Financial management software wanted

December 6, 2010 9:43 AM

Looking for free budgeting software. There are certain things I must have. Patience for doing my own research on this is obviously not one of them.

I signed up for mint.com only to find out it fails on something major. I'm looking for a replacement. I need some specific things:

1. Can tie into my bank account (this is large domestic bank in north america)
2. I can budget a year into the future. Will settle for 6 months.
3. I can create alternate scenarios for a specified time frame
4. Savings goal setting and progress tracking
6. Can be done completely online. I don't want to use anything that forces me to use Excel.
5. Free. Also, this is on a windows machine. Mac or any mobile compatibility isn't needed.

posted by asockpuppet to Work & Money (6 answers total)

I use mint for tracking, and a google spreadsheet for budgeting. It meets all of your requirements about access, potability, etc. There are lots of templates out there that you can start from. Just ask if ypu want to see mine.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:29 AM on December 6, 2010

GNUCash has windows builds. It also has:

1. OFX and HSGI support for online banking. I pull in my Discover and Fidelity transactions this way. Local bank hasn't published details, but most large domestics are covered.
2. A budgeting feature. It's not great at using historical data to estimate your budget though.
3. I think you can create multiple budgets, but whether this helps kinda depends on what you're after.
5. Is free and open source.
6. It can also use SQL databases as a backend, so technically it can be "online."
posted by pwnguin at 10:31 AM on December 6, 2010

Try budgetsketch.com for a few of the features. More are being added on a regular basis and they have a low cost premium account feature in the works now so they can grow.
posted by iNfo.Pump at 3:31 PM on December 6, 2010

try smartypig - google that one for a specific savings account for a specific goal
posted by iNfo.Pump at 3:33 PM on December 6, 2010

Unfortunately I do not know of anything better than mint for this. What was the major failing for you?

I use mint for everything you list as wanting, with the exception of alternate scenarios. For long term budgets I set my monthly budget to rollover month to month, though I'll admit my budgeting needs are not that hard to do these days as I have a bit saved up. I'd suggest, as others above have done, using a spreadsheet for budgeting/alternate scenarios, since that gives you a lot more flexibility than Mint's built in features.

For me mint is amazing for keeping track of where all my money is coming from and going to.
posted by vegetableagony at 9:51 AM on December 10, 2010

Mint doesn't work with the bank of montreal - it does with every other major canadian bank. No ETA on resolving this with them. It forced me back to YNAB.
posted by burhan at 12:09 PM on December 22, 2010