Being a big Open Source advocate, I have been looking to use Linux in the finance side of my life. There are literally hundreds of financial software packages available now that will run on Linux. And with the release of Adobe Air, I can now run newer Adobe Air software using the Air platform. It’s really cool and really opens up the possibilities!
Personal Finance – You Need A Budget (YNAB)
You Need A Budget is not a free software, but it is a great program and has great support. It was written by Jesse Meechem who is a frugality expert and has added much more than a checkbook and account manager. YNAB also sports a neat budgeting interface for those who want to follows Jesse’s teachings to the letter, which is pay yourself first and live within your means. His budgeting system takes a lot of guesswork out of doing the math yourself in Excel or Google docs and the program doesn’t require updates every year like Quicken. For $60, I like it and have used it for the last 5 years. There is a free trial and I think the software costs around $60.
Personal Finance – AceMoney
AceMoney is a made for Linux application and can track your accounts, perform budgeting and do eCommerce transactions. It has a lot of reports and supports different file formats for upload, a nice feature. It also supports currencies and automatically downloads exchange rates using the Internet. AceMoney costs $30, but you can use a free 30 day trial to check it out.
Personal Finance –PLCash
PLCash by Paula Lutus is a free personal finance software written for Linux. It provides support for tracking your investments, general banking (but no online banking support) and will do reconciliations. It’s a good, free general purpose money manager software. Did I mention that it is free?
Personal Finance –GNUCash
GNUCash is a fully Open Source personal finance software. Since it is released under the GNU, you can run it on just about any flavor of Linux. It used double entry accounting method, and could be used for a small business as well as personal finance. It does multiple accounts, investments, and has a number of reports. It also can import and export multiple file formats, and has a very intuitive interface. It supports QIF, OFX and HBCI imports and TXF exports for import into a tax program.
Personal Finance –MoneyDance
MoneyDance is very full-featured software, though it is proprietary and costs $40. It does run on Linux, as well as Windows. It supports all the normal finance stuff, plus it can do online banking and bill payment. Another feature I like is the scheduled/recurring payments, which I use a lot with YNAB. One downside, MoneyDance does require Java. However, it’s not a hassle, because you can get a version with Java already packaged with the install. Just have to deal with the daily updates. (I hate that)
So there you have it, 5 ready to rock personal finance packages. Try one out, I’m sure you will like them.
