You could choose how to manage personal finances by writing it manually in a personal notebook, but you will soon realize that it would not be sufficient if you want to do an analysis of your personal expenses and make a quite complex personal financial statement. At that moment, you will need personal accounting software.
There are many options for personal accounting software available on the market such as Quicken, YNAB, and many more. Paid software usually has more complete features and good support.
If you are just an ordinary user with no accounting knowledge at all, or you just want to try the software for free before purchasing commercial software, whatever your reason, you have several options for free software out there.
Many options of free software will be helpful for you in determining the software that suits your needs, but on the other hand, it can be confusing for you how to choose the software which appropriate for you. I have tips to help you in choosing free software for you. Even so, you can apply these tips in selecting paid software as well.
1. Do not require accounting knowledge.
The user is the home user who has a very diverse educational background. Thus, software should be understood by everyone, and the software should not use terms that are only understood by accountants such as the balance sheet, depreciation, amortization, accounts payable, etc. The user should need knowledge only of the simple arithmetic calculation.
2. Budget
The budget concept is very simple but very useful in controlling. If you compare actual data with its budget then you will get an early warning when you are over budget. The software should have features to facilitate performing budget control.
3. Scheduled Transaction
Expenditures of a household must have routine transactions to pay every month such as electricity, telephone, internet, etc. Delays in paying these regular bills will bring a very inconvenient impact. In this case, the software should be able to take apart.
4. Report
Your Revenues and expenditures for a month or a year could be presented in the table or charts to help you in analyze your transaction activity. This feature is a mandatory presence.
5. Help / Manual
In the paid software, maybe this is not a problem but not on free software. Good free software should have a help/manual clearly, and it can be understood by the user easily.
6. Password
Your financial transaction is very personal and very confidential. The software must maintain that confidentiality. The password feature will maintain the confidentiality of your personal data transaction.
7. Lifetime Planner
Lifetime Planner is the tool to make the plan for your retirement. Actually, this feature requires a little knowledge of finance such as the rate of inflation. Not all free accounting software has this feature. However, this feature is very useful for you, believe me. This feature is not mandatory but recommended feature.
