The  Best Top 6  Personal Finance Software Options of 2023( Reviewed and Ranked)

Personal finance features to look for

Desktop or mobile?

Consider where and how you’ll apply your personal finance toolkit. A mobile and app-based solution makes a lot of sense because most of us spend money when we’re on the road. This is why having a software package that enables you to log and track outgoings is important. However, the majority of products provide both desktop and mobile options.

Reporting capability

Personal finance software is essential for producing reports in addition to being excellent at helping you manage your finances and keep track of your expenditures. After that, you can use this information to complete things like paying your taxes or sharing it with a person who manages your accounts.

Easy integration

To the best of its ability, any personal finance software you are considering should integrate with other programs. When documenting things like expenses, this is essential. For far more effective tax filing, make sure your package may be employed to transport figures from one spot to another.

Help and support

As with any software program, it’s wise to confirm that support will be available if necessary. While some personal finance software solutions offer free help, others only offer it as part of a premium plan. Depending on how comfortable you are using the software, you may require a lot of assistance.

How to Integrate Personal Finance Software with Your Bank Account

Although the personal finance apps and services we assess have a wide range of features and capabilities, they all have certain qualities in common. For instance, the majority of them provide links to your banking institutions via the internet. This means that you can download information about cleared transactions and other accounts from your bank accounts, credit card accounts, brokerages, and other financial institutions, and then view the information organized in the applications’ registers.

Although you often have to supply additional security information—which is obviously a good thing—you typically have to input your login credentials for those financial sites in order to connect.

Is it Safe to Use Personal Finance Software?

All of the personal finance applications we evaluated are secure to use. Your login information is safeguarded by encryption and other security measures on the part of the applications that connect to your bank accounts, such as Mint. But you must also contribute to the experience’s safety.

Here are three actions you should take:

Use a different username and password for the personal finance app as well as your financial logins. You’ll need a password manager in this situation.

Whenever it is possible, use multi-factor authentication. This includes entering into the personal finance app and any related bank accounts.

Because they can be used as authenticators to access bank data and accounts and keep all of your personal information private.

To further safeguard yourself, it’s never a bad idea to review the best practices for preventing identity theft online.

Two-Factor Authentication: What Is It?

What Can Personal Finance Software Do With Transaction Data?

Most users spend some time cleaning up the data after importing a batch of transactions from credit cards and bank accounts into personal finance software. The proper categorization of transactions into income (for instance, salary, freelancing payment, and interest) and expenses are required (food, mortgage, utilities, and so on). The categories are often determined by the apps, but you can always adjust them and divide transactions among different categories

You can acquire charts and reports that precisely depict where your money comes from and goes if you’re meticulous about categorizing your income and expenses. When it comes time to prepare taxes and when you run reports, this information may also be useful.

You might be able to add tags to transactions as well, depending on the service. In this manner, you are able to search for transactions that are associated in ways beyond category designations. For instance, you could create the tag tax-deductible, which would make it simple for you to access all of your tax-deductible expenses at the end of the year.

You may connect files and add notes in several personal finance apps. However, if you made a cash purchase, your bank won’t be aware of it. You can manually construct a transaction in those situations. Quicken Deluxe is the greatest personal finance tool for this type of transaction management.

A personal financial app should display a list of all transactions across all of your accounts so that you can immediately notice any transactions that you didn’t authorize. An unauthorized transaction should be reported as soon as possible so that your bank may be notified and the account can be closed.

Using Personal Finance Software, you can get a general overview of your financial situation.

Every personal finance solution we evaluate has a login dashboard. Because it shows the most important details about your financial condition, such as account balances and unpaid invoices, the dashboard is occasionally the only screen you need to see.

On the dashboard, charts and graphs show you information such as your income compared to your expenses and your budgetary performance. If markets are open, you might be able to set financial objectives, monitor your progress toward achieving them, and view real-time updates on your investment portfolio.

This summary essentially provides you with highlights of the data analysis that these services performed in the background, with the opportunity to go further. For instance, clicking a checking account balance in Mint will take you to that account’s transaction list. To find out what factors are involved and how your credit score has lately changed, click it in Credit Karma. In essence, your personal finance app’s dashboard provides you with a rapid overview of your financial condition and serves as a launching point for more in-depth financial research.

Budgeting Education Using Personal Finance Software

Minimizing your spending to keep them under your income is part of being financially responsible. The creators of Personal Capital hold the following philosophy: Every month, spend less than you make. A realistic, thorough budget is beneficial. Personal Capital is one of the more straightforward personal finance apps, although there are many others that are more complex (YNAB, which stands for You Need a Budget).

It’s much simpler to create a workable budget than it is to define your boundaries. Before you’ve established a budget for a few months and can start to understand how your money comes in and goes out, it’s frequently just guessing. Because of this, Quicken Deluxe and some other personal financial programs allow you to use historical data as models for current income and expenses. In this manner, you can use historical data to get the answer to the question, “How much do I typically spend each month?”

Each category is treated as a budget in Mint. You pick one, specify a frequency (for instance, once every month), and enter a sum. How much do you want to spend each month on your car, for instance? How about food items? By presenting a series of colored horizontal bars that represent where your spending is at the moment in relation to your allocated amount, the website lets you see how well you’re sticking to each budget. Green indicates that everything is going well, and red indicates that you have exceeded your set limit. As you get more insight into your spending patterns, you can adjust each budget by using the up and down arrows.

A budget is viewed by Quicken Deluxe as a comprehensive table with all categories included. You may view your finances by a number of other time periods using the software as well (monthly, annually, and so on). Additionally, it offers tools to make data entry more automated.

Using Personal Finance Software to Set Financial Goals

It’s not difficult to set goals, like starting an emergency fund. A personal finance app will tell you how much you need to save each month to reach your goals after you enter the amount you’re trying to save and the deadline for doing so. Some websites go further. For instance, NerdWallet allows you to automatically track your progress by connecting your goals to the proper spending account.

Planning the Big Picture Using Personal Finance Software

The majority of personal finance websites do not concentrate on retirement planning theory and practice, much less on lifetime financial planning. However, Quicken Deluxe comes with extra tools to assist you in creating a thorough lifetime financial plan, planning for taxes, and paying off debts more quickly. On its website, Personal Capital offers a number of free planning tools, but it also has a group of financial experts that charge a fee for more in-depth planning services.

Does Personal Financial Software Aid in Bill Payment?

Only one of the apps we assess, Moneydance, comes with free online bill-paying features. If the service is supported, you can connect to the bank where you have a checking account and use its bill-paying services (bank fees may apply). If you use the Deluxe version of Quicken, it costs a monthly fee for bill pay.

Other programs allow you to at least keep track of your invoices and payments, but you must make other arrangements for payment. But at least you may incorporate your monthly bill payment into your personal financial plan. In particular, Mint and Quicken Deluxe excel at this. You can enter paper bills from vendors who don’t charge you electronically, like a dog walker or babysitter, or you can set up automated connections to online billers (like Xcel Energy or Verizon). The website allows you to manually record payments and notifies you when they are due.

Is Credit Score Boosting Personal Finance Software Possible?

A stellar credit rating is priceless. It aids in lowering the interest rate you pay in addition to assisting you in getting authorized for a credit card, mortgage, car loan, and other loans. It’s critical to understand not only your current credit score but also how it’s determined and what you can do to raise it.

These essential requirements are satisfied by the free websites Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, NerdWallet, and WalletHub. In this aspect, Credit Karma is exceptionally thorough and effective. It gives you access to your credit reports and routinely obtains your credit score from two of the three major bureaus each day. Additionally, it discusses how various elements affect your credit score and what you can do to try to raise it.

One of the ways you can improve your credit score is to use financial products—credit cards, mortgages—that have attractive interest rates and other benefits, making it easier for you to pay off debt as quickly as possible. Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, NerdWallet, and WalletHub help pay for the services they provide by displaying occasional ads for products that might appeal to you based on your credit profile. You can also browse marketplaces for additional candidates. Mint uses a similar business model so the site can remain free.