Personal Finance Software

[bearbait]

What do you use, if anything, for keeping track of household and other personal finances?

I'm still using Quicken 98 [sic] and find it excellent. It was patched for Y2K back-in-the-day but I vaguely recall that it is going to cease functioning correctly later this decade. The new Quicken (no longer by Intuit) seems $US and $Ca focussed.

So I'm looking for some equivalent to Q98, definitely not cloud-based, and preferably not a subscription-based package.

Ideas?

Ta!

 

[nigelp]

I use Tapforms Pro - it’s a personal database but is an annual subscription now. Not stupid money and the developer is very good at answering questions.

You’ll have to do some setting up because it can be used for anything! I use it to long expenses, miles, invoicing for my businesses as well as personal money tracking, gear lists and all sorts of anything.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Microsoft Excel. Still using 2010 version I think. Although I have a new in box copy of 2016.
I used to share a house and used it to track all my outgoings, and all the bills, all of which I paid and then had to extract half from housemate. Then used Excel for preparing for US taxes and account reporting, and UK taxes.
Also use for gear lists, travel itinerary (time, distance, destination).

 

[bearbait]

Microsoft Excel. Still using 2010 version I think. Although I have a new in box copy of 2016.
I used to share a house and used it to track all my outgoings, and all the bills, all of which I paid and then had to extract half from housemate. Then used Excel for preparing for US taxes and account reporting, and UK taxes.

Was this one of the many Excel accounting templates? Or was it a "raw" Excel spreadsheet with your own formulae, etc.?

 

[Broch]

I have used Excel since Noah used it to keep tab of his shipbuilding costs (i.e. for longer than I can remember). I not only use it personally, but have used it as the backbone for planning and managing three companies over the last thirty years and I still probably only use 10% of its capability. I use it for financial modelling, technical models for things like digital filter design, and databases - it really is very powerful.

I never use templates, always new raw sheets I've designed myself. The secret is to test the sheets using nice round numbers to see if everything is working correctly.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Was this one of the many Excel accounting templates? Or was it a "raw" Excel spreadsheet with your own formulae, etc.?

No template, just my calculations from pasted in data.
My sheet started in 2001. I looked at accounting templates and financial statement templates at one point, but a simple list worked well enough. Other things have been added on over the years as my need for certain data has changed. The formulae have been pretty simple, sums, percentages, averages, multiplications or divisions for currency conversions.

I paste data in from online banking now. My bank offers CSV format in addition to formats for several pieces of accounting software.

Since I have Excel, and use it at work for a lot more complicated things than my accounts, there isn't much reason for me to get anything else. Maybe because I am familiar with it, I use it for all sorts of stuff. I have a file for keeping track of all the fabric and sewing supplies I have bought for DIY camping projects. When I need to compare prices and features, or price up and compare places for orders and shipping I use Excel. All my kit is weighed and I have the weighed packing lists for most trips I have made in Excel. I have a sheet all about my belt grinder and belts, recommended speeds for belts, what I have bought and when, grit conversions tables, and pricing. Endless stuff I use it for.

Using Office 365 at work, and somewhere along the line they added the function that you can use excel to create a list of all file names in a given folder, including subfolders. They just keep adding capabilities, and I was using a fraction of what was there, even at work. I recently even tried to get it to do more than I know how by getting ChatGPT to write scripts to do what I want excel to do. A bit hit or miss, but using instructions I had no idea were in there!

 

[slowworm]

I would use the free Open Office / Libra Office spread sheets. Easy for me to set them up from scratch as I've used all singing and dancing spread sheets for financial work but they aren't the easiest things for people who've not used them before.

 

[bearbait]

It's sounding a little like Excel is the way to go. I am reasonably familiar with it and so shouldn't (hopefully) find it overly difficult to "model" the Q98 functions I use.

Many thanks, all...