Is the latest version of the very popular and extremely effective budgeting software known as You Need a Budget. YNAB has always been built around the very effective “envelope” budgeting methodology and even takes it a few steps further. The software is solid, the budgeting method is sound, and you’ll be hard pressed to find another budgeting program with a more loyal user base.
Read on for all the nitty gritty details on YNAB 3.Note: this review was last updated on version 3.6.4 of the software. Getting Started with YNAB 3 After a very simple download from the, you simply follow the steps to install the software on your computer. Both Windows and Mac users will find that the process is quite quick with a few clicks of the mouse. Upon starting up the application, you are presented with this screen: Being that I’ll be doing this walkthrough from a new user point of view, I chose the “Create a brand new budget file.” Those that have used YNAB previously (for example, on a different computer) can open their existing budget file to start right where they left off. Next you’re introduced to the main YNAB screen and you’re given the option to go through a tutorial of the software: If you’re new to YNAB and its methodology, I highly recommend going through the short tutorial as it will help quite a bit. I was actually fairly impressed with the clarity and helpfullness of the tutorial.
It walks you through how to create an account, set budgets, etc. If you’re hungry for more guidance, YNAB has plenty for you.
At the end of the tutorial you’ll see links to the “Get Started Guide,” some free online classes, and video tutorials. And if that isn’t enough, you can always access the very in-depth help directory and see answers to commonly asked questions in the bottom left portion of the YNAB screen. As a side note: this help directory isn’t like most other help files that are difficult to navigate and boring to read. These are actually extremely helpful and easy to understand. They even have illustrations throughout to help you learn quicker and easier.
Below are some screenshots of the items mentioned above the guide. YNAB = Excellent Support and Help for Users This reminds me of a point I’d like to briefly make. YNAB does an extremely good job of customer support through many different means.
A quick trip to their and the and you’ll see that they offer a myriad of help options including:. Live Online Classes (free) – Introduction to YNAB and classes on various other topics. Recorded Classes (free) – Covers the basics to get you on your feet in no time. YNAB Online Tutorials – A whole slew of video tutorials explaining how to do just about anything you want. Email Support – And they are actually quick at responding.
YNAB Forums – A very active and very loyal community willing to help anyone who has a question. Much moreI think you get my drift. I’m impressed by the amount of help available to those starting out with the software. My Experience with YNAB 3 YNAB has done an excellent job in their help and “getting started” documentation, so I’ll try to focus more on the features of the software rather than the detailed “how-to” so as to avoid duplicating efforts and information (while still giving you a good view of what has to offer). As you’ll see throughout this YNAB 3 review, YNAB has done a good job of walking you through the software.
It has pop up boxes that ask you the right questions at the right time and that tell you important information to help you understand how the software and the (likely new to you) budgeting methodology works. An Overview of the YNAB 3 Screen Here’s a screenshot of the first screen you’re given in YNAB 3 — you are defaulted to one of your Accounts screens. (click to enlarge): On the left is a Budget tab, tabs for all of your Accounts, and the Reports tab. We’ll go through each one in detail throughout this review, but here’s a brief summary: Budget: The budget screen is where you allocate your funds to your categories, monitor your spending/savings, and more. This is the real heart of the YNAB system.
Accounts: This is where your “physical” bank accounts reside. Doc vs docx file format. While one of your accounts is selected you can see, edit, add, import, schedule, and search your transactions. You can also now see your working balance on this screen. Reports: The Reports tab provides a number of a great little reports including: spending trends, spending totals, and net income/net worth. As mentioned earlier, you’ll also notice that in the bottom-left corner of YNAB 3 you’ll see a Help tab. This has resources for the most commonly asked questions as well as access to the full Help directory.
A side note: to save space, the Help tab is also collapsible. Another space saver you’ll find is that you can collapse a portion of the left sidebar by clicking on arrows shown in the third screenshot below. YNAB 3’s Budget Tab We’ll start with the real bread and butter of YNAB: The Budget. Here’s YNAB 3’s Budget screen (click to enlarge): At the left of the main budget window are all of your budget categories. You can think of these as your spending “envelopes.” Like any quality personal finance software should allow, these categories and sub-categories are completely customizable. You can add to or delete them to you hearts content. You can even drag and drop to change their order or choose to hide the ones you don’t want to see.
Splitting Transactions Moneywell Personal Finance Software 2018
The main portion of the budget window is taken up by 3 columns: each month’s set budget amounts ( Budgeted), actual spending ( Outflows), and what’s left over for each category ( Category Balance): At the top of each month is a tab showing how much you have available to budget for that month. At the bottom is shown how much is rolling over to the next month to be budgeted. You can choose to collapse or expand this tab to show how these figures are calculated. Budgeting in YNAB 3 I’ll spare you the details on how exactly to do everything in the Budget, but suffice it to say that does an excellent job of making it extremely easy to set your monthly budget, know exactly how well you’re doing throughout the month, and see how your spending and saving will effect your finances in the future.
Setting Your Budget The leftmost (Budgeted) column is where you can quickly allocate your funds for each of your spending categories. According to Rule #1, you’ll allocate all of your “ Available to Budget” funds until it reaches zero (giving every dollar a job). If you’d like, you can also use YNAB 3’s Quick Budget feature which automatically fills your budget cells for you. You can tell it to use last month’s budget numbers, last month’s spending, the average spending that you’ve had in the past, or total scheduled outflows this months. If you want to get your budget done quickly or just want a starting point to work from, this is a quick and easy way to do it. I, however, recommend giving each category at least some thought each month so you can find areas where you can spend less and save more.
See What You’ve Spent As you enter your transactions throughout the month, YNAB 3 automatically incorporates that spending data into your budget screen so you can see exactly what you’ve spent in each category and where you’ve spent it. The middle column (Outflows) shows you what you’ve spent from each category. And for those times when the words “Did I really spend that much on XYZ already?!” slip out of your mouth each week, you can see a breakdown of your spending by simply clicking on the spent amount: And by the way, if you click on a transaction, you’re taken right to that transaction in the Accounts tab to view it in more detail or edit it. A nice touch.
Working With Balances The Category balances column shows you the balance that you have for each of your categories. If you’ve not yet spent the amount that you budgeted, you have a positive figure. If you’ve spent too much, you have a red, negative figure. Essentially, this is the column that tells you if you can buy that sweet new shirt or not.
Also, if at the end of the month, you have a positive balance in a category, that amount rolls over to the next month, building up your balance. This is how you can save money for irregular expenses. This may be the coolest part of envelope budgeting. YNAB 3’s Accounts Tab As previously mentioned, the Account tabs are home to the information for all of your bank transactions. Under the Budget tab, you will find a smaller tabs for each of the bank accounts that you’ve added.
You can display or hide any account that you wish. (Click below image to enlarge.) The main window to the right of the account tabs is the Transaction Window, containing all the information for each of your bank transactions. By default the transactions window shows the date, payee, category, memo, outflow (debit), inflow (credit), and a running balance. It also allows you to mark the transaction as cleared or give it a colored flag of your choice.
A great feature of YNAB 3 is that you can customize which columns appear in the this transaction window. If you don’t want a Memo column, you don’t have to have it. Want a Check Number column?
Adding Transactions in YNAB 3 Adding transactions in is extremely simple. You have two options to add your transactions, you can either 1. Add your transactions manually or 2. Import them from your bank.
Add Transactions Manually This is one area that I tend to be a little picky in. Being that my wife and I usually add our transactions manually (it helps me to feel the influence/pain of my spending more), the ease and speed of data entry is pretty important to me. I’ve found with many software applications that it takes too many clicks of the mouse, that I’m unable to use only the keyboard, or that it’s just plain tedious.
Fortunately, this is also one area where YNAB 3 does especially well. Every piece of data in your transaction can be entered without every having to leave your keyboard to touch your mouse. Also, the fields begin to auto fill as you start to type your data. This all may seem like small things, but trust me, it’s little details like this that cut your budgeting time WAY down and that a good piece of software certainly won’t overlook. Thank you YNAB for paying such attention to detail. No Direct Connection With My Bank? Some people want their budgeting software to connect directly to their bank and download the transaction for them.
While this can be quite handy, YNAB hasn’t developed this functionality because they say it promotes a “set it and forget it” mentality that is actually counter-productive to your budgeting. And you know what? I completely agree! It only takes my wife and I a few minutes each week during our weekly budgeting session to input transactions. And the act of doing so truly helps you to “feel” the act of spending more (which is hard in today’s world where we just swipe a debit card for all purchases). Search in YNAB 3 One of the great features of is the ability to perform very intelligent searches within your transactions. By clicking in the search box at the top right of the application, the screen turns from green to blue, indicating that you’re in search mode (again, a simple but brilliant design).
YNAB 3’s search is quite robust. As you begin to type, it starts offering options for you to search.
For example, when you start typing in “gr” it shows you payee’s that have “gr in the name, categories with “gr”, a ‘gr’een flag, and on and on. You can also include multiple parameters in your search. For example, in the screen shots below, I searched in the Groceries category, with the Payee name “Costco” and after the date of 12/13/09. It gave me the one transaction that matched all of those requirements. This can be extremely powerful and helpful if you’re looking for specific transactions.
This is one of the many details that is setting YNAB 3 apart from it’s competitors. Very intuitive and very powerful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to look for a transaction or been trying to figure out why my balances were off and this feature helps me find what I’m looking for in seconds. Other Nifty Tools and Tricks There are a few other well thought out details that I thought I’d briefly highlight here as well. Splitting Transactions: An absolute essential item for any good budgeting software is the ability to split your bank transaction into multiple budget categories.
I may, for example, buy food (Groceries) and an oil filter (Auto Repair) at Walmart in the same transaction. YNAB 3 allows you to quickly and easily split those transactions with a few clicks (it even calculates the remaining amount for you as you add categories). YNAB 3’s Reports Tab For those that are looking for some nice reporting functionality, YNAB 3 does a pretty good job. There are other programs that may provide more in-dept reporting, but YNAB does a great job of organizing your data in some pretty helpful graphs: One thing that I really like about YNAB’s reports (that differs from many other software applications), is that you are not only shown a visual graph of your data, but you can simultaneously see the data in a table as well.
That table serves two purposes: 1. To give you easy access to the data and 2. To serve as a selection tool and key to your graph. Each item in your graph shows the corresponding item highlighted in the same color in the table. You can also click any item in the table to “draw” or un-draw that item in your graph. See the screenshots below for a clearer picture. As you would expect, you can change the date range of your reports by dragging the date slider (or its ends) below the graph to cover the dates you want.
Also, the size of the table and graph can be easily changed with a simple drag of the mouse. I’ll briefly go over each report that YNAB offers: Spending Trends The Spending Trends report is a very useful graph and table that shows you how your spending has changed over time for each category that you choose. Here’s a screenshot: You can select (in the table) any master or sub-category that you want to be drawn on the graph.
This can be helpful if you have an outlier that is skewing your graph (as shown in the screen shots below). Simply deselect that category to take it off the graph. YNAB 3 also offers 3 “Quick Graph” options where you can choose to graph the top 5 master categories, the top 5 sub categories, or all master categories. One last note: I also like that they’ve included the percentage numbers next to the items in the table. It’s light enough that it’s not distracting, but there in case you’d like to know.
Spending Totals The Spending Totals report gives you that often seen pie graph showing your distribution of total spending for your different categories: You can now drill down into each master category by clicking on it’s piece of the pie. You can then see the sub category spending for that particular master category. A nice touch.
Net Income/Net Worth The Net Income/Net Worth report is a handy one indeed. It helps you to see a quick view of your cash flow and wealth accumulation over time. Here’s a screenshot: By default, your Income, Expenses and Net Worth are drawn on the graph. You can quickly see how money has flowed into your life, how it’s flowed out, and how that’s effected your overall net worth. For example, in the screenshot above, you can see that we sold a car in July and bought a (less expensive) car in August. You can also choose to include Net Income, Total Assets, and Total Liabilities in the graph as well. Also, all of the above reports can be exported in a.csv format so you can play with the data in Excel as much as you’d like.
You can also print the report as well. The Book: “You Need a Budget” If you’d like a very thorough, entertaining, and encouraging explanation of the budgeting methodology behind YNAB, you can purchase a hard copy of the book called “You Need a Budget” for $10. If you don’t mind reading it on a computer, the whole book can be absolutely free. It’s a quick read (only 50 pages) that teaches you the why behind the methodology so you’ll understand the why behind how the software works. They’ve made the book convincing, outlining in great detail the benefits of this Four Rule methodology. YNAB 3’s Price and Free Trial YNAB 3’s retail price is, a reasonable price to pay for such high quality software.
And with the average YNAB user saving around $300 in the first month, it’s well worth the purchase price. For those wanting to test drive the software before purchase, YNAB offers a to let you see if YNAB is right for you. YNAB 3’s Money Back Guarantee If, for whatever reason, you’re not completely satisfied with YNAB 3, they offer a no-questions-asked 30-day money back guarantee. 30 days is plenty of time for you to fall in or out of love with YNAB, so there’s no risk in buying. This kind of money back guarantee is quite refreshing.
Conclusion The software is extremely effective and easy to use. It’s simple, and that’s what makes it so powerful. The software itself is very well designed – it’s apparent that a good deal of thought went into even the smallest of details to make the system quick and intuitive. The level of support that you receive with YNAB is superb.
There is a myriad of resources available to you (online guides, video tutorials, live coaching, amazing community forums, direct contact with the founder, etc.) to ensure your budgeting success. This is in stark contrast to most software companies out there. While the software itself is fantastic, the real power of YNAB comes from the budgeting system that lies behind the software.
YNAB’s “4 rules of cash flow” make up what is one of the most effective ways to manage your money that I’ve found. I love the YNAB budgeting methodology because it focuses you on the tasks that actually make a difference in the way you spend and save money. YNAB states that it is: “ Budgeting Twice as Effective, in Half the Time.” And after using YNAB in my family for over 3 years now, I must say that I completely agree.
It’s simple, fast, and effective. And it’s sure to save you loads of money. MoneyWell is another personal finance software application built for the Mac. It’s sleek, it’s shiny, and performs like you would expect any good piece of Mac OS software to. MoneyWell uses the very effective envelope budgeting method (well, in this case, it’s a “bucket” budgeting method) to help you better manage your finances and plan for future expenses. Among other features, MoneyWell offers Direct Connect Banking and uses a single-window interface designed to simplify your experience with the MoneyWell software. So how does MoneyWell stack up to the other Mac-based competitors such as iBank, Snowmint’s Budget, and others?
Hopefully this MoneyWell review and walkthrough will give you a better idea of what MoneyWell has to offer in terms of effective personal finance software.Note: This review is for version 1.4.12 of the MoneyWell software. Who’s Behind MoneyWell?
MoneyWell is produced by No Thirst Software LLC, a small company built by entrepreneur Kevin Hoctor. Kevin states that part of the mission of the company is to “deliver excellent products and services that change peoples lives.” Not a bad mission statement if you ask me. And if there’s any avenue in which peoples lives can be changed, it’s certainly in helping them better manage their money and debt. I personally like that MoneyWell is produced by such a small company. This usually means that customer service is personable and often quick. Customer satisfaction is usually top priority in small companies such as No Thirst Software.
Also, the creator has a vested interest in the product, and as such, will be very focused on future improvements. Installing MoneyWell MoneyWell offers a free trial version of the software for you to test drive before you buy. The only limitation of the trial is that you can only enter 200 transactions. This should definitely be enough for you to see if you want to buy the software for good.
After clicking the Free Trial button on the MoneyWell website, you’re guided through the basic download and installation steps to easily install MoneyWell on your computer. After installing MoneyWell you’re given a couple of options to get started: I particularly like that they offer the option to import an OFX, QFX, or QIF file from another budgeting software application if you’ve been using one. Also, the sample file is a good way to click around and learn the system a little bit before diving in with your own transactions. Being that this review will try to give you a walkthrough-type view, I chose to start from scratch.Note: The MoneWell website has a good collection of tutorial videos to help you with learning the ins and outs of MoneyWell and getting started with your own budget. Be sure to check it out if you’re needing help.
Setting Up MoneyWell When starting from scratch, you’re prestented with this screen: Here you can see the overall look of the application (although it doesn’t yet have any data in it). We’ll go over the single-screen design in more detail a little later. Adding Buckets While this is probably pretty self explanatory, here you will check each “bucket” that you want in your budget. These buckets are the same as envelopes in other envelope-based budgeting software programs (you may want to consider these your “categories” of income and spending). Throughout your budgeting, you will add money to (through income) and take money out of (through spending) these buckets.
You can change these later, but you should do your best to cover all of your expense categories here.While I didn’t see an option to create custom buckets in this step, I did see later on that you can add custom buckets by right clicking on a bucket (in the left sidebar of the appliation) and clicking New Bucket. You can also click the “plus” icon beneath the bucket list.
I was glad to see this capability since any effective budget must allow you to customize it to your specific spending needs. Adding Your Bank Accounts After adding your buckets, you’re taken to a screen to add your bank accounts. MoneyWell offers Direct Connect to your bank which allows you to automatically download your bank accounts as well as your transactions. You can also choose to add your bank account manually if you choose to do so (or if you have difficulty connecting with your bank). It wouldn’t let me connect with my bank (Chase).
After digging around a bit, I found that Chase charges $10/month to allow direct connect with personal finance software. Looks like I’ll be adding my accounts and transactions mannually (which is fine with me — I actually think it helps reinforce the monitoring of your spending habits). MoneyWell’s Single-Window Interface MoneyWell does a pretty good job of introducing you to the single-window interface that it uses. Here’s the screenshot that they provide on their website: I see this as a total matter of personal preference. Some will really like the single-window plan, while others may see it as a bit crowded for so much information. I don’t think it’s crowded per se, but I could see the benefit of having a separate windows for transactions (allowing more space for more historical budget/spending information without having to click to each separate bucket). Draw the Fill Line: Setting Up a Spending Plan Once you’ve added your bank accounts to MoneyWell, you’re now ready to set up your Spending Plan (also known as a budget).
MoneyWell refers to this step as creating “fill to here” lines on your buckets. Basically you are noting how much money you will need to spend during the month from each bucket.
You can create your Spending Plan by clicking on the Spending Plan button at the top of the MoneyWell screen. You’re presented with this screen: If you’re just starting out with MoneyWell, you will enter in the “Planned” amount for each bucket. You can set the Frequency and Timing for each bucket as well.
If you have a number of past transactions already in MoneyWell (if, for example, you imported a larger file from another personal finance software application), you can choose to calculate your spending plan by your past history. Data entry into this Spending Plan was quite easy. At first I was frustrated that I couldn’t tab through the fields to enter the numbers quickly. But I soon found that by hitting Enter on the keyboard after each entry, it takes you down to the next bucket’s Planned field. You can thank me later for saving you loads of time with that little tip. Fill the Buckets: Allocating Income Once you’ve set up your spending plan (told each bucket how much money you need in it), you can now allocate the money that you have in your bank accounts to your buckets.
If you’d like to start by allocating the beginning balance of your bank accounts, you’ll first need to designate the Starting Balance “transaction” to be used for your Salary bucket. One way to do this is to click on the transaction and then choosing Salary from the Bucket drop down list in the Transaction Detail section. You’ll then see that your Salary bucket shows that amount next to it.
Now, you can mannually allocate money from your salary bucket into your expense buckets by clicking and holding on the Salary bucket and then dragging your mouse over an expense bucket and releasing. In the box that appears, type in what you’d like to allocate, and click Add. By clicking on the Allocate Income icon ( ), you are given this screen: The numbers in the far right column show the amount to be allocated to the respective buckets. These are determined by your spending plan settings (you’ll notice that the numbers are half of what the “planned” column shows.
This is because I have my income set to come twice a month (hence the buckets will be filled with half the planned amount, twice during the month). You can change the allocated amount by double clicking in the cell and changing the number. You can also prioritize the expense from Lowest to Highest. This will help with allocating your income and making sure that your most important expenses are always paid. After allocating your income you will see the balances of each bucket in the left sidebar. See the following screenshots.
Empty the Buckets: Adding Transactions There are a number of different ways to add transactions in MoneyWell. As already mentioned, you can use Direct Connect to automatically download transaction data. If, for whatever reason, you don’t use Direct Connect, you can either upload an exported file from your bank or you can add each transaction mannually. We’ll look at both.
Enter Transactions Mannually Entering transactions mannually is fairly easy. You can new transactions by clicking the Transaction icon ( ).
You can then tab through most of the important details in the Transaction Detail section (on the right side of the screen) and enter as you go. I like that for most transactions you won’t need to use your mouse much while entering the data (unless you want to use the Status feature). At first I was disapointed that you needed to use your mouse to click the transaction icon for each new transaction.
But then I happened to try hitting Command + N on the keyboard and it did just what I had hoped: it started a new transaction. Trust me, this will save you loads of time if you’re entering all your transactions mannually. Importing Transactions If you’re looking for a quicker alternative for entering your transactions, you download your transactions from your bank and import them into MoneyWell. The file needs to be either an OFX, QIF, or CSV file, so make sure your banks can export one of those file formats (most banks will). After downloading the file from your bank’s website, simply click the Import icon ( ) and select the file. After choosing a date format that will work with your file, click “Import” and your transactions should show up in your transaction history.
The one thing that you will need to do here is go through your imported transactions and specify which bucket each transaction is for. Moving Money in MoneyWell Moving Money Between Buckets You’ll sometimes find that you’ve overspend in a certain category. Since you’re using the envelope budgeting methodology, you’ll have to take money from another category to be used to cover the overspent amount. Doing so in MoneyWell is fairly easy.
Just as you do when you alocate money from your Salary bucket to your expense buckets, you can just “drag and drop” money from one bucket and put it into the other. For example, in the screenshots below I had overspent in my Gifts category by $56.63 (I had $30 in the bucket to spend, but I became too generous and spent $86.63). To cover the overage, I decide that I can take money from my Vacation/Travel bucket.
Splitting Transactions Moneywell Personal Finance Software Free
By clicking the Vacation bucket and dragging it to the Gifts bucket, I can choose to add the $56.63 to make it even. See the screenshots for a play by play of how that happens. Moving Money Between Bank Accounts When you transfer money between your bank accounts (for example, from your Checking to Savings), you’ll want to record that as a transaction.
Moving money between bank accounts, however, is just as easy as moving it between your buckets. Using the same drag and drop technique that’s outlined above, simply drag money from your checking account onto your savings account. Then simply fill out the amount you want transferred and click Add. If you want the amount to be shown in a bucket (in this case, Savings), you may designate a bucket for that transaction. Reconcile Bank Accounts Another little feature that some may find handy is the help MoneyWell gives when reconciling your bank transactions.
It’s fairly self explanatory and easy to use, so I won’t say much here. But here’s a screenshot in case you’re interested: I’m not sure that we need a whole new reconciliation screen for this, but the visual aids will be helpful for some. The only thing I would add in terms of account reconciliation is the ability to do it directly from the regular transactions screen by clicking the circle to the left of the transaction to mark it as cleared.
Reports The Reports section in MoneyWell may not be what most people might expect. What some other personal finance software programs call reports are actually graphical representations of their spending information. Being that MoneyWell shows much of this graphical representation in the main screen (determined by what you have selected at any give time), MoneyWell doesn’t have a separate graphical analysis area.
MoneyWell’s Reports are basically a number of different data tables showing your spending information. While these may useful to some, I personally prefer a larger set of graphs to choose from. Granted I may not have enough data (or rather, data over time), to really appreciate the graphs that MoneyWell provides, I’ve found other applications to have better spending analysis capabilities via their various reports and graphs. Other Notable Features MoneyWell offers a number of other features that aren’t covered in detail in this review.
You can read more about them on their website, but I thought I’d mention a few here. Scheduled Transactions. Search Bar. “Memorized” Transactions. Smart Buckets. Copy to Excel or Numbers MoneyWell Price MoneyWell costs $49.99. They offer a free trial (you can enter up to 200 transactions) so you can get a good feel for what it has to offer before buying it.
If you find that MoneyWell helps you manage your money better, $49.99 is a small price to pay. Money Back Guarantee If you purchase MoneyWell and then later decide that it’s not for your, you can get a full refund up to 60 days after purchase. No questions asked.
This is a solid guarantee that I believe the company will stand behind. Conclusion MoneyWell uses the solid envelope budgeting methodology that has helped people get a handle on their finances for years. The MoneyWell system utilizes this methodology well. I would like to see a little more encouragement for the users to “budget to zero.” Currently it’s a little too easy for users to leave a chunk of money unbudgeted in their Salary bucket. So if you use MoneyWell, make sure to stay disciplined and get to as close to a zero-based budget as possible. The MoneyWell software was clean and professionaly developed.
I found no bugs and only a couple of areas that I thought could have used some usability improvements. Data entry was quite simple and fairly quick.
As far as the software goes, it felt very solid. In terms of effectiveness, MoneyWell will get the job done with it’s budget “buckets.” I was left wanting a little more in terms of reports and graphs, but those things aren’t the main features that most will look for in personal finance software. All things considered, if you try MoneyWell and find that it works for you, go for it. While I may still have other favorites above MoneyWell, it’s a solid budgeting tool that, if used correctly, will help you shed debt and increase your savings. By Snowmint Crealive Solutions, is an envelope based budgeting software program that was originally built for the Mac, but that is now available for both Mac and Windows platforms. Being that I’m a huge proponent of budgeting using the time-tested envelope method, I’ve been looking forward to checking out Snowmint’s Budget for a little while now.
In general, most personal finance software applications that use envelope budgeting will help you manage your spending better. But the methodology is just part of it. The software also needs to be well designed, easy to use, and effective. How does by Snowmint stack up to the competition?
Let’s find out. Note: This is a review of one of the 6.2 versions of Budget (Mac). There have since been newer versions released (up to 6.5), which are sure to have some improvements and changes.
Who’s Behind Budget? The company that created Budget is Snowmint Creative Solutions, LLC. It looks to be a small operation, with two principles at the head (Ron Hooper and Kyle Hammond) and a few other contractors.
I personally see this as a positive thing. A small team means centralized responsibility and usually means that they take more ownership in the product. This is a good thing. There are a few things that stick out to me about the Snowmint company. For one, everything that I read (online and on Snowmint’s website) points to the fact that Snowmint provides very good customer service and product support. If contacted, they strive to respond to your questions within 24 hours.
The FAQ section is large and comprehensive. Also, their forums provide a great deal of answers and appear to be rather active (with new posts and comments being added regularly). They also have a great guarantee, but more on that later.
Getting Started with Snowmint Budget Before I get into the actual set up process with, I’d like to point out that Snowmint provides a good deal of help to get you started with Budget. On their Budget Information page, they offer numerous helps including instructional pdf files, a visual (and effective) tour of the envelope budgeting concept, a set up tour, and a usage tour. All of these were very helpful. Another one of my favorites was this: They even have instructions and guidance on how to use Budget to teach your child or teenager to learn to better manage their finances.
This is something that all of our youth need to learn and I was glad to see that it’s something that Snowmint has thought through. Setting Up Budget For this review and walkthrough I’ll be using the Mac version of the software.
When you first download Budget (by clicking the Free to Try button at top right of the website), you’re first presented with a Setup Assistant. On the Budget Information page Budget provides a pdf file to walk you through setting the program up (that doesn’t use the Setup Assistant) as well as a Setup Tour (that does use the Setup Assistant). I chose to use the Setup Assistant. Create Envelopes This is, arguably, the most important step of creating your budget. Here you’ll create all of the envelopes that you’ll spend money “out of.” If you’ve used budgeting software that didn’t use envelopes previously, you can consider these envelopes to be your different spending categories. For example, you would have an envelope for your mortgage, one for groceries, one for entertainment, etc.
Has a long drop down list for you to choose the envelopes from. Or (and this is important) they allow you to create your own envelopes by simply typing it in the box. Too many finance apps don’t allow you to create your own custom categories — I’m glad that Snowmint has seen the light. Also, as you type, Snowmint offers suggestions.
I found this to be faster than using the drop down list. The more fully you complete this step, trying to think of all your envelopes, the more effective your budget will be. You may want to have a record of your past spending on hand for this step. Snowmint Budget Main Window After the inital setup you’re then presented with the main window of Snowmint’s Budget: The main window of basically consists of four areas: the top toolbar, the left sidebar, the main envelope area, and the bottom “expansion” bar. We’ll briefly go over each: The Top Toolbar Contains buttons that perform actions such as entering transactions, deposits, etc. You’ll use this toolbar to see a transation history on a bank account basis or an envelope basis.
Also found are buttons for stats and an Info button that is used to view or change information for your envelopes or bank accounts. The toolbar has a fairly intuitive interface. Depending on what item you have selected, it dims or brightens icons that would be clickable for that item. For example, if I’ve clicked on a bank account, it allows me to click on the Debit icon (brightened), but not on the Envelope History icon (dimmed).
Left Sidebar The left sidebar contains your bank accounts and their balances. By clicking on the individual bank acounts, you are shown the envelope balances that pertain to that bank account. Also, with a bank acount seleced, you can click the Info button to edit information on that account such as its name, preferences, next check #, a signature, etc. By double clicking on an account, you open the Balance window to reconcile your bank accounts. Envelope Area All of your envelopes are found in the largest section of the screen. I like that this clearly puts the emphasis on the balances in your envelopes, rather that simply what you have in your bank account (a reminder that each dollar spent must be accounted for with funds from an pre-planned envelope balance).
Each envelope shows the envelope name as well as the balance of funds in that envelope. These envelopes are also a little more customizable (more on that later). By clicking an envelope once, you can see the icons in the top toolbar brighten, allowing you to click on them. This means that you can enter spending transactions (a check, debit, or credit card charge), record a deposit into that envelope, see the envelope transaction history and stats, and more. Bottom Bar The bar at the bottom the screen, while it doesn’t take up much space, can actually do quite a bit.
The leftmost icon opens the Envelope Display View. This allows you to view envelopes in a customized way.
For example, I could create a Fixed Expense view to see all the envelopes that I consider fixed expenses. To set up a custom envelope display view, simply right click in the Envelope Display window and then click New Envelope View.
Then click the Settings icon and choose your view preferences. The Settings icon opens up a settings screen in which you customize the Envelope Display Views that you set up.
Among many other settings, this is where you determine which envelopes will show up in which view. The Transactions icon opens a sidebar on the right side of the screen that contains transaction information.
The History icon opens a bottom window that shows transaction history for whichever account or envelope you choose. The Stats icon adds some stats to the history view. See the following screenshots to see each of these functions. Customizing Envelopes If you think the plain gray envelopes are a little bland, you’re right. But the good news is you can customize them to a certain degree.
By clicking on an envelope and then clicking the Info icon in the top toolbar, the info window for that envelope opens up. This window provides some good information such as the amount budgeted for the envelope, which pay that budgeted amount is coming from, and more. If you click on the Appearance button, you can change the color of the envelope, as well as add a black and white or color icon to it. With a couple of clicks, I turned my boring gray envelope into this: After a few minutes, I was able to turn my envelopes into a little more colorful collection:.If you wanted, you could color code your envelopes to help you visualize your spending. For example, all fixed expenses could be lighter hughes of yellows, all your variable regular expenses in hughes of blue, and all your discretionary expenses (that you can control more), in darker hughes of reds.
Just a thought for those who see things more visually. Here’s some screenshots of the envelope customization process. Manually In most instances, however, you will be getting a larger paycheck and need to distribute that income into various different envelopes. If this is the case, you click on the bank account (in the left sidebar) that it is to be deposited into and then click the Deposit icon. In the Deposit window you input where the income is coming from, how much it is, and then distribute the income into the various envelopes as shown: Using Pre-allocated Settings If, however, you set up a budget (income and expenses) in the Setup Assistant when you began, you have another, much quicker option to record your income and distribute it to the envelopes. Simply click on the Record Pay icon, select which pay source it is, and click either Record Pay now (to use the set allocations) or Adjust Pay Allocations (to make changes.
Your income is automatically put into the different envelopes for you according to the allocation that you set. Adding Transactions There are three basic ways to record transactions. If the transaction covers only one envelope, the best way to do it is to click on an envelope and then one of the transaction icon (check, debit, or charge) and enter the transaction information (you can also just double click the envelope to open the transaction window). If the transaction is going to be split across multiple enveloes, you click on a bank account and then click one of the transaction icons.
If you go this route, you’ll also need to set the amounts for each envelope. You can also choose to use the Transaction Entry window to enter transactions. As noted before, if you click the Transactions icon at the bottom of the screen, the Transactions Entry window opens. What I Don’t Like About the Data Entry It may be a personal preference, but I found that entering transactions into the system was a little too tedious. The way it’s set up, while simple, requires you to make many clicks of the mouse.
I was longing for a list of sorts for the transactions so that I could just use my keyboard to enter multiple transactions very quickly. Instead, I was clicking around to different envelopes for each transaction. On weeks with a lot of transactions, this may get a little annoying. Import Transactions Thankfully, you can import your transactions from your bank. This should save you loads of time. I couldn’t get it to work with my.QIF file, but that may have been a problem with my institutions downloaded file and not with Snowmint Budget.
Transferring Funds There will be times when you will need to take money from one envelope to pay for something from another envelope. This is good in that it reinforces the idea that everything you spend, must be accounted for.
Transferring funds from one account to another is quite simple in. All you have to do is click an envelope (that you want to take money out of) and drag your mouse to whichever envelope you want to transfer money into. In this screenshot I was transferring money from my Restaurant envelope into the Groceries envelope. I also noticed that when I tried to enter a transaction that would take my envelope balance negative, I got the following: A nice touch. A Few Other Neat Features Stats One of the icons in the top toolbar is the Stats icon: It allows you to view various financial data in table, line graph, or bar graph formats.
While this is a nice feature, a broader offering of reports would be nice. Balance Another Budget feature that may come in handy (especially if you still use monthly bank statements) is the Balance: This is primarily used to reconcile your bank statements (or online transaction history) with your Budget software. It’s fairly intuitive and easy to use. And More This is not a complete list of all the features that Budget has to offer. The documentation for the software goes over a number of others for the more advanced user.
Snowmint Budget Price The listed price for Budget is $39.95 for a downloaded copy. At the time of this writing, it was “on sale” at $29.95. In terms of quality personal finance software this is a very reasonable price — even a little lower than most competitors. If you want a physical CD, the price is $47.95. Snowmint’s Free Trial I’d also like to highlight that Snowmint offers a free trial for Budget.
It’s a great way to try the software out before you buy. They have a fantastic money back guarantee, but if you want to take it for a test drive before handing over any dough, you can.
The trial allows 250 transactions and 4 balances, so depending on your rate of transactions, it could last up to 4 months. To download Budget for free and start using the free trial, go to their, and then click the “TRY” button.
Snowmint’s Guarantee Another good thing about Snowmint Budget is it’s great guarantee. In their words: “ If you are not 100% satisfied with any of our products for any reason within 60 days of your purchase we will give you a full refund.” I would think 60 days of consistent use would be plenty of time for you to see if you like the product or not. They also guarantee great support and privacy. Be sure to check out their guarantee page to get an idea of how much they stand behind their product. Conclusion is a solid personal finance software program that the Mac lovers out there may find to be a useful tool when trying to get a better handle on their spending.
It’s also now available for Windows, so the PC users can also benefit. I don’t believe that I ran across a single bug in the time that I spent in the application, something that hasn’t happened with the other Mac software applications that I’ve reviewed. I really like that uses the time-tested envelope budgeting methodology. For those that are dedicated to using this software, it will definitely have a dramatic effect on your money management skills. It’s hard to not manage your money better when you’re using the envelope method. Is Snowmint’s Budget the best budget software out there?
Is it a strong contender (especially in the Mac environment)? I had few complaints about Budget. Primary among them was that the transaction entry could be designed to be a bit faster. The reports could also use some work. But all things considered, if you’re a Mac user and are looking for another alternative to help you manage your money, is one that you should at least take for spin using the free trial.