Do You Use Any Online Household Budget Management Software?
If so, which one do you use?
We’re kind of money nerds, and when we move to a new place, we like to closely monitor our spending for a month or two. We want to see where our money’s actually going.
A few years ago, we would have used Microsoft Money for this task. I was pretty happy with that product. However, we’re on Macs now, and we’d prefer a solution that isn’t tied to one computer.
So, we’re hoping for a nice lightweight, modern solution. I’ve done a bunch of searching, and many of the options feel very old and busted, or offer way, way too much functionality for what we need.
The closest we’ve gotten is OurCashFlow, but that still seems like overkill. For example, they want us to import our banking data into their system. For one, that’s scary, and for another, I don’t really need them to know about our accounts. I basically just want to track outgoing expenses.
Any bright ideas? Otherwise, I guess we’re going to go with a good old Googles Docs and Spreadsheets, uh, spreadsheet.
May 15th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Used this ages ago http://www.gnucash.org/ runs on Macs which should suit you. Some assembly may be required.
May 15th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Hey Darran,
Probably way OTT for home usage but I’ve been toying with lessaccounting.com recently.
Maybe I missed a post, but have you moved to Malta permanently & why? Your country hopping is great! Do you run the business remotely each time?
-Robin (TechCamp & BarCamp Dublin!)
May 15th, 2007 at 5:35 am
Thanks for the suggestions!
Robin: We’re spending six months in Malta, and indeed running the business remotely from here. So far so good in that regard.
May 15th, 2007 at 7:30 am
I quite like Wesabe (http://www.wesabe.com), though I should really use it more often.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Why not use the spreadsheets on Google? Just code each line for each expense with a letter corresponding to a spending category, or revenue category, and then either do a value look up on another page, or sort on category.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Dale: Yeah, that’s the alternative. However, there’s probably some basic additional functionality that I wouldn’t mind. For example, I love me a chart. I can generate those in Excel, obviously, but a vendor is probably going to think of some useful charts that I wouldn’t consider.
Additionally, a vendor will hopefully have prepopulated all those categories, which I’d certainly appreciate.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I use mvelopes http://www.mvelopes.com/ and I like it. It also uses the importing bank information methodology, which for me I love because I am lazy and if a system requires me to manually enter all my transactions or manually import OFX files, I know I’ll end up not doing it after a while.
With Mvelopes it downloads everything for me so all I need to do is categorize it and manually enter cash items.
One (possible) downside is its a completely Flash interface, but it works fine on my Powerbook.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Yeah, normally the banking wouldn’t be such a big deal, but we’re finding Malta a largely cash-based society. So, there’s little benefit for the trouble and risk of doing a banking import.
May 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Anyone wonder why banks haven’t just built this into their online account management software? I mean how hard do they suck that they can’t address the key issue their customers are concerned with — managing their money flows?
June 18th, 2007 at 4:37 am
[…] while back I wrote about my ongoing search for the appropriate household budget management software: So, we’re hoping for a nice […]
June 19th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I’ve tried a few things, but nothing beats the Google spreadsheet I set up for us. I’ve got it customized with just as much info as I need, and no more. I hate the import function on prefab software. While it has all the right values, I still have to manually configure it to sort into the appropriate categories, and I haven’t seen a program yet that effectively automates the process (why can’t I set up a rule that expenses with a certain dollar amount or with a certain vendor are automatically named and categorized? I hate having to edit each instance of a recurring payment!)
Anyway, I’m still unimpressed with the offerings out there. They overcomplicate a simple process.
And as James says, it’s ridiculous that banks don’t have an integrated system built into their websites for this.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:51 am
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July 7th, 2007 at 1:05 am
I’m currently using Mvelopes, which I like in theory, but the service has only actually worked with my bank for a total of maybe 3 weeks out of the 3 months I’ve been using it. Their tech people are supposed to be working on it, but right now, it does not download any transcations from my bank (although I checked in advance and my bank was on their supported banks list). They suggested I change banks (not an easy thing to do when you have all of your accounts set up already). They don’t know when they will be able to fix the problem. Anyway, I doubt I’d recommend the service unless you know someone else who has been able to use it with your bank. What about Yodlee? Does it do the same thing? I’m looking for something similar to Mvelopes - a web based system I can access from my Mac at home or PC at work and check on all my accounts at one time. I don’t have time to download transcations from all of my accounts so I need something that will talk to my bank & credit card companies to get all of the transactions. Has anyone tried Yodlee?
August 13th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Yodlee is great for a lot of things, but not for budgeting. That’s what I’m specifically looking for now. Mvelopes is too convoluted for me and Wesabe doesn’t really have any budget planning tools. I’m hoping to try Mint but haven’t seen it yet. Any other online budget tools that automatically download transaction data?
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:21 am
Mint is strictly a U.S. company now - I looked for BMO and couldn’t find it - just a thought.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:36 am
My search for online budgeting brought me here. And I’m sorry to say my experience with Mvelopes wasn’t too hot. Even though my bank was listed, I never could get the download. This was after several hours of conferring with my bank and Mvelopes online customer service. They don’t have anyone on phones which turned out to be extremely inefficient for this problem. I’m still searching…