

Ask HN: Anyone here doing personal income/expenses tracking? - inovica

Hi there<p>I'm just looking for some personal (rather than business) expense tracking software, preferably online.  Thought I'd ask if anyone here here has created anything like that or if anyone has anything that they would recommend.
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raintrees
I use a spreadsheet. Why not start with Google Docs for same (online
requirement) to get started?

I found that getting a read on financial affairs for a couple of months was
good enough for me to create personal budget expectations, arrange my income
accordingly, project future income/savings, etc.

I just check back in occasionally, and do the project again. I have too much
on my plate already to add another daily/weekly ongoing requirement. ymmv...

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inovica
Good idea. I think I'll give that a go

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charliepark
I know the space well and would be happy to help. I made
<https://www.pearbudget.com>. Depending on what you're looking for, it might
be just right for you. Or, of course, it might not.

If you let me know what you're looking for, I can help you find something.
Either here or on Twitter (@charliepark).

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inovica
Thanks! I'll check out Pear Budget. Basically we use Quickbooks for our
accounts, but I've been finding that I don't really know how much we (my
family) spend. With the New Year I'm wanting to get a handle on just how much
things are costing - fuel, entertaining etc.

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charliepark
The scenario you're describing is exactly what we focus on. Ultimately, there
are three different ways we "spend" money. There's how we _want_ to spend
money, there's how we _think_ we spend money, and there's how we _actually_
spend money. A good expense tracking / budgeting tool is going to bring all
three of those circles into alignment. Also, our opinion is that the tool
shouldn't be too complicated. Most people only need 1% of the options Quicken
gives you. I have more opinions on it, but I won't flood HN with them right
now.

I probably won't be checking this thread super-often, so if you (or anyone)
have any questions, or if there's a specific feature that you _need_ to have
available in a budgeting app, ping me on Twitter.

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luckyisgood
I'm using www.pearbudget.com, I just upgraded to their paid account recently.
It is simple enough not to be a hassle, and its tags system allows me and my
boyfriend to track our expenses together, knowing how much either of us spent
separately. I can recommend it.

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vsync
GnuCash is great; I use it for both personal and business.

If you have it use PostgreSQL for the data store you can run it at home
(keeping the database there or on a server somewhere if you like) and then
connect to it from another machine wherever. I haven't tried that yet as it's
a new feature in 2.4.0 which I just upgraded to.

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rudasn
I'm working on an expenses/purchases app at the moment. I have small
businesses in mind but I am also considering a personal aspect. What is it
that you want to get out of such an application?

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inovica
Hi there. My requirement isn't really small business as we currently have an
in-house book keeper and we use Quickbooks. It's for personal use. I just want
to be able to put in our regular monthly income/costs and then evaluate spend
(for example on beer!). I've done some analysis and turns out I spend nearly
$200/month at a local pub (bar), so that prompted me to start looking at
everything to see where I could reduce easily

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rudasn
I have that same problem as you. Since my personal monthly budget is very low
I tend to keep track of my expenses closely. I still don't know how exactly
I'm going to market my app but I'm leaning towards having a "personal" version
without the stuff businesses need.

If you want, drop me a line at my-hn-username at gmail (or checkout
rabbitpurchasing.com) and I'll let you know when my app is ready - you will be
able to record and know that you spend X per month on beer.

~~~
inovica
I've had a good look today and there's not much out there that's good. There's
a few decent Mac apps (I'm Mac-based) but I'm looking for web-based as thats
what I'd prefer. My situation here is that I earn decent money from my
business, but my personal spend is not really recorded and the small amount of
analysis that I've done has shocked me at the money I waste :)

In terms of marketing your app, maybe you could focus on how your app will let
you focus a bit more. Just a thought

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kleinsch
We've got our budget set up using Mint.com and evaluate it using their tools.
Since they're the 800 pound gorilla in that space, how're you thinking about
differentiating from them?

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inovica
Firstly we're not planning on differentiating from them - I'm looking for
something to use for myself (not to build something). Also, I'm based in the
UK and am unable to use Mint

