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Software for personal finance
Today a lot of people become interesting in personal finance. Of cause first of all they study from a various books. After that people would like to try on practice – completing budgets, managing assets and creating own system for personal finance management.
In most cases first instruments for that exercise of cause pen and paper. After some period of time it is become obvious that people would like to use some sort of software. At the beginning, a lot of people chose simple Excel spreadsheets.
During some period of time and systematic improvements that tables could convince the user and there are a number of advantages of such methods:
- it is relatively cheap, because you already buy excel for any other business purposes
- you don not need time to study new program, if you already familiar with excel, but any other specific software has a lot of specific items which need to be discovered by user
- you can start from simplest list of transactions and improve it any time, so will create something most suitable for you, what you really understand
Of cause, all listed above advantages of self-made excel spreadsheet could work but the question is – whether this structure will be optimal! Why do not try what was done by professionals?
Let’s start analysis of the existing market for personal finance software!
First of all let us propose to form some criteria which will be required in order to boots people start using computer software instead of using pen and paper.
First requirement - the system should maximum automatically utilize existing accounting data, such us latest bank statement.
Second requirement – data protection and security, because in this case we will keep all our personal data in the computer and smartphone, which could be stolen, hacked and so on, by people who is very interesting to see your personal financial data.
Third requirement – the program should be easy in use, because we will input here a lot of data on a permanent basis, therefore any additional click or information will slowdown the process and finally make us angry and tired.
Finally – any program should be useful and created in such way, when user could focus on most important information in order to understand the result in order to analyze and improve their financial position.
Taken into account all above mentioned requirements we can start our analysis. Today we have basically two types of personal finance software which is online and offline. This differentiation is extremely important. We will consider all above mentioned requirements for both type of software.
Online software – what it is?
This is website, whether you can create you personal page and set up your personal finance information, such as bank accounts, to one place, within the website, Then, you can apply some rules for automatic recognition of your information, use proposed list of accounts and type of expenses and automatically produce any type of reports.
This tools are absolutely free, so you only need to be register with Company website.
Additional important feature is that you will have access to your personal data from any equipment which connected to the Internet, without need to install special program on particular devise.
One of the best provider of such web software of cause is mint.com
But, this tools has serious weakness – you need to disclose your personal information to no financial companies. It is different – to use internet banking with your bank – and provide information to web company. Of cause companies strongly declared about high level of security for such programs, usage of separate servers, qualified staff but still you can information in the Interned about some problems with unauthorized disclosure of such information from time to time by mistake of due to technical problems.
In additional, this programs most suitable for analyzing of bank transactions but personal finance need date about other assets you’ve got such as home, stocks, petty cash.
Offline programs.
This programs need to be bought or just downloaded as freeware and than installed to you computer or any other electronic device. It is a huge number of such programs in the Internet, but most of them are built in the same principle. Of cause the most complicated part for such programs is to understand how they work, reed all manuals and spend time with installation. The serious disadvantage of such program is requirements of constant input date on a permanent day-to-day based and if you will postponed for such records during few days it is possible that you will forgot about some transactions.
The unbeatable lieder of such software is Quicken from Intuit! This program allows you establish connection with your bank account and load a number of data automatically. But anyway, some cash transactions which you’re made need to be added manually.
As part of offline programs the market could provide a plenty of calculators, tips advisers, trip reports, budgets, stock data. It is not possible to recognize this as 100% personal finance software, probably like some convenient tools.
While printing this article it was announced that Quicken bought Mint, which means that future is a combination of both tools online and offline software. What will be future application will see, but anyway online features will be develop mere than today.
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