Open Source Budgeting Software
You may be interested in using your personal computer to help manage your budget and personal finances. However, before you consider a commercial software package, you might want to consider one of the many of the open source, free applications that are available, many of which have similar features to the commercial apps. All of these apps are also cross-platform, meaning that they will run on many different computers.
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Gnucash
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Gnucash is a free and powerful open source application that is capable of handling personal and small business budgeting and financial management. Gnucash uses a true double-entry accounting method, which requires every entry in one account to have an offsetting entry in another account of a different type. While double entry accounting is a staple in business bookkeeping, it may be too complicated for many personal users that are unfamiliar with the double-entry system. But if you are up to this challenge, or you are a business user who needs the flexibility, Gnucash is an option for you.
Buddi
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Buddi is designed to make personal finance accounting as simple as possible. Featuring a tabbed interface and the ability to categorize transactions, it has a strong feature set that will help you manage your budget and finances to see exactly where your money is going, and how well you adhere to your budget. You can create four types of credit (or asset) accounts and five types of debit (or liability) accounts. Enter transactions into Buddi by clicking on the budget category, and the app takes care of the reporting and graphs for you. Some of the execution seems a bit awkward, with no context menus or drag-and-drop support.
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dsBudget
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The dsBudget software gives you the capabilities to separate all of your expenses into categories, such as "mortgage" or "food." It allows you to separate your income into these categories before the month begins, then it subtracts your expenses from these accounts, and can give you a running total throughout the month of what you have spent in each category and how much is left. It stores all of your data locally on a hard drive or USB drive. Even though it uses your web browser as the interface, the data is not stored online, and the application does not access the Internet.
Other Options
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You can track your personal budget quite effectively using a spreadsheet. There is a slight learning curve if you want to design your own budget system, but the flexibility may make up for it, and you can use an open source spreadsheet application. Open Office is an application that you download and keep on your machine. The spreadsheet functions work similar to Microsoft Excel. You can also use Google Docs, which stores your spreadsheets on their server. This allows you to access the file anywhere that you have Internet access. Both solutions have budget templates available at no charge.
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