Personal finance software advice?

Hi,

I live in the UK and have a bank account with barclays and also a barclaycard credit card; both of which I can access statements from via online banking (although my barclays current account only keeps records for the last 6 months).

I'm looking for some software that can connect regularly to both my current account and credit card account and download statements; archive them and allow me to assign categories to each transaction; ie: look back on a weeks spending and change a generic ATM WITHDRAWL entry to 'Money Spent on Beer', for a transaction on a friday night; just so I can analyse how much i'm spending on what...

Is there any software that can do this? It doesn't really need to be too complex, but i'd prefer it if it were automated rather than having to do it all manually in excel.

Reply to
markus4412
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I use Microsoft Money myself and find it excellent (and it is not expensive). Most banks let you download statements from their online banking and these go straight into Money.

I have been using it for several years to run a couple of club accounts too and had no problems.

I am using Money 2002, and have heard some horror storys from people upgrading to Money 2005 but I suspect that starting from scratch is probably ok.

Regards, Neil.

Reply to
Neil Hampton

I should point out that there are other alternatives - e.g. Quicken

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I have no experience of this but have heard it is very good.

Regards, Neil.

Reply to
Neil Hampton

I am in the UK and using the US ver. 2006. For my credit card and other accounts I manually enter the information into the registers. But for my Barclays account I simply download the statements. With your account register in Money open, log into your online banking in the normal way with IE. Then there is a drop down box on the left that by default says "Customise My Site". Select "Export Data" and Go. Select your software package and then the account. Follow through and Money will automatically detect the download and integrate the transactions.

Marcus

Reply to
Marcus Fox

FWIW, I use Quicken, and *intentionally* do manual reconciliation - 'downloading statements' seems to miss the point that I want to check that that bank have got it right...

rgds, Alan

Reply to
Alan Frame

True, but I enter my transactions manually over the month, then when the statement is downloaded in Money, it matches the transactions up and allows you to accept or change each individual transaction. This makes it much easier to do a reconciliation (and points out the transactions that have no manual match!).

Regards, Neil

Reply to
Neil Hampton

I used to use Money 2003 and I found it useless. It has so many bugs that you have to spend so much time trying to find ways around them.

It always screws up your budget, regularly corrupts your data so you have to start from scratch and randomly loses transactions.

My advice would be to use a pen and paper - it's much quicker.

Mark

Reply to
Mark

In the States, Quicken and MS Money are the defacto personal money management for PC's. Both are good with minor differences. Quicken does not (did not) download Stock Option prices which might be meaningless to you. Examine both. Check UK versions. Make sure your choice works as you want with your institutions. ie Do you want to automatically update from within the application or from the bank's site/software, or both?

H>Hi,

Reply to
arthur

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