Designing a personal finance app

Question

As a side project, I am looking at creating a personal finance program. I have tried using Money and Excel to keep track of my finances but have either been unhappy with the stability or lack of features. My question is this, what tools have you used to keep track of your personal finances? Here are some requirements I would like to achieve:

1. Stable
2. Can automatically download data from banks for free
3. Customizable enough to easily create a total balance from selected accounts

I was thinking of using a python script, but really haven't thought it out further than that. What interfaces are available to automatically download account information?

EDIT: So it seems like the general consensus that there are many open source tools are out there which can be modified to suit your needs. Also, many people seem to be happy with using Quicken if they are willing to spend some money. As far as online record tracking, mint seems to be the most popular choice.

The only problem I have with using the online systems such as mint or yodlee, is that there is no easy way to "approve" the bank transactions so that you can check off your receipts and see if they match the charges.

Answer 1

The most reliable accounting application that I've ever used was Quicken v2 that I bought in 1992. I used it for 11 years through to 2003 and never once did it crash or corrupt data or do anything unusual and performed its function perfectly and simply. One of the features that it did not have (if memory servers me correctly) was downloading from banks. However, if you want to see a solid, full featured and elegantly designed piece of accounting software to use as a template for yours then I'd suggest that you try and track down that version of Quicken. It was designed for Windows 3.11.

Answer 2

Perhaps instead of starting from scratch and attempting to re-create tens of thousands of man hours of programming work, you could try some open source alternatives. If one of them is close enough but missing a feature or two, you could add it yourself.

Here's a list of 50 open source financial tools.

(I haven't used any of these. I use Quicken myself, and like it a lot.)

Answer 3

Have you checked out Mint? On the 'roll your own' front, I think you will find that banks don't have a consistent API for downloading your records - each one has their own format.

Answer 4

Lifehacker has just started a rundown on the online apps.

I personally like Mint.

Answer 5

I used MS Money for around 12 years. Eventually, I realized that all I was doing was correcting the spelling of store names after downloading statements from the web. Basically, the banks, credit card companies, and brokerages do an excellent job of keeping track of everything for you in real-time.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from moving forward with your project, but if you're asking about what we're looking for in a financial tool - that's pretty much my answer.

Perhaps someone (like yourself) could build an app that isn't just a glorified checkbook (like Quicken and Money), but more of a convenient way to aggregate all that data from the banks into one screen (on the web, maybe?). Nothing too fancy - just a way for me to know how much money I don't have.

Answer 6

MS Money 2002 is what got me started on financial software and saving and paying attention to income vs. outlays, so I'll always have a great soft spot in my heart for it.

However, I've used Wesabe and more recently, Mint as online tools that integrate all my banking for me.

Mint lets me track my checking, savings, mortgage and retirement accounts, and recently started allowing customization of categories. It also checks my credit card interest versus other offers (and savings / checking) to see where I can save money. Of course it's got all the reports so I can see how much I spent on groceries versus new monitors.

I love it, and because of that, I'd avoid reimplementing the wheel if I were you - at least check it out for a couple of weeks.

Answer 7

I use an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet to manage my little investment company. I had originally used Quickbooks when I ran Windows and attempted to use GnuCash when I switched to Ubuntu but, to be honest, I didn't need that level of power.

Since I'm really only entering data from statements into a double-entry system, I wrote macros to import the data from the bank files and also to create a balance sheet, P&L and detailed transaction reports more than adequate for the accountant at the end of the year.

It does everything I need to do except track the state of individual investments but that's not required for accounting purposes - I track that for my own purposes in another spreadsheet.

Both my banks allow me to download QIF files for my transactions and I have macros to import that.

I'm pretty well done with specialized software for accounting, I'd rather have the control than wait around for the features I need to be added to GnuCash. Don't get me wrong, it's a good app, but my wife (I'm sure she's right because (1) she's a CA and most importantly (2) she's my wife :-) says it has some annoying limitations.

Answer 8

OFX is a standard used by many banks for communicating directly with them.

iBanks for OS X just added this functionality and it works very well.

Of all my various accounts, I think 90% had OFX support, and I now download direct into iBank just like Quicken and Money.

Answer 9

I have been using Yodlee MoneyCenter and it works fine for me. It automatically syncs my data from the bank, categorizes my transactions, sends out email/sms alerts on overspending etc..,

Answer 10

Funny, I'm currently working on my own as well. Used Quicken & excel in the past. But I've had the same issues with that as you. I like the ability to keep all my finances/usernames/passwords on my own pc. Call me paranoid but I'm not a huge fan of the online versions. My own setup is maybe halfway done, which means I'm about a year out from completing a first run of it. It's been pretty interesting to work though.

Building off your list, here's what I think a financial app should do:

rename/categorize based off of what you've already set up* (this is where i find most others lacking)

show you where you'll be in x years at the current rate* (do any of them currently do this?)

see how future purchases or events will fit into your budget* (i havent seen this either)

as well as all the normal bells and whistles.

Answer 11

This is an older thread but I just stumbled upon it.

@dr_pepper if you use Yodlee MoneyCenter, you can click on transactions and add meta data to it to note whether you have reconciled this yourself or not. It's a bit of a hack but you could re-purpose one of the checkboxes (i.e. "Reimbursable") to use that when you have reconciled the transaction. The problem is there is no easy way to search for transactions that have not been checked reimbursable. However, there is a visual notification beside each transaction to tell you if extra meta data has been added.