In fact Personal Capital is easily the best retirement planning software for Mac available. Some of these things have now been introduced in the latest version of Quicken 2018 for Mac but Banktivity still remains an excellent personal finance app for macOS. Mac users need to purchase Quicken for Mac. It also offers a free credit score and has a wide range of alert options. Personal Capital doesn’t have budgeting tools, but it lets you track all your accounts and is very well-suited to people with investments they want to track.
Whether you work for someone else or own your own small business, H.I.G. Capital’s Quicken software is a great tool for handling your finances. Quicken will let you keep track of bills, expenses, and your bank accounts, and can also help run the accounting and finances at your small company.
Quicken is highly-rated, exceptionally stable, and has been around since the 1980s, so it is universally supported by accounting firms. Quicken is trusted all over the world to handle billing systems, financial goals, and investments, but those features don’t come cheaply. Installing a new copy of Quicken can cost you anywhere from $40 to $100 USD, and the developers have been experimenting with subscription models in other countries—bad news for those of us who don’t want to pay monthly or yearly for software. Also see our article Fortunately, there are alternatives that are less expensive than Quicken, and there are even some good free choices out there. If you’ve been on the hunt for an alternative program for both personal and small business finance tracking rather than paying for and using Quicken, there’s plenty of good news for you. We’ve found the five best accounting system software packages available as alternative choices to Quicken. So whether you don’t want to pay for software, or you’re looking for something a bit easier to use or manage, we’ve got some of the best alternatives listed below.
No matter what you’re looking for, we’re confident one of these will fit both your personal use and your small business needs. GNUCash isn’t the prettiest software out there—as so many freely-licensed platforms are—but it is a great alternative to Quicken that won’t cost you a dime of cash outlay. The GNUCash app is available on Linux, Windows 10, and MacOS, making it a great choice no matter what operating system your business is built on. You can track your banking accounts, investments, your income, and expenses with GNUCash, making it a good alternative for both personal and business use, and it has a ton of features built-in—all with the promise of never costing a cent. GNUCash is currently on version 3.2. Despite being a free-license software application, GNUCash ships with a ton of features interesting to anyone looking to replace Quicken with a new program.
GNUCash’s double-entry feature prevents and protects your accounts from a computing error, with every transaction required to debit one account and credit another. Scheduled transactions keep your system running smooth and without error, and a checkbook-style register keeps things looking clean and easy to understand. All of this, combined with a easy-to-use graph and reporting system, and you’ll always be sure your transactions are correct and accurate. GNUCash’s biggest headaches come in the form of its steep learning curve. As is the case with most free software, GNUCash will take some adjusting to before you’re as confident in your financial system as Quicken’s. In our opinion, though, if you’re looking at free solutions, the move is worth it. GNUCash has a large community of users, all eager to help each other learn the software, and there are several tutorials available online as well.
Overall, GNUCash is one of our favorite alternatives to Quicken. The support and price of entry are great features, as is the available Android application that helps track your financials on the go. It’s a professional accounting app through and through, giving you peace of mind when it comes to making sure your books are balanced and your reports accurate. Definitely check this one out—with the entire suite available for free, there’s no reason not to.
Mint might not be for everyone, especially those users looking to stick with more-traditional financial software. But since Intuit (the company behind Mint) sold off Quicken in April 2016, it’s become their primary accounting application for personal use. If you’re looking to run a full-fledged business using Mint, you might want to look elsewhere on this list, because Mint specializes in tracking personal finances, accounts, loans, and credit.
But if you need something to do all that, along with a great user interface and a free tier that makes it quick and easy for most users to jump right in, Mint is one of the best apps out there. Unlike the majority of our recommended software suites, Mint is cloud-based, making it easy to store and manage your personal financial data without having to rely on one computer. When it comes to design, Mint excels: whether you’re reading and checking your accounts on a PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, it has a wonderful interface that makes it easy to read and check your information. With the freedom of a cloud-based platform, you’re free to take your information and finances anywhere you want to go.
Mint’s features won’t impress many business owners, but for personal use, it’s one of the simplest apps you can find while still retaining the simplicity of a platform designed for everyone. Mint can track every bill and payment you owe—some automatically, through your email and bank account information. You can set monthly and weekly budgets to keep track of, and even designate limits for specific categories of purchases, like food, movies, and groceries.
And one of our favorite features: Mint can keep track of your credit score, making it easy to determine how your overall financial health is doing. Like we mentioned above, Mint’s one of our favorite personal finance trackers, but for small businesses, it’s not the most fully-featured product on this list. Mint MyBusiness, an included-but-not-free feature of Mint’s overall software suite, does help make up some of the difference between Mint and Quicken, but it isn’t a perfect solution. For personal users, however, Mint’s exactly what the doctor ordered— an intuitive (no pun intended) user interface designed to easily track your payments, accounts, and loans. And for most users, the app is entirely free. Based on the name, you’ll be unsurprised to learn Personal Capital is an application that provides tools and utilities to track your personal financial data.
Unlike GNUCash and Mint, Personal Capital falls into both free and paid tiers, depending on your use case and what you’re looking for in a piece of software. Personal Capital tends to act far more like Intuit’s Mint app than GNUCash or Quicken, but that doesn’t mean professional users should entirely ignore the application. Personal Capital is the application on our list that best strikes a healthy balance between consumer and prosumer offerings.
Personal Capital primarily operates in a web client, with downloadable apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices on the App Store and Google Play, respectively. The app has three main tools: net worth tracking, investment portfolio analytics, and planning for your retirement with tips and guides on how to invest and store your money. There’s an included fee analyzer that alerts you when a hidden fee pops up in your bank account—like, for example, when you buy tickets to an event held in Canada or another foreign country. The app can offer investment advice with a built-in investment service, designed to help users with long term investing plans looking to capitalize on their current financial status. But that doesn’t mean Personal Capital leaves prosumer users out in the cold. With tools offered through their Personal Capital dashboard, you can see your cash flow, your income reports, spending reports and upcoming bills, and spending by both account and category. It isn’t quite built to handle everything a small business would need, but with some adjustment and assistance from their support staff, if you choose to try Personal Capital as a business-tool, you’ll be up and running in no time.
Personal Capital’s tools might not be for everyone, but they cover a wide-range of applications, all for the low, low price of nothing for most users. With easy-to-use mobile tools and a web-based interface, it’s easy to track your current financial status from anywhere—and you can even plan for your future, too. This is one of our favorite applications for those users looking ahead to their retirement, and since it’s free to try out, it’s a great addition to our list. YNAB, short for “You Need a Budget,” is one of our favorite personal financial trackers available for purchase right now, even though it isn’t a free application. The cheekiness and fun-minded nature of their title doesn’t end there though—this is an app that makes controlling your money fun and easy to do.
YNAB might not be a perfect app for professional users looking for a Quicken alternative, but for personal users of Quicken looking for something easier to use, YNAB is one of our favorite choices. The general premise of YNAB, according to their own staff, functions on four simple rules that they apply to their own economics. First, every dollar in your account needs a job. With their software, you can assign your financials to separate budgets, making sure that you aren’t overspending or wasting money because “you have additional funds.” Whether your money is budgeted towards weekly expenses, monthly bill payments, or simple savings, you’ll know exactly what every dollar in your account is doing before you even slide your debit card. Second, YNAB encourages you to embrace your bills, by helping you plan for those payments ahead of time.
Third, YNAB encourages you to accept that, sometimes, payments spring up out of nowhere. And that’s okay. Instead of faulting you like some other financial applications will, YNAB gives you the thumbs-up for emergencies and unexpected priorities. And finally, YNAB pushes you to “age” your money, so you aren’t spending the cash you earned yesterday, but the cash you earned last month. This take on financial planning is a lot different than what we’ve seen from other methods and applications, but it doesn’t stop there. YNAB offers classes on economic freedom ranging from five minutes to an entire thirty-four day trial on how the app works.
Unfortunately, this is where we confirm that, yes, YNAB doesn’t come free. Though you do get that free trial for just over a month, the entire application will run you about $50 a year. YNAB’s own marketing states that users typically save on average over $3,300 a year, but it isn’t a cheap application upfront. And of course, YNAB is great for single or family use, but if you’re looking to use the app for small-businesses, you’ll want to check out some of the other offerings on this list. YNAB version 4 is available on Mac and Windows, and the fully-redesigned YNAB is available in browsers on any platform, with clients for both Android and iOS also available from their respective app stores.
If you’re looking to save money on Quicken’s financial software, Moneyspire probably isn’t the app for you. It’s the most expensive application on our list by far. For us to recommend it at the price, you have to assume that Moneyspire is doing something right—and they are. Moneyspire’s easy-to-use application can track all of your accounts and transactions with exceptional detail and quality.
Both your spending and income accounts are tracked too, so you always know what’s going on with your account information. Moneyspire also offers bill reminders, report and chart creation, reconcile statements, and balance forecasting tools, all for both business and personal use.
You can split transactions (something Mint can’t do), set budgets, and even track additional currencies if you’re doing business in foreign countries. Moneyspire’s features make it one of the best Quicken alternatives for business users if you’re willing to pay for the privilege of using the app, but we found the desktop app—available on Windows and Mac —to be simple enough for non-prosumer users as well. Though the design of their app isn’t quite as fun as, say, YNAB’s app, the app is clean, with simple graphics and a spreadsheet-like layout making it easy to read and use. The app is also available on iOS through a companion app, which isn’t quite as fully-featured but is great for tracking your finances on the go. Unfortunately, as of this writing, there isn’t an Android app available for download—we’d love to see that in an upcoming software fix, but we also aren’t holding our breath. Moneyspire’s featureset makes it a great alternative to Quicken, but the cost could certainly be a barrier of entry for some users.
And while it’s one of our top picks for pro and business users, those looking for a less-complex experience would be better off with either YNAB or Mint. Still, for the right audience, it doesn’t get much better than Moneyspire. I currently use both Quicken Deluxe AND Personal Capital.
I need to use both because, for me at least, of two very good reasons. Quicken’s main, but not only, disadvantage is cost. This was borderline acceptable before; now, since becoming a subscription service, it has crossed that line. Personal Capital is great in the investment area when it comes to tracking one’s portfolio against a few major indicies, and everything is done semi-automatically. On the negative side for Personal Capital, and the reason for my still using Quicken, is that it is virtually worthless come tax time. Customizing Income and expense categorization is very cumbersome and splitting categories for transactions is not possible. Bottom line: Personal Capital is superior to Quicken for many things investment related, but so lacking in accurately monitoring income and expense categories that it is unacceptable as a standalone replacement.
That is the reason why I am on this website today—still looking for a Quicken replacement.
Read on for our detailed analysis of each app Gone are the days of waiting for a printed bank account statement to drop through your letterbox, or making a visit to your local branch to move some money between accounts. We now have more control of our money than ever before. But that convenience could, for some, mean disorganisation, reckless spending, borrowing and debt. Applying poor money management techniques to your personal accounts is one thing, but doing the same to your small business funds could be disastrous. And while we can't help you to be sensible – that's on you – we have selected ten personal finance software solutions that can make a difference to the way you think and act with your capital.
Take your pick of these services and use them to stay on top of your money. A good overview will help you control your spending, grow your balance, and ensure you've always got enough in reserve to keep the taxman happy. If you're looking to keep your business books with a bit more detail, check out our guide to the. Dashboard is outdated Price: $74.99 (around £57) per year Available for Windows, MacOS Probably the biggest name in personal accounting, is well-aged and feature-packed and – whisper it – starting to feel a bit out of date. So much so that parent company Intuit recently sold the rights to the software to a private equity firm in order to concentrate on its more modern properties like Mint.com and TurboTax. The latest version of Quicken released this year now includes 5GB of secure online backup with Dropbox, free Quicken Bill Pay and expanded custom reporting. At the time of writing, the company is also offering a lower price for the first year of $44.99 (around £35) instead of $74.99 (£57) for those who sign up to the Premier plan.
The Premier edition is perfect for managing personal finances, business accounts and investments in one place provided you're in the US – it's not so hot for UK users, being geared more towards American finance options. It neatly links transactions between your accounts – so transferring from savings into a current account is one entry, with a 'from' and a 'to' rather than a pair – and provides various budgeting and prediction tools to help you stay on track. Click to get. Not suitable for those outside the US Price: Free, fee-based Available for on desktop and mobile primary function is to track your investments, assets and savings, rather than specifically looking after your current accounts. Are your assets working for you? Are you on course for a comfortable retirement? What can you do to be better off?
Plug everything in and you'll be able to see the big picture of your finances. Personal Capital offers specific advice and statistics based on your goals and your current standing, but access to human financial advisors is where the company makes its money. While anyone is welcome to use its website, you can only access advisory services if you have an account minimum of $250,000 (around £190,000), and there's an annual fee (of between 0.49% and 0.89%) to pay if you want your assets managed – this is lower than most financial advice services. UK customers will probably want to steer clear – Personal Capital is geared towards US investments like IRAs and the 401k – but for those State-side this could be the perfect way to grow your wealth. Reporting options are limited Price: Free/From $1.99 (£1.50) per month Available online An online service that's not slathered in effects and colours, does a good job of presenting your finances in a clean, professional manner. It cutely brags about the fact that it's currently helping its users manage almost two trillion dollars in funds, so it's got a solid user base behind it.
You don't have to give Buxfer your exact banking details if you're uncomfortable doing so – you can opt for offline manual syncing with your bank account instead – but if you do trust it, there's a layer of high-level encryption to protect your data and the company is regularly audited. We like its budgeting tools best of all – the visual reporting is very strong, and the fact that it doesn't force you into predefined categories and instead allows you to tag expenditures however you see fit means Buxfer should fit nicely into most people's banking lives. The free version gets you five budgets, accounts and bill reminders, the Pilot version ($1.99 per month - around £1.50) adds on automatic tagging and bank syncing, the Plus version ($3.99 per month - around £3) gives you unlimited budgets, and the Pros version ($4.99 per month - around £3.80) includes online payments, advanced forecasts and more besides. Limited features Price: $83.99 (around £64) per year Available on desktop and mobile Just in case you need to be told explicitly what to do, along comes - short for You Need A Budget. Because, hey, if you don't want to spend every single penny you have and more, you absolutely do need one. And perhaps you have more money than you thought?
YNAB's primary mission, as you might expect, is to help you curb overspending and avoid living from paycheck to paycheck. Stick to the program, temper your spending appropriately, and eventually YNAB will see you spending last month's money rather than that which you've just earned.
It's quick to install, supports the majority of transaction information downloadable from banks, and appropriately configures itself for personal or small business use by changing its monetary categories depending on your needs. If you get off track, YNAB – which is reasonably forgiving and understanding for a bit of software – will tell you what you need to do to get back to where you need to be.
You'll have to make sacrifices, but if it's guidance you need, this sets itself apart from the likes of Quicken. Doesn't support account tracking Price: From $4 (around £3) per month Available on desktop and mobile There are various philosophies of budgeting.
One time-honoured technique is the envelope budgeting system: splitting your funds, as they arrive, into various envelopes marked for specific purposes, never dipping into an envelope to spend cash on anything other than its designated use. You don't need savings to start budgeting this way, just willpower and, er, envelopes. Without a whole host of bank accounts you're not going to be able to apply this technique effectively to digital money, but using is a good way to at least put a representation of your sectioned-off income in front of you.
Designate an envelope for working capital or savings and you can grow your personal wealth or business funds surprisingly quickly. Anything you don't spend in an envelope stays there, giving you more to play with in your next pay cycle. There's no longer a free version of Mvelopes (although you can try it for free with a 30-day trial) but the basic plan for $4 (£3) a month should be adequate for most people, offering management of unlimited accounts and envelopes. It's intuitive to use, and there are mobile apps for Android and iOS, essential for taking a peek inside your envelopes when it comes time to pull any money out of them. Can be a bit tricky to navigate Price: £35 (around $46) Available on web, desktop or to download for Windows UK readers will be pleased to know that unlike most accounting software, this is produced by a British company – not that other apps are terrified of good old Pound Sterling or anything, but it's slightly easier to put your financial trust in home-grown software, and its support for data from UK banks is very strong. Is more than happy to support worldwide currencies, and in fact does a solid job if you're working simultaneously with more than one, offering balances in multiple currencies rather than rounding them off into a single total. It's also good for keeping track of everything, allowing you to scan receipts with its mobile app and import them later on.
It's not the prettiest software around, and it's slightly more awkward to use than many of its more refined cousins, although Banktree does produce very neat reports which you can break down by time, or by payee. It may be worth experimenting with the free trial before you choose to invest in this one. Easy to use Price: Free Available for iOS and Android This iOS/Android app doesn't try to reinvent the banking world or offer anything truly ground-breaking, but it is perhaps one of the most useful money management tools out there. Hook up every one of your UK bank and credit card accounts and you'll be able to see each of your balances in a single place with a single login. That in itself is enough for us to recommend it.
But there's more – will track your spending, offering you an overall pie chart depicting your spending on loans, consumables, transport and the like. There's an at-a-glance overall balance, showing exactly how much money you have available across all of your accounts, and you can compare this to the previous month's figure to show how well you've been managing your funds. That's a great motivator. It's super-safe, too: Money Dashboard locks down your login with an equivalent level of security to that of your bank, and it's completely read-only – your money isn't going anywhere. No Android app Price: $49.99 (roughly £38) Available for MacOS, Windows and Linux Made primarily for Mac users (but also out on Windows and Linux), is a desktop money management package with a very neat single-window interface. Load it up and you'll get an instant view of your finances, upcoming bills, recent expenses and more.
Click an item in the left hand sidebar and the main content changes to reflect it. Its reporting features are quite strong if not spectacular to look at, and one of Moneydance's most useful sections is its account register.
If you're old-school and once managed a cheque book, this operates on a very similar principle. There's also an iOS app for logging transactions on the go, which later syncs with the software on your desktop. Unfortunately for UK users, Moneydance doesn't support the connection protocols used by UK banks, so you'll need to download your transaction history manually to keep on top of it and revert to your bank's own app to move money around. US users, however, are well covered. Have to subscribe to make the most of it Price: Free Available for iOS, Android The stuffiness of money management can negatively affect some. We've certainly been in the position of not wanting to even look at a spreadsheet full of depressing numbers. Boils it all down to a series of circular pots – drag coins from your current account, and you can allocate them to all of your spending needs.
We wouldn't exactly say it makes money management fun, but it's cute at least. Coinkeeper is free to download and try, although you'll need to shell out for the $1.79 (roughly £1.40) per month subscription option to really make the most of it and budget effectively. It's brilliant for keeping track of your expenses, and don't be fooled by its frivolous looks – you'll be able to see at a glance where your money is going, and export your data in a CSV file to use in virtually any other finance app or spreadsheet. Layout can be messy initially Price: Free Available online Provided by This Is Money – an offshoot of the Daily Mail – is both a good way to keep track of the stocks and shares you own, and a great way to see if you'd make it as a market investor without risking any capital. Updated every few minutes, it contains info on all London-listed shares and UK-based funds, and even lets you track money put into alternative assets like wine and art. When your individual investments are set up, be they real or virtual, you'll be able to see what top brokers are saying about the stocks you've picked, get an overview of exactly where your money is allocated, and track the performance of your stocks over time.
Basically everything you'd need for a play portfolio. If you're funnelling a lot of cash into shares though, you might be better off employing the services of a broker or investment manager and using this tool only for at-a-glance monitoring.