budgeting expenses, APP or spreadsheet

Mint.com

YNAB App. It syncs with your checking account and debt accounts. Keeps everything in sight. Really easy to use.

You do not have to manually enter expenses. Most banks/credit card companies that have on line banking let you download your expense data.

I just download the data into a csv file and then open it in EXCEL. I usually add category and subcategory columns and assign the expenses that way. You can then use the subtotal feature to add up the categories. You have to sort it first.

Downloading into Quicken or other software is usually an option. We have used Quicken but I got tired of the seemingly constant upgrades and went the spreadsheet route. And it was much more complicated than I needed it to be.

For budgeting, I also just use a spreadsheet but that is mostly to just make sure we don't get an overdraft at the bank. I don't really compare the budget to the actual expenses very much. I guess if I needed to know exactly how the actual expense compared to the budget I would need to get something more sophisticated. Or, if you need a more disciplined approach to managing your money I can see how one of the budgeting tools could help.

Going to try YNAB again


I really liked the idea, approach, and layout.


But it fell apart because I couldn’t manually transact everything. It was actually an intended design feature to not account sync.

Classifying transactions is one thing, but missed/forgotten small transactions tended to add up.

Trying again with this new version.

LINK

Wave Apps syncs your accounts and you can categorize them from there. It's free and you should be able to operate it as an individual or as a business.

Personally, I do all of my budgeting and expenses in Excel. It's the best method for me to keep track of everything and gives me to freedom to run whatever numbers I want.