to budget your money and set specific savings goals. You can plan for both retirement and college savings, as well as attain some insight into how to minimize your tax liabilities.
Like some of the advisor-focused programs on the market, WealthTrace also allows you to run scenarios on things like market downturns, life insurance needs and retirement income. If questions come up as you use the program, you can connect with a WealthTrace expert by phone, email or live chat to get help.
7. MoneyGuidePro
| Fees | – Monthly rates: $50 to $175 per advisor – Annual rates: $500 to $2,000 per advisor – $400 to $660 per year for various add-ons |
| Best For | – Solo financial planners – Individual RIAs that employ multiple financial planners |
MoneyGuidePro is a client-centered financial planning software used by professional financial advisors. It’s focused on alternatives to the standard methods of retirement planning. One of the features that’s integrated within this software is called Play Zone, which utilizes sliders for retirement age, financial goals and more to illustrate how financially successful a client’s retirement could be.
This software comes in three forms: One, Pro and Elite. One is the most basic version, as it comes with only a risk tolerance assessment tool, financial and lifestyle goals planning, holistic stress testing and more. Pro boasts all of the features of One, as well as a bunch of extras, like risk management, estate planning and net worth statement creation. The Elite edition offers everything above, in addition to secure income modeling, total income modeling, advanced lifetime protection and tax planning.
Envest, which in March 2019 purchased MoneyGuidePro for $500 million and took over its operations, is a large financial services company that focuses on various advisor-centric wealth management platforms.
8. eMoney Advisor
| Fees | – Varies entirely depending on the needs of the advisor or firm |
| Best For | – Firms looking for a complete set of advisory services and programs |
EMoney Advisor offers a hefty suite of financial planning services for advisor firms and large advisory enterprises. The program is based around four distinct packages of services: Plus, Pro, Premier and Growth.
Customers who purchase the Plus tier receive bare-bones access to eMoney’s customer website and mobile app, basic financial planning services and advanced financial analytics. If you need more than that, the Pro version upgrades the foundational financial planning services to an advanced level, in addition to advanced financial analytics.
Premier customers gain access to everything that eMoney has to offer: basic planning, advanced planning and advanced analytics. The fourth tier, Growth, comes with the offerings above, in addition to integration with marketing services to help advisors’ businesses grow. It’s also integrated with a service called Bamboo, which helps advisors improve their online presence and generate stronger client acquisition.
EMoney Advisor can be integrated with other popular advisory services from Morningstar, Salesforce, Fidelity, Envestnet and more.
OVERALL BEST FINANCIAL SOFTWARE
There are a few personal finance programs that cover a couple of areas, but there aren’t many that are suitable for absolutely everything.
If you’re looking for the most sophisticated advice and learning content, then you’d be better off with more specialized software.
Otherwise, an all-purpose program can be very effective.
Quicken
Quicken is one of the most established pieces of personal finance software for a good reason. If you want to be able to handle your investments, taxes, and budgeting in one app, then you can’t get much better than Quicken.
You’ll be able to do everything from calculating your net worth to paying your bills automatically.
This comes for a price. You can choose between a starter ($35.99), quicken deluxe ($51.99), premier ($77.99), and home & business ($103.99).
If all you want to do is track your finances, then the starter pack will suffice, but if you want to perform more sophisticated functions, then it might be worth investing.
Upgrading to deluxe will give you more customization, and premier will provide you with more help with investments, taxes, and savings.
Tips for Choosing Free Personal Finance Software
While choosing a free personal finance software, you should look for the following things:
- Available on maximum platforms. You will be adding transactions and other stuff frequently on the go, so you need a solution that is available on the platforms you use for your desktop and mobile devices.
- Provides all basic personal finance features. It should have all the necessary features and they should work flawlessly.
- Simple. We cannot stress this enough, if your personal finance software is cluttered with features and confusing, you will end up not logging your transactions on it at all.
- Best free personal finance software are always secure, please make sure you choose one that offers encryption.
Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!
What to consider with the best personal finance software
If you’re in need of some organisational clout, especially if you’re running a small business, picking a personal finance software package can help a great deal. Depending on your needs you’ll find that the best personal finance packages allow you to keep on top of things like receipt logging and managing expenses, all from within one program.
The other bonus is that most of the personal finance software packages allow you to share your data with your preferred tax and accounting software. That means you’ll be much better placed when it comes to tax filing time. There are personal finance packages tailored to both online and offline needs, with many having apps that let you track spending day to day. Cloud-based personal finance packages let you keep all of your data in a safe place too, so all bases are covered.
Personal finance features to look for
Desktop or mobile?
Have a think about where and how you’ll use your personal finance package. Most of us tend to spend money on the go, so having a software package that allows you to log and track outgoings means a mobile and app-based solution makes a lot of sense. Most packages offer both desktop and mobile solutions however.
Reporting capability
While personal finance package are great at helping you manage money and track spending, they’re also vital for producing reports. This data can subsequently be used for tasks such as filing your taxes or for sharing with an accounts person who does the job for you.
Easy integration
You’ll want to check that any personal finance software you’re considering will ideally work in tandem with other packages. This is crucial when it comes to logging items like expenses. Check your package can be used to move figures from one place to another for much more efficient tax filing purposes.
Help and support
As is the case with any software package, it’s always good to check there will be help at hand should you need it. Some personal finance packages come with free support, while others have it as part of a paid-for plan. How much help you will need depends on your confidence with the software.