Personal finance software is an integral part of your business. If you want to save money, first you need to know what you currently spend and earn. Personal finance software can help you achieve this goal and much more. Here are our recommendations for the best open source personal finance software with a description of each product.
Personal finance software is a great way to track your spending and plan for the future. But some of these programs are expensive and have many features that you may never use. If you’re looking for an alternative, consider free open source personal finance software. It’s free to use, reliable and easy to download.
Learn about the top and best open source personal finance software. Here, you will understand why open source budget software is a secure, confidential and powerful choice for people who are worried about their financial security and privacy.
The best personal finance software is free and open-source; it’s called Quicken. You might be scratching your head over how something so powerful is available for free, and open source? You’re not alone; most people just can’t believe that such a great application is available for free. In this post, we’ll take an in-depth look at what it means for the application to be both free and open source.
Free Open Source Personal Finance
1- Firefly
Firefly is an open-source self-hosted personal finance manager, It has advanced accounting and reporting features, such as double-entry accounting, advanced charts and visualization, bank management, assets accounts, and transaction monitoring and follow-up. There are more features, all are presented in a simple user interface, which makes it easy to use, and learn. It has import/ export options allowing the user to import records from multiple sources and export to many formats.
Firefly was built using PHP and MySQL but it offers SQLite as MySQL alternative, it has extensive documentation of how to install, use and manage records. It’s developer-friendly as it has a powerful API with rich documentation.
- Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
2- KMyMoney
KMyMoney is a feature-rich open-source, free personal accounting manager, Though, it was released and created for Linux (KDE), it works well in different Linux desktop environments and has installation packages for Windows and Mac OSX.
KMyMoney supports double-entry accounting, transaction scheduling, logging, reporting, multiple accounts and ledgers, and budgets management. It comes with a simple easy-to-use interface designed to provide a rich experience for non-technical users.
- Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
3- GnuCash
We have covered GnuCash, in our article ( 20 .. ), It fits the category for personal finance management software as it was designed for small companies and for personal use.
GnuCash supports many features as in commercial paid software, as double-entry accounting, multiple accounts management, Scheduled Transactions, advanced reports and visualization, Statement Reconciliation, Multiple Currencies, QIF, and OFX Import which allow easy migration for many commercial accounting software.
GnuCash has multiple database supports as SQLite3, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
- Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
4- Skrooge
Skrooge is an advanced accounting manager, I have been using it for quite some time, It supports accounts migrations from many accounting software including open source and commercial ones as ( KMYMONEY, Microsoft Money, GNUCASH, GRISBI, HOMEBANK and MONEY MANAGER EX ), It supports multiple accounts, advanced reporting, multiple currency and languages, and easy operations management with scheduling features.
Skrooge may be based built on KDE foundations, for KDE/ Linux desktops but it works great on other operating systems like Mac OSX and Windows. It was released as an open-source under GPL V3 license.
- Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
5- Money Manager Ex
Money Manager Ex is an open-source/ free (Libre) accounting manager for small companies and personal finance, Its features may look very similar to the software we added on this list, but It comes with more advanced options regarding mobile support and portability. So, before we dive into its features which make it the most powerful accounting manager on here let’s talk about its portable features and multi-platform support.
MoneyManager Ex supports Android systems, and its application gets more than 100.000 downloads and many positive reviews, It has 2 Windows versions for 32BIT and 64BIT and portable editions for both. It has Linux and Mac OSX installable packages. All of this comes with lightweight installable files.
Features of MoneyManager Ex include multiple bank account management, stock management, multiple assets accounts management, QIF/CSV/XML import, bills reminders for recurring bills and deposits, financial calculations, budgeting, and cash flow forecasting, currency exchange rates history, and advanced reporting powered with customizable charts. It supports multiple languages as (24 languages) and has a user-friendly interface.
MoneyManager Ex was released under GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2).
Platforms: Linux, Windows (with portable editions), macOS, and Androi
6- HomeBank
HomeBank is a free user-friendly accounting manager for personal use and small companies, It works on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It has a multilingual user interface as it has been translated to more than 50 languages.
Accounting features
Importing data from Intuit Quicken, Microsoft Money or other software, Import bank account statements (OFX/QFX, QIF, CSV), automating operations as payments, transactions and reporting, support multiple account types ( bank asset, credit, cash, liability), scheduled transaction, simple Month/Annual budget, dynamic automated reporting powered with charts and graphs.
- Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
7- Grisbi
Grisbi is a free, open-source personal accounting and finance manager, It supports multiple currencies, has a user-friendly interface, and supports budget management, with advanced reporting.
Platforms: Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
8. GnuCash
First up, let’s take a look at GnuCash. GnuCash is a reasonably full-featured accounting application that is suitable for both personal use and managing a small business. First released in 1998, GnuCash is a stable option packaged for most major Linux distributions with Windows and Mac ports available. It features multi-entry bookkeeping, can import from a wide range of formats, handles multiple currencies, helps create budgets, prints checks creates custom reports in Scheme, and can import from online banks and pull stock quotes directly. While not the kitchen sink, it can handle most financial needs readily out of the box.
One reason I particularly like GnuCash as an option is the availability of a mobile application that complements, rather than emulates, its desktop companion. The mobile app makes it easy for you to track expenses on the go and import them into the desktop version for more detailed management (although, unfortunately, it does not provide direct syncing).
GnuCash hosts a public mirror of its source code, which is primarily written in C, on GitHub. Given its long and complex history, portions of the code are made available under a number of mutually compatible licenses, primarily the GPL, but the code repository has the full details.
9. Spreadsheets
While all five of these options are well-supported and regularly updated, my final pitch is to not even use a personal finance tool at all, but instead to use spreadsheets to manage your financial data. Yes, there’s a lot to be said for having a dedicated budgeting tool. There’s less reinventing of the wheel involved, and you don’t have to worry as much about messing up complex formulas. You also have the peace of mind of knowing that there are others out there who have exactly the same setup and can help you out when you get stuck. And you also need to be careful to not store personally identifiable information like account numbers in plain text, particularly if you store or back up your data to a shared location.
But the vanilla spreadsheet isn’t a terrible tool either. In terms of the ease of customization, it can’t be beaten. Custom charts and graphs are easy to generate, and you can track additional data alongside your accounts to get a clearer picture of your spending. Open source tools like LibreOffice Calc or Gnumetric offer great functionality and expandability to track your finances your way.
Personally, I use a mix of tools. I use a personal finance tool to store the raw data and for getting an idea of what my accounts look like at a glance. But for more complex operations, I turn to a trusty spreadsheet to drill down to exactly what I want to know, particularly when I want to pair the data with other personal information I collect. For example, I have a device in my car that tracks trips via GPS; by pulling out gasoline purchases, I can pair this information to see my exact cost per mile for every trip. Or I can pair restaurant spending with the personal health metrics I collect to see the correlation between how often I eat out and how my weight fluctuates.
10. Akaunting
Akaunting is free and online accounting software that really has a modern and fluid design. If someone won’t want to install it on their systems, they can also use the pre-hosted cloud Akaunting application available on the official website.
This open-source accounting software for managing finances is designed for personal to small business usage.
It is a web application that after downloading needs to be placed in a web server locally or remotely. Akaunting developed using modern technologies such as Laravel, Bootstrap, jQuery, Swift Mailer, API etc.
The user can generate invoices, accept online payments and keep track of expenses.
Akaunting online open source accounting software
Furthermore, other features of it are online accounting thus supports a wide range of devices; customer management; Creating and managing bills; multi-currency support; inventory tracking and managing goods; financial reports; multilingual; Configure permissions on a Role level; Discount; Automatically creating invoices, revenues, bills, and payments; Create unlimited bank and cash accounts; easy invoice; app store to extend Akaunting capabilities and more.
11. 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.
12. Personal Capital
Personal Capital offers a way to track your investments alongside your other accounts within a single money dashboard.
Just as with budgeting software, you can connect each financial institution you have an account with and view everything in one place. Personal Capital helps you analyze your money, track your investment portfolio, monitor your net worth and also track your credit score.
Unlike most budgeting software, the options for monitoring your investment accounts are more specialized. You can track whether you’re in line with investment goals such as retirement, check how well your portfolio is performing, and find out if you’re paying unnecessary fees.
If you have an extensive portfolio (worth $100,000 or more), you can pay a fee to receive personalized advice from financial experts. The core software is completely free.
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
Conclusion
Open source budget software allows you to manage your personal finances on your own terms. There are numerous open-source personal finance software applications that are worth using, and you can make them even better by creating your own plugins and extensions.
Free open-source personal finance software is a great option for those who want to keep their finances private and want more control over their financial data. These free personal budget software options are top of the line and offer more features than you might expect.