Spending Tracking Software - Replacement for Money Dashboard

[SheldonT]

I currently use Money Dashboard to track my spending. I have just received an email to say that it will closing at the end of October.

I am therefore looking for suggestions as to what I could use as a replacement.

The way I use it is as follows:

All my spending from a few different credit cards and three different current accounts are captured/uploaded automatically. These are then categorised, with some manual input from me, using categories that are either from the system or set up subsequently by me.

At the end of the year I download all the transactions and manipulate them in Excel to create a detailed income and expenses schedule which I have going back a number of years.

I am therefore looking for advice as to what I could now use instead which would give me the same functionality and information to enable me to compare future year's income and expense to that from the past that I already have.

Does anyone else do something similar with other software/apps? Any advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Sheldon.

[Dod101]

I know nothing of Money Dashboard but for some years I have simply used a spreadsheet I set up in Excel. You can have as much or as little detail as you like but of course it does mean manually entering it. Much easier nowadays when nearly all my expenditure is non cash.

Dood

[kempiejon]

I had Accountz, open banking tracking software. Seemed to do what you want, pulled transactions from my current and credit cards and once set up classified spending so I had a breakdown of where all my expenses went. It was excellent, a bit of an eye opener for where my money went. Unfortunately it seems Accountz are caput. https://accountz.com/faq-home.html I remember I did look for an alternative and someone suggested YNAB https://www.ynab.com/ never progressed with that idea though looked promising but American. I do occasionally check my historic Accountz spreadsheets to see how the numbers back then stack up to today's income and expenditure. Now it is a manual process though.

[SheldonT]

Thanks Dod. I may have to resort to that if I can't find anything suitable. At the moment my transactions come through automatically and I tag them daily. If I have to do it manually I will likely do it monthly or even less often and I may not remember what I spent my money on!

[SheldonT]

Thanks Jon. I will take a look at those.

[kempiejon]

Thanks Jon. I will take a look at those.

SheldonT, Interest piqued, a quick google finds https://www.pocketsmith.com/tour/ they seem to offer a free version.

[formoverfunction]

https://www.gnucash.org/

Gnucash is very capable, free and runs on multiple platforms.

I used it to keep track of my finances, expenses etc, but I know people who used it to run small businesses. It's very capable of doing that. It maybe overkill for personal finance, but that's how I used it. It suspect if will be around for the future.

There are a lots of guides on Youtube.

[Hypster]

I switched from Microsoft Money to YNAB many years ago and am very happy with it.

[Dod101]

Thanks Dod. I may have to resort to that if I can't find anything suitable. At the moment my transactions come through automatically and I tag them daily. If I have to do it manually I will likely do it monthly or even less often and I may not remember what I spent my money on!

You now have other better suggestions but I enter my expenses more or less daily at the same time (about now) as I check my bank statements. Mind you I have plenty of time. Obviously if you are working it would not be so easy.

Dod

[gvonge]

I switched from Microsoft Money to YNAB many years ago and am very happy with it.

YNAB ?

[SheldonT]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I will take a look at them and see what best suits my needs.

I would prefer not to have to pay for anything!

[teecee90]

I moved from Money to MoneyDance, although its not free. https://moneydance.com/

[Urbandreamer]

I switched from Microsoft Money to YNAB many years ago and am very happy with it.

YNAB ?

There is another thread pointing out that there may be problems with the google search box on the page that you are looking at, so I'll assume that is why the question.

I happen to know that it stands for "You Need A Budget" (YNAB) which is now available as a phone app.
Here is a link to search results.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... d+a+budget
Wikipedia provides interesting info on it's history.

I tried gnucash but eventually settled on Dod's spreadsheet method. Horses for courses. I was interested in specifics of my spending rather than attempting a budget.

[stacker512]

I tried gnucash but eventually settled on Dod's spreadsheet method. Horses for courses. I was interested in specifics of my spending rather than attempting a budget.

I believe I tried gnucash about 10 years ago, but settled on KMyMoney (https://kmymoney.org/), it's free, (pretty sure) it's open source (you can get the code via a git repo), cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). It's sadly not cloud-based, so can't easily sync across multiple devices.
You can setup multiple categories for spending, create a budget, setup multiple accounts, ledgers, periodic payments (direct debits, standing orders), graphs. I also use it for my equity investments. Used it to track student loans repayments (before I paid mine off).

[staffordian]

I moved from Money to MoneyDance, although its not free. https://moneydance.com/

Another long term Moneydance user here, having moved from Quicken when they effectively abandoned the traditional software model.

It's cross platform, supports third party extensions such as a useful quote loader for share and currency prices, and a budgeting extension (not used it so no idea if it's any good), and has a free Android /Iphone app for on the go logging of transactions which syncs with the main program.

It does have an inbuilt budgeting function and the ability to download transactions from some financial establishments, though this tends to be US centric and I've never tried using it with any UK banks.

Although it's not free, a full version can be downloaded, any number of transactions imported from other programs and 100 new transactions entered to see if it suits, and if it does, buying it unlocks it totally so you don't lose what you've entered.

The other plus is that older versions are still available and there is no compulsion to upgrade to the latest version as there can be with some software.

No connection other than as a satisfied user.

[Itsallaguess]

‎
I'm still quite happily using Microsoft Money on my Windows 10 box for my home budgeting.

I'm using Money 2002, but the Way Back Machine archive still holds a working copy of the Microsoft download page for the last Money Plus Sunset Deluxe version -

https://web.archive.org/web/20200415062254/http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20738

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Gerry557]

I moved from Money to MoneyDance, although its not free. https://moneydance.com/

Another long term Moneydance user here, having moved from Quicken when they effectively abandoned the traditional software model.

It's cross platform, supports third party extensions such as a useful quote loader for share and currency prices, and a budgeting extension (not used it so no idea if it's any good), and has a free Android /Iphone app for on the go logging of transactions which syncs with the main program.

It does have an inbuilt budgeting function and the ability to download transactions from some financial establishments, though this tends to be US centric and I've never tried using it with any UK banks.

Although it's not free, a full version can be downloaded, any number of transactions imported from other programs and 100 new transactions entered to see if it suits, and if it does, buying it unlocks it totally so you don't lose what you've entered.

The other plus is that older versions are still available and there is no compulsion to upgrade to the latest version as there can be with some software.

No connection other than as a satisfied user.

I loved Quicken for years until one day it just stopped.

[swill453]

I loved Quicken for years until one day it just stopped.

Strange, I still use Quicken Deluxe 2000 every day. It's got all my transactions in it going back to 1996 (at one point I upgraded from an earlier version).

Scott.

[staffordian]

I loved Quicken for years until one day it just stopped.

Strange, I still use Quicken Deluxe 2000 every day. It's got all my transactions in it going back to 1996 (at one point I upgraded from an earlier version).

I can't now remember exactly what prompted me to change, though one issue with Quicken was that it didn't support online share price updating which Moneydance does.

Apart from the share price updating issue, I seem to recall that with the version of Windows I upgraded to at the time I also found Quicken gave me problems with either displaying or printing reports which wouldn't go away even after trying to run it in various compatibility modes, but I wouldn't swear to that.

[swill453]

I can't now remember exactly what prompted me to change, though one issue with Quicken was that it didn't support online share price updating which Moneydance does.

Apart from the share price updating issue, I seem to recall that with the version of Windows I upgraded to at the time I also found Quicken gave me problems with either displaying or printing reports which wouldn't go away even after trying to run it in various compatibility modes, but I wouldn't swear to that.

I don't, and never have, used Quicken for my shares. However it has tracked my spending over nearly 60 different bank accounts and credit cards over the last 27 years. All transactions are still available to me, though closed accounts can be hidden.

I still run up to 4 monthly reports, without a problem.

Scott.