Since long time, I was wondering where my money goes. I always run out of budget at the end of every month. And I could not track where all my money goes. So I decided to use a personal money manager. After some Googling, I found a wonderful software called Money Manager Ex. This is a lightweight personal money manager software which is available free of cost.
Features
Money Manager provides some nice features. Below is the summary of the features, I like.
Multiple Bank Account: You can manage multiple bank accounts. It supports two type of accounts - saving/checking and investment. Your investment accounts automatically becomes stock accounts. But it would be nice if I could get third account type - credit account, for my credit cards. However, you can manage credit cards by pretending them to be saving account and entering the opening balance (i.e. outstanding amount) in negative.
Transactions: With Monery Manager Ex, you can enter tentative transactions. I enterd tentative transactions for the month in advance. Then you can categorize the transactions as reconciled, void or follow up.
Repeated Transactions: You can enter repeated transactions and set the frequency, date etc. This saves lots of data entry time.
Transaction Splitting: This is a very useful feature of Money Manager. You can split a transaction in multiple transactions. I enter a lum sump amount at the beginning of the month for home needs. Later on I can split this transaction into different categories. This helps me to manage my budget and always provides me a birds eye view of my finance.
Budgeting: This software allows you to enter budget for a year. Later on you can compare budget with the actual expenses.
Reports: Money Manager Ex provides a handful of useful reports. Some of the reports, I use are:
Where The Money Goes
To Whom The Money Goes
Where The Money Comes From
Budget Performance
Income vs Expenses
Custom Reports: If you are not satisfied with the reports provided with the software, you can use custome SQL reports. This allows you to write SQL statement to generate the report. This is a very noice feature for a developer like me.
Database: Money Manager uses SQLlite database. You can do anything with the database using any SQlite tool like SQLite2008 Pro Enterprise Manager or SQLite 3 Explorer.
Carry Your Money Manager With You
The best feature of the Money Manager is that you can carry it with you. The software is very carefully designed not to use any windows dependency like windows registry or any thing else. You don't need to install the software on your machine. Keep the software in a pen drive and use it any where, at home or on your office laptop or in a cyber cafe etc.
Related Posts:
Money Manager Ex - SQL Query: to create category-wise expense report.
Need any help on using money manager? Put a comment and I will be happy to help you out.
3 comments:
Thanks yanesh,
I'm in same position like you. Just start using MME, but can't get into the database. your link on SQLite2008Pro is very useful option. Nice post.
I would however like to see password functions & data base encryption to ensure security.
This is great! I currently use Microsoft Money, but can see myself using this in the future. Password protection and encryption is all that's missing. I like the small footprint; a little over 4.5 MB compared to 113 MB for MS Money. I don't need or want alot of bells and whistles just to balance my checking account. Money Manager Ex fits the bill nicely.
Post a Comment