Need help - Free or Cheap accounting software
 

I am looking for a cheap of free accounting software. I just need something to keep track of a checking account and some savings. No online banking just a good check registry with the ability to track and search transactions.

Thanks,

I use Quick Books Pro & it works great for me

It's not free but I've been using Quicken for years to do what you described.

However, there is a free on-line version but I haven't used it. Just google Quicken and you will see the free version.

Gnu Cash. Free. http://www.gnucash.org/

Excel...

I have read some on this....have you used it?

Too much work, my wife will use this also.

Yes. A bit of a steep learning curve if you use it for a business, but fairly simple for what you want to use it for.

Quicken is good, albeit a bit constraining.

Unless Microsoft has changed, Excel isn't free or cheap.

If you want very good clones of Word, Excel, etc. go to OpenOffice.org

vi, grep & expr

unix is dead, long live unix.. -rwxrwxrwx

it's amazing how powerful an editor vi was once you learned it....

LOL, I was just explaining vi to one of my 20-something year old guys today and regular expressions to another.

Anyway, back on topic, we have used Quicken at home and my wife's office for years, and Quickbooks at my office. No complaints whatsoever. They are inexpensive and work well - massive time-savers compared to manual bookkeeping.

Thanks, I am going to get Quicken.

Quicken is a good choice. I have been using it for 20 years. If you do your own taxes it ties right into Turbo Tax.

Quicken is great for this and really shines once you set it up to talk to your bank. I held off a long time on this one. Now I pay pretty much all my bills electronically and reconciling is a snap. Time saved well worth the few dollars it cost.

http://www.snap2it.com/


I think you are supposed to pay something if you like it. So just don't like it.

Multi-user, Fast

Good point - with a combination of Quicken, TurboTax and online/automatic bill-pay, I can seriously say I have cut my routine bill-paying AND taxes to a handful of hours per YEAR at this point. The normal household bills literally take 5-10 minutes every 1-2 weeks. I cannot imagine going back to hardcopy checks or manual tax returns.

Ask LeeH. I think he is in the acctg software biz.

A number of years ago, Microsoft released the final (I think) version of Microsoft Money for free. (just checked - v4.0, from 1995). I used to use it for its amortization schedules, until I found something better. But it should do what you want, and it's free (and legal), if you can find it. I found my copy online several years ago.