Personal Finances Ledger Software

1

Years past I used Kiplinger Simply Money, then Quicken Deluxe, then Microsoft Money software (in this order) as my general finances ledger. Primary benefits: ease of use, form-based data input, snapshot reports and trend analysis of household spending vs income.

Ironically, as a given software helped me get smarter about my personal finances I became aware of the software’s inadequacies; and so I’d move to a different product… until I stopped using anything.

Smash cut to today. I want to reestablish the self-discipline of keeping a daily ledger. But the software I have experience with is no longer available. And the few ledger software that are available are subscription-based or exist as some online fee-based service. Bleh.

Many folks post within another thread in this forum their preference to use a spreadsheet for oversight of their income and expenses. I’ve imported and parsed end-of-month credit card csv files into Excel plenty of times. But this isn’t the same as the general ledger functionality found in the apps I mentioned. I simply prefer a form-based UI front-end while the spreadsheety stuff happens invisibly in the background.

…plaintive sigh.

I suppose I am willing to try a spreadsheet. So where does one download an excellent, vetted personal finance general ledger spreadsheet XLS template file?

And…
Do any single-license personal finance general ledger software exist nowadays?

Please share your experience with either.

2

Honestly, in early January of each year, I just download the prior year’s transactions from my credit cards and banks, and just aggregate them into a giant spreadsheet. I ignore all of the internal transfers within my four walls, and only pay attention to inflows and outflows.

I sort this big spreadsheet by payee, assign a category to each payee, then do a pivot table and there I have it… last year’s actuals by category. That’s all I need.