Pros: Personal Finances for USB
- USB Software: Personal Finances runs from a USB flash drive so you can take the software and your data with you to be used on any Windows computer with a USB drive.
- Multiple Data Files: Create and keep more than one data file in Personal Finances. Track your home finances and small business finances in two separate data files. Set up a data file for yourself and one for a child to teach financial management with Personal Finances.
- Unlimited Categories: Personal Finances offers unlimited categories and subcategories to define spending. Category types include income, expense, transfer, family members, and sections.
- Easy Data Entry: Since Personal Finances is very basic personal finance software, creating an account or a transaction requires just a few clicks. To create a transaction, click on New at the bottom of the main screen, then select expense, income transfer or planned expenditure (scheduled transaction) and then enter the transaction details. Click OK and you have entered a transaction.
Cons: Personal Finances for USB
- Reports: Personal Finances offers only rudimentary financial reporting by categories with a few options for sorting data. Although Personal Finances reports can be printed, there are no graphs and reporting is only available in a month-to-month format.
- Multiple Currencies: Personal Finances can set up multiple currencies, but there does not appear to be a conversion feature for working with multiple currencies.
- No Reconciliation: While you can set up separate account registers to enter transactions into with Personal Finances, there is no way to reconcile your accounts to determine if they are accurate.
- No Budgeting: Personal Finances has no budgeting feature and budgeted amounts cannot be set for categories.
- No Scheduled Transactions: While scheduled transactions can be entered as a planned expenditure, there is no complete list of planned expenditures in Personal Finances. There is no calendar with which to view scheduled transactions as you would get with Quicken or Microsoft Money.
Free Trial and Return Policy
Personal Finances 30-Day free trial is good for 200 transactions, giving ample opportunity to see how the software works. In addition to the free trial, Personal Finances comes with a 100% unconditional 30-day guarantee with a full refund - no questions asked return policy.
Help Documentation? What Help Documentation?
The Personal Finances webpage notes that a paid version will get you free tech support, which you will need because I found no documentation and no 'how-to' information under the Personal Finances Help menu. I confirmed that no help documentation is available now, but the developer plans to add this in the near future.Personal Finances Pricing
$19.95 buys an individual license and $29.95 buys a commercial license, although there seems to be only one version of Personal Finances with no business version or "commercial" version. The paid license buys free upgrades for 12 months; I suspect there will be upgrades throughout the year if the developer wants wants to realize a profit from Personal Finances.Bottom Line Opinion on Personal Finances
While Personal Finances runs well and seems bug-free, the features are so basic that a spreadsheet would yeild the same functionality. The lack of features combined the absence of Personal Finances Help documentation makes the $20 price relatively high. Twenty U.S. dollars will buy you more features in Money Essentials, or you can opt to spend about $7 more for Quicken Basic which includes more features and solid reporting.While it is very convenient to have your personal finances available on a USB drive, Personal Finances does not yet measure up to similarly-priced competition in the personal finance software arena. If you have extremely basic personal finance management needs and you are proficient enough to use the sample file to figure out how to use the software, give Personal Finances a try on your USB drive.
I will be keeping an eye on this work-in-progress to see if it gets refined to a competitive personal finance application.
Personal Finances Web Page - Download Personal Finances
Important product disclaimer information about this About site.