Financial Management Software

[Casscat]

Based on a comment on another thread (in Starting Out), and forgive me if this has been asked before, but can anyone recommend a good (and cheap) package for recording income and expenses, particularly when you have income from several sources and in two currencies. I am self employed in Spain and paid in euros, have holiday rental income in Spain paid in sterling and euros and also rental income from a UK investment property in sterling. I have stacks of papers building up everywhere and am technically challenged when it comes to things like Excel so I have not been able to devise a system for keeping tabs on all of this. I would like to have something to record all the info and attach scanned doc so I can just send the relevant bits to my Spanish and UK accountants as required. Any recommendations?

[kevsboredagain]

There's the obvious Quicken but I also use YNAB for a while, which was good. I stopped tracking my finances like that after a few years as it wasn't helping me much.

[Casscat]

I've never heard of either of them, so I shall look into both - thank you.

[kevsboredagain]

Sorry, I forgot that Quicken is no longer supported in the UK. My parents have used it for many years and have managed to stick with an older version.

There's also Microsoft Money

[Casscat]

I'm not in the UK, but what I'm after doesn't need to be sophisticated. I'm not running a payroll or anything.

[e-richard]

I know I'm a computer geek and that's my main business, but seriously, for your needs (as I understand them), this is what I'd recommend:

[Nemo]

Microsoft Money is no longer supported. I used it a hundred years ago I think for a short time! No personal experience of any of these in the link, but some may be worth exploring. http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... ps-1281754

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... nd-1136684

The second link is more about business use but mentions Money Manager as being suitable for home users. A few of us have signed up to Wave invoices and I inadvertently signed up to the accounting by Wave before pulling myself out of it!

[Hells Bells]

You can sign up to Wave accounting without linking to your online banking though.

[Casscat]

I know I'm a computer geek and that's my main business, but seriously, for your needs (as I understand them), this is what I'd recommend:

I need to scan and email documents to my accountants in Spain and the UK plus keeping records of everything. The mess I'm in at the moment comes from retaining mountains of random papers. I'd like to get everything logged - which could involve a paper spreadsheet of course - and all my documents scanned and organised so I can send information electronically to the various places I have to. Before I moved to Spain it was not an issue - I was on PAYE in the UK for my earnings, filed quarterly in Spain for my holiday rental and once a year in the UK for the finca as a FHL. It's a whole lot more complicated now that I am autónoma in Spain (quarterly returns), have Spanish holiday rental income (annual returns) and have UK investment income (annually reportable in Spain on a calendar year basis and on an April to April basis in the UK). I just need an electronic filing system so that I can pluck out the data I need for the various reporting lines.

[kevsboredagain]

The mess I'm in at the moment comes from retaining mountains of random papers. I'd like to get everything logged - which could involve a paper spreadsheet of course - and all my documents scanned and organised so I can send information electronically to the various places I have to.

For that I use a program called Paperport together with a multi page/double sided scanner. You can use it to scan and oragnise all your paperwork. When I was out of work I scanned absolutely everything and became 100% electronic apart from hard copies of things like birth certificates. I no longer have any paper files at all. When something comes in the post like a bill or important letter, I pay it, scan it and shred it. It's all in Dropbox and backed up in multiple places so I have access to absolutely everything at any time. It's surprising how little storage you actually need to do this.

I stopped logging all my bank transactions because it wasn't helping me much once I'd done it for a while. Instead, I just take a snapshot once a month of the totals and this tells me if I'm going up or down. If I want to see a bank statement or bill I can find it easily in my Dropbox folders.

It takes effort to get started but makes life so much easier later whe it's at your fingertips.

[Sam V]

I've been using VT Cashbook for years, downloaded free, I think it's still free. You can set up multiple accounts and there's a variety of business scenarios to choose from.

http://www.vtsoftware.co.uk/cashbook/index.htm

[Casscat]

Thanks Sam - I'll take a look at this