Daniel Carrera

Updated: 3 Nov 2009.
This is a list of eight “Personal Finance” (accounting-type) programs that are entirely free, open source and mostly cross-platform. KMyMoney is not cross-platform but in the future it will be. The programs are listed in approximate order of simplicity and features.

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Summary – Other Software – Send Your Suggestions

Summary

Buddi			Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No		No
HomeBank			Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No		No
iFreeBudget	[3]		Yes	No	No	No	Basic	No	Yes		No
Grisbi			Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes		No
Money Manager EX	[4]		Yes	Yes	No	No	Basic	OK	Yes		No
jGnash	[5]		Yes	Poor	No	No	Good	Good	Yes		No
KMyMoney	[6]		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Good	Good	Yes		No
GnuCash			Yes	Yes	No	Yes	OK	OK	Yes		Yes

[1] I only list platforms where the program can be installed by non-technical users.
[2] Multiple currencies means that you can have different accounts in different currencies. Some programs advertise “multiple” currencies and what they mean is that you can pick any currency as long as all your accounts have the same one.
[3] This is a Java program, so in principle it should be possible to run it on a Mac. But the program has not been tested on Mac and personally I could not get it to run on my Intel Mac.
[4] There is an experimental version for Mac.
[5] Runs on PPC Macs, but not on the new Intel Macs unless the user is fairly technical.
[6] When KMyMoney is ported to KDE4 it will run on Windows and possibly Mac. As of Feb 2009 the port to KDE4 has not started.

Buddi

“Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background.”

Buddi may be a good choice for people who simply wish to track their income and expenses. It is very simple and very easy to use. There are only three tabs: My Accounts, My Budget and My Reports. In My Accounts you put your assets (bank accounts, cash) and liabilities (credit card, student loans, mortgage). In My Budget you put income and expenses. In My Reports you see various reports like “show me my income and expenses for last month”.

I got a good impression of Buddi. It doesn’t have any advanced features, but for people who are just starting to track their personal finances it might be a good fit. The only issue I have with it is that it can’t export to QIF. So when you outgrow this package, you’ll have a hard time moving your data to a different application. If you think you might be in this situation, I recommend you look at HomeBank.

Missing features:

• Does not support QIF import.
• Does not support stocks.
• Does not support multiple currencies (all accounts have the same currency).
• Does not have any reports besides budget.

HomeBank

A very small and simple finance package. Suitable for keeping track of your expenses or making a budget. Like most personal finance software, it organizes things into accounts, payees and categories. Features include: QIF import/export, OFX and CVS import, scheduled transactions, simple annual budget and car cost.

If your needs are simple or if you are just starting to track your finances, HomeBank is for you. A very important feature that it has is QIF export. This will allow you to migrate to another application later when your needs change. As you gain experience managing your finances you will gradually outgrow HomeBank and it is important to know that you can migrate.

Missing features:

• Does not support stocks.
• Does not support multiple currencies (all accounts have the same currency).
• Does not have any reports besides budget.

iFreeBudget

The main feature that iFreeBudget provides compared to HomeBank is support for scheduled transactions, some support for investments and a somewhat wider range of reports. In exchange for that you give up QIF import and export as well as some ease of use. However, it does offer OFX import.

Special features: iFreeBudget can download your transactions on-line, directly from your bank. I wish more programs had this feature (btw, I did not test this feature). Another feature is that your account data is encrypted, so you have to enter a password to access it.

I am concerned about the lack of QIF export. If you decide to move to a different package you will have a hard time migrating.

Support for stocks and investments is very basic, but it may be appropriate for some users. iFreeBudget does not actually track money flowing between your bank and your stocks. It simply records the fact that you have certain stocks and gives you the current market value.

The main reason I give it a low score on ease of use is transactions. The wizard is certainly “easy”, but it’s a lot of clicks just to enter your groceries. You can go to File > New > Transaction. The problem here was that iFreeBudget kept saying “Invalid account” but didn’t tell me which account was invalid or why. It took me a while to find the problem.

If you are considering iFreeBudget, I would recommend that you also look at Money Manager EX. It has a similar feature set, somewhat better, and I find it easier to use.

Missing features:

• Does not support QIF import and export.
• Does not support multiple currencies.
• Support for stocks and investments is weak.
• Support for reports is a little weak.

Grisbi

This is still a low-end product. Grisbi supports all the features I listed for HomeBank, plus it supports multiple currencies (go to Edit > Preferences). It also has income/expense reports. Grisbi can import QIF and GnuCash files, and it can export QIF and CSV files.

I was not particularly impressed with Grisbi. It is not a bad program at all, but I felt that jGnash and KMyMoney have an easier user interface even though they have more features. So why would I use Grisbi? Still, I am sure that some people will prefer Grisbi and the program definitely deserves to be mentioned.

Grisbi offers QIF export and that’s important. It means that you have the option of migrating to a different package later when your needs change.

Missing features:

• Does not support stocks.
• Support for multiple currencies is weak (e.g. no price editor).
• Support for reports is weak.
• I don’t like the UI as much as the other programs.

Money Manager EX

This is a nice program, I like it. It has a similar but somewhat better set of features than iFreeBudget and I like the user interface better.

Money Manager EX has only basic support for stocks. It can track what stocks you have, but it does not track money flowing between your bank account and your stocks. MMEX has support for multiple currencies. The system is basic (e.g. there is no “price editor”) but I suspect that it is perfectly adequate for a lot of people. MMEX also has a pretty decent collection of reports (e.g. cash flow forecasting) which should be more than enough for most people.

If you need a program that supports stocks or multiple currencies but you want something simple and basic, you should definitely try Money Manager EX.

MMEX can import QIF files, but it cannot export to QIF. This is my main concern with this program. It may be perfectly suitable for you today, but if your needs change and decide you want a different package, you may have trouble migrating. MMEX does support CSV export and I guess that’s better than nothing, but realistically, that’s not enough to migrate to a different application.

Unique features: MMEX supports encrypting the database with the account data.

Missing features:

• Does not support QIF export.
• Support for multiple currencies is weak.
• Support for stocks and investments is weak.

jGnash and KMyMoney

These are my favourites. Both programs have a very similar feature set, but very different user interface. IMHO both have a good UI, they are just different. So definitely try both. That said, please note that jGnash has poor QIF support.

Both programs support stocks and investments including stock splits, and both have strong support for multiple currencies. That includes automatic online updates of stock prices and currency exchange rates.

Although these programs have a lot more features than Grisbi, I find the user interface easier to understand. If you are used to thinking in terms of asset and liability “accounts” vs income and expense “categories”, KMyMoney will be more familiar. If you learnt double-entry bookkeeping, either will feel comfortable – both programs include income and expense in the “accounts” section.

Reports: Both have a more complete set of reports than either HomeBank or Grisbi. They include net worth, balance sheet, portfolio, investment performance, etc. KMyMoney has better reports than jGnash. KMyMoney includes more reports (e.g. tax and forecast) and its reports are more flexible (e.g. monthly or yearly net worth, net worth by institution, etc).

Importing data: jGnash can import QIF and OFX. KMyMoney can import QIF and GnuCash. A reader (Ron Price) has reported that jGnash does a poor job at importing QIF files. Ron tested QIF import on several programs on this page and jGnash was the worst. jGnash lost his categories and accounts. If you are migrating from another program, be sure to test.

Exporting data: KMyMoney can export to QIF, but jGnash cannot. This is important. It is hard to migrate away from jGnash because it doesn’t support QIF export. jGnash has a good feature set, but you might want to switch to a different program later, and this is difficult without QIF export.

Other: Both support scheduled transactions and secure file encryption.

Unique features: jGnash can export reports to PDF and it has an interesting client/server architecture. KMyMoney supports VAT, it has better documentation and a much more active community (so it’s easier to get help).

GnuCash

Probably the best known accounting package for Linux. GnuCash is a step up in the complexity/features scale. Besides “personal finance”, it provides small business accounting features like invoicing, billing, accounts payable and accounts receivable. You can setup customers, vendors and employees. I can’t say much about the business features because I don’t use them.

GnuCash supports multiple currencies and stocks, but honestly, jGnash and KMyMoney both handles those better. For this reason, I am planning to migrate from GnuCash to jGnash or KMyMoney.

GnuCash supports QIF, OFX, and HBCI import. It also has the most complete set of reports from any program in this list (cash flow, employee report, etc). It includes a financial calculation (e.g. for annuities or present value calculations).

GnuCash does not support QIF export, bug KMyMoney supports GnuCash import and QIF export, so it’s not a big problem to migrate away from GnuCash. I recently migrated from GnuCash to KMyMoney and I didn’t have any significant problems.

GnuCash doesn’t try to hide the details of double-entry bookkeeping to the same extent that the other programs do. If you have studied accounting, you might like this, but people who never learnt accounting might need some time to get used to thinking of income and expenses as “accounts”. You don’t need to know the difference between debit and credit to use GnuCash.

Other Software

Before we begin, I’d like to suggest other great resources which are not strictly “Personal Finance Applications” but should be very useful to anyone wanting to mange their finances.

• Financial calculators: Auto loan, savings plan, taxes, life insurance, you name it.
• Investor Education Fund: Unbiased finance information for Canadians.
• Spreadsheets: Google Spreadsheets and OpenOffice.org.

Send Your Suggestions

Is there a great program or feature that you think I should cover? Let me know! I do want to focus on free (no cost), cross-platform, open source software with an active community.

- Why free? Because there are many great free tools that people don’t hear about.
- Why open source? Because it’s the easiest way to make sure that the program isn’t cripple-ware, ad-ware or trial-ware.
- Why active community? Because it helps ensure over-all quality, regular updates, documentation and support.
- Why cross platform? Because that way more people can use it, and because it sucks when an application limits your choice of operating system.