Personal Finance Software Reviews
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Personal finance software reviews can assist you in finding the best accounting software for you. If you’re having a tough time deciding, the reviews below should help.
The good new is you won’t be locked in forever if you choose software that’s not quite right for you the first time. However, it’s best to take some time and do a little research upfront to ensure you get off to a good start.
These software reviews list some of the most popular financial software programs available. There are also a few freebies listed in the mix as well.
Quicken
Although there are a lot of good programs out there, this one is my favorite. It’s been around for a while and offers a variety of upgrades to suit your changing needs. It’s also notoriously user-friendly and offers some of the best support in the industry.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
Quicken Starter Edition
Quicken Starter Edition is compatible with most Windows programs including the latest versions. It’s not compatible with Mac although Quicken does offer Quicken Essentials for Mac which is similar in capabilities to Quicken Deluxe.
Starter Edition is a really solid basic accounting program. If your finances are relatively straight-forward this may be exactly what you need. This program also allows you to upgrade to a higher version of Quicken if the need arises.
Starter Edition allows you to:
- Categorize and track expenses
- Keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Download account transactions
- Online banking available
- Allows you to import data from Microsoft Money
- Allows you to export data to PDF or Excel
- Pairs seamlessly with TurboTax (sold separately) to make tax preparation much easier
- Offers excellent support including online manuals, tutorials, FAQ, as well as phone, email and live chat support
- Allows you to backup and restore data
- Password protection available
- Offers a wide variety of reports including cash flow, tax reports, and net worth reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
Quicken Deluxe
Quicken Deluxe is, in my opinion, the best Quicken has to offer. This is a good middle-of-the-road program offering what you need without a lot of complicated fluff.
It’s an upgrade from the Starter Edition so in addition to everything listed above Deluxe also offers:
- My Savings Plan which helps with advanced budgeting and large purchases
- 401K, IRA and 529 account tracking
- Tag transactions similar to tagging web pages in social bookmarks
- Quicken Attachments which allow you to attach notes or scanned items like receipts, account statements and invoices to transactions or accounts. This feature is helpful for tax preparation or in the event of an audit.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
Quicken Premier
Quicken Premier has all the features of Quicken Starter Edition and Quicken Deluxe but with investing tools and the latest asset allocation and investing guidelines.
This is the one you need if you’re a serious investor since it allows you to have all your financial information in one place.
In addition to the features listed above for Starter Edition and Deluxe, Premier also offers:
- Investment performance analysis
- Help minimizing taxes on capital gains
- Reporting for IRS Schedule A, B and D
- Morningstar ratings for mutual funds and EFTs
While Quicken is one of the most well recognized names in personal accounting software, it can get a bit pricey. While the Starter Edition is comparable in cost to other financial software, the upgraded versions are more expensive.
Quicken is awesome but the cost of the upgrades can be an issue, especially when there are so many other great alternatives to choose from. Check out other software reviews below to see more options.
Moneydance is a personal finance manager that really packs a punch.
It’s very user-friendly and offers an excellent bundle of features without the need for pricy upgrades. Its simple interface puts your finances at your fingertips without unnecessary accounting jargon. And it’s compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
Moneydance offers a free trial so you can test drive the software to see if it works for you. Some of the features include:
- Allows you to categorize and track expenses
- Keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Download account transactions
- Online banking and bill pay available
- Allows you to import data from Microsoft Money and Quicken
- Automatically calculates principal and interest for mortgage payments and other loans
- Allows you to backup and restore data
- Password protection available
- Offers a wide variety of reports including cash flow, account balances, and net worth reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
- Tracks your portfolio allowing you to view the total value of your investment accounts or the performance of individual stocks and mutual funds over time and current stock prices can be downloaded automatically
Moneydance doesn’t interface with most tax software so keep that in mind. However, you do get basic investing modules and a sound set of money management features at a competitive price.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
AceMoney
AceMoney is a personal finance manager that helps you organize your finances quickly and easily.
It has a nice variety of features that can not only handle personal finances but also small-business accounting needs as well.
Although not as robust as Quicken or Moneydance, it does offer AceMoney Lite which is a free version of the software. Notice I said free not trial. The catch is you’re limited to only one account. However, even the full version is competitively priced and all future upgrades are free.
AceMoney is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux so no worries here. Some of its many features include:
- Ability to categorize and track expenses
- Keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Online banking available
- Allows you to import data from Microsoft Money and Quicken
- Mortgage and loan calculators to help plan and budget for purchases
- Automatic backup of data
- Password protection available
- Offers a variety of reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
- Tracks 401K, stock options, employee stock purchase plans or any other investment activities and will download stock quotes from the net
- Automates input of orders coming from PayPal, RegNow, RegSoft, SWReg and Plimus for small-businesses
AceMoney doesn’t interface with most tax software so if this is important to you this may not be the right program. But overall this is a pretty good personal finance software program for both home and business. And with the free version, you can try it and may find it’s just what you’ve been looking for.
RichOrPoor is a financial software package for individuals, families, and small businesses. This personal finance software helps you track income, expenses, assets, liabilities, and much more.
It gives you over 30 reports so you can get the total picture of your finances. RichOrPoor helps you to manage nearly every aspect of your finances including checking, savings, credit cards, investment, cash, budget and more.
It’s simply formatted, straight-forward, and easy to use. However, it’s only compatible with Windows. If your operating system is Mac or Linux don't worry. There are several other programs listed in the software reviews here that are compatible.
A few of the features included in RichOrPoor are:
- Ability to categorize and track expenses
- Keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Password protection available
- Offers a variety of reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
- Very basic investment account tracking
- Simple bookkeeping capabilities
- Two years of free updates
RichOrPoor doesn’t interface with tax software or allow you to import data from other software such as Quicken or Microsoft Money. This is a decent starter program that is competitively priced. You can even get the software free through TrialPay by signing up to try one of their featured offers.
It’s worth a try if you’re unsure whether or not you’d like personal finance software. However, you will probably choose to upgrade at some point since the program only offers basic capabilities.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
iCash
iCash is an easy-to-use, full featured, multi-purpose personal finance manager tool intended to help you control all kinds of money issues.
iCash can serve several small accounting needs for individuals or small businesses by helping you keep track of income, expenses and bank transactions. With a few clicks you can begin creating accounts and start making transactions within minutes.
iCash is versatile and user-friendly. The best part is, you need very little or no accounting knowledge. Simply create accounts for all your expenses, income, bank accounts and more and then start moving money between them.
All accounts are well organized according to user-defined categories and built-in types so reports can be tailored to include all records or only ones meeting specified criteria.
iCash also allows you to have as many money manager documents as necessary so you can control almost anything from business to home at the same time.
iCash is compatible with both Windows and Mac. Some of its features include:
- Allows you to categorize and track expenses
- Keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Offers online manuals, tutorials, forums, FAQ and demo movie
- Provides automatic backup
- Password protection available
- Offers a wide variety of reports including cash flow, account balances, and net worth reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
- Allows you to track your portfolio although entries have to be made manually
Like some of the others, iCash doesn’t interface with tax software or allow you to import data from other software such as Quicken or Microsoft Money. This is another good starter program and the price is comparable to other software of its capabilities. Although it’s well designed and user-friendly, you may choose to upgrade at some point as your finances evolve.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
Account Xpress
Account Xpress is a personal finance management software program loaded with features designed to help you manage your money accurately and efficiently.
While all the programs assist you in creating a budget, this one focuses a little more on getting out of debt and staying that way.
It’s compatible with Windows and offers a free version called Account Xpress Lite. This version offers all the features found in Account Xpress (standard edition), but is limited in the number of accounts and currencies that it supports.
Account Xpress Lite supports one currency, three accounts and no sub-accounts. In all other aspects, Account Xpress Lite is identical to Account Xpress.
Some of the features offered are:
- Ability to categorize and track expenses
- Create and keep a budget
- View monthly income and expenses
- Reconcile accounts
- Download transactions from your financial institution
- Allows you to export data to other applications such as Word or Excel
- Automatic backup of data
- Password protection available
- Offers FAQ and help desk support
- Offers a variety of reports to help you more clearly see your overall financial picture
- A tree view structure similar to what you see in Windows Explorer
Account Xpress doesn’t interface with tax software or allow you to import data from other software such as Quicken or Microsoft Money. However, it is a well designed and user-friendly program that’s worth a try. And since Account Xpress Lite is free, you can try it without risk and decide whether it’s right for you.
BudgetExpress is an easy-to-use complete budget planning software program. Unlike most of the others listed, this one has a single purpose – to help you create and manage your budget.
It’s compatible with Windows only and boasts the following features:
- Importing of online bank files (compatible files : OFX, QIF, QFX)
- Management of several accounts in the same budget
- Setting of credit limits
- Be notified when budget items exceed their limits
- Compound interest investment calculator
- Loan repayment calculator
- Printing of calendar and reports
- Budgets displayed in the form of a calendar
- Production of reports illustrated with graphics
- Budget Creation Wizard creates your profile and suggests budget items
- Comparison of your actual and planned budgets
- Loan and credit management
- Loan and credit simulations
- Creation of an unlimited number of password-protected budgets
- Reference library
Although BudgetExpress doesn’t interface with tax software, it doesn’t really need to. This one is designed to get you on track financially by helping you create the best budget for your needs step-by-step.
In the software reviews listed here you'll notice that practically all the other programs offer budgeting capabilities. If you’re already using another program that allows you to create a budget, I certainly wouldn’t recommend adding this one.
However, if personal finance software is new and overwhelming to you and you need help creating a budget without a lot of other features, this may be just what you’re looking for.
Richer Poorer Sweatpants
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
Big E-Z Books
Big E-Z Books Personal Edition is a software program powered by Microsoft Excel. It allows you to simplify the bookkeeping process, save time, stay organized and get right to the point with pre-programmed, pre-titled spreadsheets.
Change categories to suit your needs, enter data and let the software total everything for you.
It’s compatible with Windows and requires Microsoft Excel 2003 or newer to run. Its features include:
- Twelve easy-to-use monthly spreadsheet files
- Automatically summarizes your data into quarterly and year-end reports
- Maintains and reconciles the checkbook
- Customizable income and expense categories
- Budgeting is a breeze
- No Excel experience needed
- Includes one year free support
This program is basically a collection of Excel spreadsheets. If you like being more hands-on this will work well for you. It offers streamlined budgeting and expense tracking. However, it doesn’t offer the automated capabilities of most of the other programs listed in the software reviews above.
If you like controlling your finances manually and prefer to keep your financial information offline but need spreadsheet capabilities to help you keep track of it all, this is a good program for you.
Personal Finance Software Reviews for
ClearCheckbook
ClearCheckbook is an extremely easy-to-use online checkbook register and money management tool.
ClearCheckbook helps you get your finances back in order by providing some of the best tools around for balancing your checkbook, managing your budgets, tracking your spending and more.
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As an online checkbook, you enter your receipts into the site and assign each transaction to an account and category. You can go back through the online checkbook register and mark transactions as cleared.
This way you'll always know what transactions have been cleared with your bank and how much money you have. The program also uses the account/categories you assign a transaction to generate reports and uses them for your budgets.
Since it’s all online you can use it on any computer with internet access and some mobile devices. You can’t beat the price either – it’s free. However, they do offer an upgrade to premium features for a monthly fee. Some of the features available on the free version are:
- Get a quick glance of every aspect of your finances from Account Dashboard
- Add transactions
- Balance your checkbook
- View reports
- Check your balances
- Look at your budget
- Track your savings and expenses
- Schedule transactions and get email reminders for bills due
- Set spending limits for specified accounts or categories
- Online FAQ and forums
This one is very different from the other programs listed in the software reviews above. However, it's a nice add-on to most of these programs and was included for that reason.
You’ll need to set up an account with a password for security purposes. After that it doesn’t take long to be up and running. It’s a nice complement to other personal finance software that allows you to download account transactions. If you stay on the go this can certainly be a very useful tool.
It has probably become obvious that there are a lot of options available when it comes to personal finance software. Hopefully the software reviews above can help you narrow down your search and ultimately choose the one that will be a perfect match for you.