Money manager software for household finances

[Suziloo]

Does anyone know of a good system for managing household finances? I'm thinking of a software package that links to your on-line bank account so you can easily analyse what you're spending money on each month. Ideally I'd like it to be provided as a service from my bank, so that I can link it to my current account and credit card statement, but my current bank doesn't offer one. Any ideas?

I've been looking for many years for a package to replace Microsoft Money (Sunset Edition) - a free download which works well enough but which is no longer supported by MS. And I haven't found anything British.... there are a few American products.... that I think does the same job as well. It doesn't link to my bank account, exactly. I can set up DDs, SOs and other regular transactions to be entered automatically but day-to-day deposits, withdrawals and credit card transactions are entered manually by me. Share prices I can link to and they update themselves automatically. Having said all that, once set up, I find it takes me only 5-10 minutes a day to take out my receipts and update the accounts. Once a month I balance all the accounts against the statements.

I've saved £££s over the years using it in conjunction with online banking. Things like avoiding those annoying little accidental overdaft charges because I'd 'forgotten' about a cheque that hadn't been cashed yet or moving the money around so it makes more money for me.

watching with interest

I still use MSMoney, have used various versions for some years, including for small business accounts. It does not seem to matter if you install it on several machines from the same disk. It downloads statements to reconcile from banks and credit cards, also picks up prices for shares and some other investments, holds a plan of regular payments and receipts, will produce valuation, worth, and transaction reports and analyse income and expenditure per whatever categories you like. If you have a lot or planned payments or receipts it runs slowly.

MS have not issued a new UK version for several years and appear to have lost interest. The do or did carry in updating or selling it in the US.

I've often thought that there's a massive business opportunity for someone that comes up with British-oriented personal finance software. It's a seriously big gap in the market.

Can't you just download a CSV file from your online banking account and run a pivot table to evaluate expenditure.

I use excel to record all of my expenditure and then using the download of my online banking reconcile the two so I don't miss anything.

you can do it in excel, but MSM and similar really are a hundred times better.

We've just downloaded YNAB - you need a budget. It takes a while to get your head around as it's about forward planning and budgeting (rather than looking at historical statements) but once you start using it, it is excellent.

The YNAB website talks about 'dollars' and 'checking accounts' etc. Does it adapt OK to sterling and can you set it up to access British bank accounts and things like share prices?

I've used YNAB for about 18 months now and think it's fantastic :)

You can change it to £ but I think you're stuck with 'check' but the only place you see it is at the top of the cheque number column for the current account (and you can turn that column off if you want!)

It doesn't do the automatic linking to share accounts and investments that MS money did, but to be honest Money had stopped doing that for me anyway! I'm not sure if it's possible to upload bank statements or not, I just set up all regular payments and authorise them as we go through the month.

I used Money for about 8 years before I switched to YNAB and much prefer the new way of doing things. With Money I was very good at recording how much I'd spent, but it was always after the event (sometimes months after ). With YNAB it's much more budget focussed, so you know exactly how much is left in each budget category - this seems to influence what I spend in a very positive way :)

you could try clearbooks, which is an online bookeeping service
i use for my husbnad business, but i think you vcould adapt it very easliy for personal use. its about a fiver a month

For those of us that still use MS Money or are thinking of buying it off eBay etc, please be aware that a patch is needed to get it to work properly. I panic bought another copy when PC went banans and then found I couldn't reinstall it as MS had also pulled plug on the online patch. Cue much annoyance. I managed to acquire Money 05 again with the patch kindly built in from a tech minded acquaintance. It's now reloaded on new PC with no problems.

Cogito - I don't thiink it does automatic uploads but you CAN manually import your bank statements if you can get them electronically is .csv format or suchlike.