
Do you use software to manage your money and what are you looking for? - georgeashkar
Are you using Quicken, Mint, or an alternative like our product Moneyspire? Just wondering what people are looking for. Give our product a try and let me know your feedback, we are always looking for ways to improve and make sure we are on the right track. Our website is www.moneyspire.com
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cascom
I've used most of the personal finance software out there at one point or
another, currently use [https://gnucash.org/and](https://gnucash.org/and) love
it (though i do use
[http://www.tradelogsoftware.com/](http://www.tradelogsoftware.com/) for the
tax side of things)

I'm probably not your target audience, but having used most of the personal
finance software out there (mint, quicken, msn money, etc.) here are a few
issues that i've had with most:

1\. most personal finance software confuses the idea of spending and cashflow,
and usually gets the time periods wrong (for example if i purchase a plane
ticket on my credit card in January, and the trip is in June, to me that is a
June expense, with negative cash flow implications in February (when i pay my
credit card bill), where as most personal finance software would just say i
spent the money in January. Another example that would drive me crazy is that
paying down a loan would be treated as an expense...

2\. most personal software solutions have very ugly/painful ways of dealing
with reimbursable expenses - if i have a $5k of work travel expenses in a
month, my personal finance software should not make it look like i blew my
budget by $5k (also think about HSA/FSA etc.)

3\. investments - most personal finance solutions do not calculate performance
properly (e.g. not taking into account deposits and withdrawals) and don't
usually have the sophistication to be used for tax reporting (unless its very
plain vanilla) --- my personal opinion is to keep it simple here
(deposits/withdraws and beginning and ending account balances) and leave the
rest to dedicated portfolio/tax solutions

4\. one thing that is sometimes lacking is tagging (which it looks like you've
done, so kudos) so that you can run alternate reports while keeping your
account structure.

5\. budgeting - have yet to see a budgeting tool that works well - mint's used
to be so infuriating.

6\. I want to control my data - a lot of programs let you do that, but one of
the primary reasons i left mint

