Tracking Finances in a digital contactless world?

[Clariman]

For over 20 years I've tracked all our spending using MS Money and used that data to reconcile bank and credit card statements - again using MS Money. This meant I always knew our balances and could identify any fraudulent or spurious transactions. Cash payments were only tracked at the ATM withdrawal level e.g. I would enter £60 withdrawn form current account on 22nd February. I didn't track what we spent it on. This was all very manageable in MS Money and worked well.

However, in the current contactless cashless world this isn't working well. I either ask for receipts for everything and would be entering loads of tiny transaction daily that would have been cash payments - or I don't get receipts and then have to enter them in when I reconcile the statement.

How have other people approached this?

Thanks
c

[the0ni0nking]

Interesting question - I used to use MS Money but have long since given that up.

The way I monitor my monthly spending is sort of in reverse - each month there is a SO that goes from my main bank account (which has no card transactions - I might not even have a card for it) into a different bank account.

So for sake of argument lets say that SO is for £1,500 - that's what I have to "live on" each month and because it's just day to day spending it doesn't vary much. Pretty much all spend on that account is via card. I don't monitor what it's spent on because it's eating out, drinking out etc etc. All leisure activities. Nothing else.

Household bills are deal with in a different bank, mortgages are dealt with by a different bank and savings are held across a multitude of banks to get the max interest from regular savers etc.

[SalvorHardin]

I still use Microsoft Money. It's a brilliant program for tracking accounts, particularly once you've set regular payments to be automatically entered (mine are set up so that everything for that month is entered on the 1st of each month ("automatically enter transactions into my register the following number of days before payment date...").

I use a debit card to make payments. If I don't get a paper receipt I make a note of what I have spent, usually as a diary entry in the phone's calendar or I write it down in a small notebook (that's what I do when in London or anywhere else that's a bit suspect for street crime as I don't take my phone out if I'm in a public place in these places). Since lockdown I don't go out much in the evenings, so the problem of remembering what you spent last night after six or seven pints doesn't happen nowadays (in the pre-debit card days I made a note of how much cash I went out with).

About the closest to a drunken night out nowadays is an evening's T20 cricket at the local county ground. I pay cash where possible (taxis) and as I know roughly where I'm going to be spending money by card (the bars, takeaways), I make several entries in Microsoft Money before I go out.

As a backup to Microsoft Money (in case a Windows Update stops it from working), I keep an Excel spreadsheet with details of all regular payments and receipts (dates, account, amounts, what each is for). So if MS Money ever stopped working, I could quickly set up my accounts in Excel. Whilst there are alternative programs which claim to be able to accurately import MS Money data, I'm happy to carry on as I am.

[UncleEbenezer]

However, in the current contactless cashless world this isn't working well. I either ask for receipts for everything and would be entering loads of tiny transaction daily that would have been cash payments - or I don't get receipts and then have to enter them in when I reconcile the statement.
c

What about the bank(s) whose card(s) you use? Presumably your transactions will appear either immediately in your app, or within a few days in your online banking?

I'd be checking their documents for how to import data from there into MS Money - via some basic format like CSV if there isn't (yet) a function to do it directly. Or googling terms like "Clariman Bank Microsoft Money" for accounts of how others have tackled the problem.

[DrFfybes]

Same as I always did - small purchases are cash, over a tenner is generally card.

We keep the receipts (usually), pretty much everything is spent on M&S credit cards, so just a couple of sheets to tick off at the end of the month.

We each have our own current accounts where salaries/pensions/dividends go in an amount goes out to a Santander joint account where all the DDs go from. I check mine every few weeks, MrsF looks at her paper statement with generally 4 or 5 transactions on it. I scan the joint account for odd transactions every couple of weeks and also to make sure there's enough to cover the credit card as there's a linked savings account for the surplus.

I've never had the need to keep a running balance on any accounts, possibly been lucky, or more likely always LBYM so not been an issue.

Paul

[Urbandreamer]

I don't use MS-Money, but have no trouble tracking contactless spending.

OK, up until know I have been anal, or relaxed about it. I took receipts so that I could separate out booze spending from groceries to be aware of what I "needed" to spend and what I could tighten the belt upon.

A few years ago I decided that I didn't need that level of detail and simply downloaded the credit card statement once a month. I can extract Amazon, ebay, Audible and supermarket transactions from the statement. I use to also separate out investment from spending, but I currently have no income so don't add to my investments.

Very recently that has changed. I intend documenting this on the crypto board in a few months, but I've started using my contactless crypto debit card. I'm now downloading transactions the day that they occur and entering them into my CGT calculator. There is a separate spreadsheet that records the fiat value of the transaction, which I update once a month. Naturally the vendor is recorded, but not categories of items bought at the supermarket.

The only specialized software that I run relates to crypto CGT, the rest is done using standard spreadsheet software. LibreOffice in my case, but Excel or google sheets would work just as well.

[tjh290633]

For over 20 years I've tracked all our spending using MS Money and used that data to reconcile bank and credit card statements - again using MS Money. This meant I always knew our balances and could identify any fraudulent or spurious transactions. Cash payments were only tracked at the ATM withdrawal level e.g. I would enter £60 withdrawn form current account on 22nd February. I didn't track what we spent it on. This was all very manageable in MS Money and worked well.

However, in the current contactless cashless world this isn't working well. I either ask for receipts for everything and would be entering loads of tiny transaction daily that would have been cash payments - or I don't get receipts and then have to enter them in when I reconcile the statement.

How have other people approached this?

Thanks
c

I am content to see what the website of my card providers say. Contactless payments made recently are shown as "pending" soon after payment has been made. Is that not sufficient?

TJH

[moorfield]

I am still using MS Money 2000 (!) but now use it to track just my SIPP dividend income on an actual vs. target basis, for which the budget planner report is excellent and gives me sight of two to three quarters ahead as I fill in estimated or announced dividends. I align those reports with the tax rather than calendar year which will be useful for future drawdown planning and determining surplus income to retain for reinvestment.

[servodude]

For over 20 years I've tracked all our spending using MS Money and used that data to reconcile bank and credit card statements - again using MS Money. This meant I always knew our balances and could identify any fraudulent or spurious transactions. Cash payments were only tracked at the ATM withdrawal level e.g. I would enter £60 withdrawn form current account on 22nd February. I didn't track what we spent it on. This was all very manageable in MS Money and worked well.

However, in the current contactless cashless world this isn't working well. I either ask for receipts for everything and would be entering loads of tiny transaction daily that would have been cash payments - or I don't get receipts and then have to enter them in when I reconcile the statement.

How have other people approached this?

Thanks
c

I am content to see what the website of my card providers say. Contactless payments made recently are shown as "pending" soon after payment has been made. Is that not sufficient?

TJH

In addition to this I've also taken to using my phone as my normal "contactless card"
- transation history for that provides an immediate record of usage

I can also have credits and debits from the normal current account raise notifications on the phone via the app; this lets me pick up on unusual activity immediately

-sd

[Gersemi]

I use MS Money, mainly so I can run off end of year reports to track annual spending, review savings and investments and forecast future cashflows.
I populate it from the monthly bank statements/credit card statement and investment records. I do collect receipts where possible, but this impossible for bars etc, and I'm afraid dear reader there are quite a lot of these. I check bank accounts weekly when I can still remember where I've been! The most difficult aspect is that some establishments have rather odd names for their transactions.
The result is that I do identify all transactions and have yet to find a suspicious one [cross fingers].

[staffordian]

However, in the current contactless cashless world this isn't working well. I either ask for receipts for everything and would be entering loads of tiny transaction daily that would have been cash payments - or I don't get receipts and then have to enter them in when I reconcile the statement.

I use Moneydance rather than Money, and it has an Android (and I think also an Apple) app which allows entry of transactions on the phone, and the app then syncs with the main program

Something like this might help as transactions can be entered quickly and easily soon after the spend has occurred.

[EviesDad]

I use MS Money and in the instances where we don't get given a receipt I pick up the transactions from the banking app on my phone. I tend to update 3 or 4 times a week so it's easy to recognise\remember the value of any transactions without a receipt.

[staffordian]

Another solution would be to use your phone for contactless payments. Google Wallet lists transactions made this way.

[csearle]

How have other people approached this?

I approach this by using the online bank "Monzo" for all discretionary spending so that I can use their (IMO nice) features to do some of what I imagine you do in MS Money, but in the app. In this way the entire reconciliation process falls away as Monzo will automatically assign categories.

Like the0ni0nking I use a separate bank account for any regular transactions (I call it my cashflow account).

So I use two regular transactions (from my so-called business account), one to Monzo to cover a month's discretionary spending, and one to my Cashflow account to cover a month's regular transactions. That gives me a simple aggregated view of my cost of living, discretionary and mandatory.

Chris

[swill453]

Part of my morning routine is to fire up my banking and credit card apps on my phone, and enter the previous day's transactions into Quicken 2000 on my PC. This hasn't changed since going largely cashless, other than there being a tiny bit more work entering more smaller contactless transactions.

Doing it when things are fresh in the memory means I largely don't bother with receipts unless keeping them for guarantees.

On both my banking (First Direct) and credit card (Barclaycard) apps, pending transactions are shown instantaneously, except sometimes when the card machine isn't online, like some buses.

(Pay at Pump garages used to be bad for reserving £99 or £100 then only showing the real amount days later. That's largely fixed now.)

Scott.

[Clariman]

Thanks everyone. Lots to think about.

C

[gpadsa]

As others above, I've a monthly standing order from main account to 'household' account that pays all regular living expenses (holidays are part of living) with no record of those 'household' transactions, just checking the account toward the end of the month to avoid going in the red & bump up the standing order every so often.

Then there are not many transactions on the main account but I started tracking them as of 6 Apr this year because it is things like gift-aided donations [+ non-gift-aided donations e.g. to TLF], deductable work expenses, etc where it is useful to have a consolidated record come SA time.

I use gnucash (gnucash.org): it will import .ofx or .csv statement exported from the bank website (+other formats apparently) & has a 'Bayesian filter' when importing so after 1st run it mostly knows which transactions belong to which expense accounts. The learning curve wasn't too bad. The faq says it's possible to migrate from MS Money but it looks like it might take a few goes to get it right.

gpadsa

[Newroad]

Hi gdadsa.

I thought the same and was inspired to download and install gnucash last night.

Will be interesting to see if I end up using it. One problem I have is that my existing spreadsheet (which tracks investments rather than expenditure) is used to help me rebalance, so I would be unlikely to be able to deprecate it, fully at least.

Regards, Newroad

[stevensfo]

I started a very simple Excel spreadsheet 20 years ago and just altered and improved it as time went on. It can be opened with Microsoft or Libre Office.

I always get a receipt and stick in in my phone case, then enter it every few days. In some countries, it's illegal not to take the receipt from a shop. Great idea!

Looking back over many years can be quite interesting. The amounts we spent on school trips for the kids are frightening.

Agree that cash is best. I use a card for mundane things, but cash for lots of others.

Steve

[swill453]

Agree that cash is best. I use a card for mundane things, but cash for lots of others.

Who are you agreeing with? Nobody else has said that

I've definitely gone over to cashless wherever possible:
- makes it much easier to track spending
- a single big payment coming out of my current account up to six weeks later
- and cashback too

Scott.