The best personal accounting software is designed to make it easy for you to track your finances. Free personal budget software does much the same thing. You can get started by reading this article, which will explain everything you need to know about free personal accounting software
Do you have good personal accounting software to keep track of your money? Most people don’t. For one reason or another, creating a good budget and sticking with it is much easier said than done. The problem is that tracking all of your purchases and income can be very time-consuming. On top of this, most people just don’t have the organization skills required to properly categorize and organize their receipts and bills.
You are looking for free personal accounting software to keep track of your money and the best free personal budget software. In this article, we will cover all the most important features (such as bill reminders) of top personal accounting software and free personal budget software.
Your accounting software is like your accountant’s brain — it should know what to do and spit out the right numbers. Choosing the best software for you requires research, especially if it is your first time using accounting software. So, how do you choose a good piece of personal accounting software? The tips below provide some recommendations to help you decide more easily.
What is the best way to track personal finances?
Apps and budgeting software make it easy to categorize your spending so you can see when and where your money is going—at a glance. Knowing these patterns is the first step toward changing your behavior to start saving more.
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. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Quicken
Having been around for several decades, Quicken is one of the most established personal finance software on the market. You can use the software to manage various aspects of your financial life from budget creation to debt tracking, savings goals, and even investment coaching. The software features Excel exporting, which allows you to manipulate and perform additional calculations on your data. One of the more advanced features includes bill paying, which allows you to set up payments for your bills right from the software. You can even use it to track the value of your assets to have an accurate calculation of your total net worth. The app is robust enough to manage both your personal and business expenses and even handles property management functions like rental payments from tenants. Quicken offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The software starts at $35.99 per year and is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
9. YNAB
You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is a personal finance software that’s aimed to help you improve your financial literacy as you manage your monthly budget. As you create your budget and manage your daily finances, the software provides you with tutorials that will help you tackle some of the tougher financial topics. If you’ve been struggling with bad financial habits, YNAB can help you break those through a few basic financial management rules.
The software automatically links to your bank account, integrating your spending information for analysis and budget tracking. You can keep tabs on how you’re tracking toward your monthly budget and take action if you’re overspending. It doesn’t include any investment tracking capabilities. YNAB offers a 34-day free trial that allows you to use the software while you decide whether it’s right for your personal finance goals. The full software is $14.99 monthly or $98.99 annually.
10. Mvelopes
The traditional envelope budgeting system helps you stick to a budget by using envelopes to manage your money. Once you’ve broken down your budget, you put that amount of cash into different envelopes. So, if you budget $100 for gas for the week, you place that amount in a “gas” envelope. Once you’ve spent that $100, that’s it. Mvelopes take this same approach to the budget, except that it’s done digitally on your phone and computer rather than with physical cash.
Choose the financial goals that are most important to you, then add your bank accounts and set your income. Mvelopes will help you create a budget and set up your “envelopes.” The software tracks your spending and shows you what you’ve spent from each envelope to keep you on budget throughout the month.
The basic version starts at $5.97 per month, and you can try Mvelopes for 30 days for, free when you enroll in the premier plan at $9.97 per month.
11. TurboTax
You may not necessarily need TurboTax to manage your finances throughout the entire year, but when it’s tax time, the software can come in handy. While it’s one of the pricier tax preparation tools, it’s also consumer-friendly, walking you through your tax preparation to help you accurately file your tax return. Entering your tax information is fairly simple—you can import your W-2 information from your employer or take a picture of it and the software will transfer the information into the form.
If you’ve used TurboTax in previous years, the software will remember your personal information and ask whether there have been any major changes. The most basic version lets you file your federal and state return for free if all you use is form 1040 with no attached schedules.
On the higher end, TurboTax Live connects you with a tax expert to give you personalized advice and answer questions about your tax return. Paid versions of TurboTax include a feature to help you uncover deductions you may not have known were available to you. While you can use TurboTax on the web, you can also download the software to your device for added security.
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.
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.
Conclusion
Despite being an industry that is buzzing with activity, there are numerous myths and misconceptions that surround free financial software. In some of these myths, it is assumed that financial software for free is inherently inadequate or inferior as compared to paid versions of the same.
Among the most widely used tools for personal investment, finance tools evolve as dynamic tools that help manage day-to-day financial transactions. Many people confuse budgeting and accounting with personal finance due to its similarities. In fact, personal finance is a broader term that includes features like budgeting and accounting but also includes insurance, investment management, savings and other assets in the area of money. The presence of loans, real estate and stocks make personal finance an imperative part of a modern lifestyle.