ISO Good Budgeting Software

[maryalene]

Can anyone recommend a good budgeting program for my computer? I'm looking for something that will let me enter my budget and then add my expenses as the month progresses so I can compare how our spending is going as to where it should be. I have Quicken 2001 and thought that it had something like this. However, it seems like all they have for budgeting is a chart where you can enter your monthly expenses. It doesn't let you enter any customized spending categories or enter a "master budget." Anyone know of a program that might be what I'm looking for? Thanks!

[Mom2Steen]

We just use a spreadsheet for these sorts of things. I made a template with categories and expenses and then copied it onto a different page for each month.

[kerc]

i *think* i understand what you want. and I think quicken does it. i'm on my mac right now (at home) but search your help...u'm fairly certain that I have done this on my pc (just switched from paying bills on the pc because my mac is in my living room)

[maryalene]

Hmmm.....maybe I'll have to do some more researching on my Quicken. I was pretty disappointed by what I saw so maybe I'm just missing something.

And thanks for the spreadsheet suggestion, Angela! I haven't had much experience with Excel, but this might be the time to learn if I can't find what I'm looking for.

[kerc]

quicken 2002:

banking ->budgeting
at the top of the screen that opens there are 3 tabs:
setup
budget
summary

when i choose setup

i then get a window that lets me create a budget with several options: automatic, manual or copy current (ok I have already done the budget so I have a current one, that might not appear for you). It lets you specify the dollar amounts for each category you want. I created new categories for stuff that I wanted to divide out. Pet expenses for instance.

so say you get it all set up to the totals how you want it.
then when I go to summary
I can get the graph and totals.
there's a spot where I can specify "options" (and tell it how I want which categories displayed) and I can get a monthly report. I *think* on that monthly report you can even see all your transactions divided by category.

Check out your quicken, I have been using it to do things like this for about 6 years. Each edition gets more sophistocated, of course, but I always have the cheapie version -- never the deluxe version. Honestly once I figured out what the heck i was doing, it was nice it was all automated. I regularly use excel for work and could program it to do all that, but that was much more work!

I hope that helps a little bit. basically my take home message is search the help on your quicken edition....it probably does nearly everythign you want.

[maryalene]

Thank you Kerc! Mine is slightly different than yours but I finally figured it out. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.