What to Look for in Personal Finance Software

What to Look for in Personal Finance Software

Ideal personal finance software provides ample user-friendly features, allowing you to manage every aspect of your finances, including your accounts, investments, future plans and taxes. The software should also provide current information on tax laws and stock reviews to help you make informed decisions. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate personal finance software.

Ease of Use/Installation
Personal finance software that offers intuitive navigation, user-friendly features and is easy to install.

Banking/Bills
Personal finance software should include online banking features, such as electronic payments, account transactions, account reconciliation, the ability to write and print checks and the ability to exchange currencies.

Personal Investing
Personal finance software that offers a feature to get stock quotes and manage your mutual funds, stocks, bonds and 401K.

Financial Planning
Personal finance software that allows you to plan your retirement, purchases, taxes, lifetime events, home purchases, debt relief and other financial goals and money management concerns and provides financial calculators to help you estimate costs, plan collage expenses, savings, taxes and so on.

Tax Options
Some personal finance software can export all of your financial information into tax software and help you find missed deductions and estimate your tax with holdings and capital gains.

Reporting
Personal finance software that provides reports and summaries of your finances so you can plan your cash flow and invest more wisely.

Through personal finance software, you can manage your finances conveniently and stress free, stop money leaks, make better investments and increase your personal net worth. In short, with personal finance software you can make your hard-earned money work harder for you.
1.

GnuCash

From A User Guide for GnuCash - Simba Management Limited

GnuCash free personal finance software download tracks bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses and has small business accounting features. GnuCash is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is actively and consistently developed, so this free software is improving all the time. GnuCash supports QIF imports and OFX downloads. GnuCash is free software, but if you use it and grow to rely on it enough you may wish to make a small donation using the link on GnuCash site.

• Compatible Operating Systems: Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD

Buddi 3.0

Buddi Transactions
© 2006-2008 Wyatt Olson

Buddi 3.0 runs on Windows, Mac and other operating systems and has been translated into multiple languages. Buddi can encrypt financial data with a password and is designed to be easy to use even if you have no financial background. Features include budgeting, tracking accounts, personal finance report, and an envelope budgeting feature called Prepaid Accounts. Free plug-ins can be downloaded to add more features, like a financial dashboard or balance sheet, and online user manual is easy to read and use.

• Compatible Operating Systems: Any operating system running Sun Java Virtual Machine 1.5 (you can get Java downloads here), including Windows, Mac OS X 10.4 and higher, and most flavors of Linux

PL Cash 2.1

PLCash © Copyright 2003, Paul Lutus

PLCash stores data in plain text format, which allows you to use a spreadsheet or word processing software to read and analyze your financial data. PLCash also offers useful personal finance reports, support for multiple account types and basic investment tracking. Data can be imported from Quicken, Microsoft Money or any other software that supports QIF data exports. In exchange to for the convenience of storing data as plain text, PLCash does not encrypt data.

• Compatible Operating Systems: Any operating system with Java Runtime installed.