Cashflow management - tracking spending

I'm jumping in early with a New Years resolution goal to track every dollar of household income and expenses in 2017.

I understand it's a valuable tool for investors to understand your cashflow and your weekly/monthly cash surplus and wanted to see just how many of us are doing this?

Could I please have some recommendations on what app's or programs people find best for doing this?

Obviously a excel speadsheet would be ideal but an app would be much easier for small transactions while out and about and could combine my wife's transactions with mine to give us household totals.

 

We have refined our budget so tightly there is honestly no need to track our spending. If I were to track our spending I would sit down once a week with a copy of both of our credit card statements and cash receipts and crunch the numbers. I wish some of my friends and family would do this exercise for one month... they would be surprised at how much they are really spending on non-essential/ luxury items.

 

I use excel but if you want an app you could try this one

https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/tools-and-resources/calculators-and-apps/mobile-apps/trackmyspend

 

I use pocketbook.com.au Comes with an app, and can be handy at tax time.
Now I have it set up, it takes maybe 5mins or so each month to have a look. We have our spending exceptionally consistent, so running forecastsI can be confident within about 90% accuracy.

You can break down the spending reports as much, or as little as you like, scan reciepts, and mark items for tax. It has an app which is good for loading expenses while you are at the terminal.

It links directly to your bank, so it will pick up spending automatically.
I find it handy.

Blacky

 

I use www.MoneyBrilliant.com.au to track personal spending. It is free to review the last three months. And I then save the reports outside of the software program so I can look at them.

The software program loads up your bank statements and automatically allocates them if you create rules.

If you are running a business it is not that helpful.

You will need to have both spouses on track to review your spending otherwise it is a bit confrontational - but that will be the same regardless of what you program you are using.

 

I wanted something more hands on,
So I use YNAB - it used to be great.
Not so sure of its new cloud guise though - they made a few changes which reduce its flexibility

 

I also use pocket book - excellent little app. Makes it very easy.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone I have downloaded pocketbook, pretty impressed that it has already loaded my past spending, I'm just going back now and organizing it all.

 

But why?
If a system is set in place and X amount of funds allocated for discretionary spending, why sit down and churn through statements. To work out you could save another $8.75 per week somewhere.. Come on.

 

Kind of.

Instead of tracking spending, I usually see where I am each week/ month - is the balance increasing or decreasing? Is it meeting my target for the year? If it's not meeting monthly target --> overspend/ unexpected expenses --> readjust target.

I do spend on luxuries, but not to the next $0.5 - I usually just check my balance and decide if I'm happy to reduce by that amount of purchase

 

In my post I mentioned "If I were to" to state that we don't track our expenses for the exact reason you highlighted in your post.

 

Any tips from the pocketbook users on how to show transfers to offset account as savings?

All my savings transferred to offset are shown as a mortgage expense so it says I have more expenses than income somehow?

 

I just setup pocketbook.. wow what a great tool.

@JesseT, categorise the transactions to "Transferring Money"

 

One of the best ways to track spending is to do the opposite.... budget an amount of savings and prioritise that first. The spending will take care of itsself if the savings outcome is being met and it is a very easy visual reference.
1. Pay your savings first, on payday
2. Do it for small amounts frequently
3. On payday if you can take the surplus cash before you are paid and bank that also.

Payday refers to dates or times when you receive wages / rent etc.

 

[@JesseT, categorise the transactions to "Transferring Money"[/QUOTE]
Yep - use transferring money.
I had trouble with it when I transferred funds for investments. such as buying shares, or repaying a loan.
I set up another category of "investing" and one for "debt repayment". It still shows up as an 'expense' but at least I can see its not spending.

Blacky

 

This is way too stressful, I don't believe in tracking I just spend and when I run out I know I have the credit card as my back up, now that makes life very simple

 

I've been using YNAB for about 9 years now but stopped at YNAB4 as the nYNAB version changed their methodology, removed certain features and increased their pricing model to a yearly subscription.

The learnings from YNAB taught me to budget well and save faster than if I were without the software. I'm able to track every account and category/envelope to the cent. There are some services which let you enter in bank details and they'll automatically pull transaction details but I'd rather not provide any information if I can help it. I don't deny its convenience but there were other issues like not being able to retrieve data from my obscure 2nd or 3rd tier lender systems. I also use YNAB to enter my assets which includes investment properties, so I'm able to track net worth more accurately.

Once I became confident with my budgeting categories and being on top of my spending habits, I was able to get my partner on board with the idea and we have it sync'd on our phones. We also include an individual cash account which represents our wallets. Many users don't go this far but it works very well for us so we can quickly determine if we need to make an ATM withdrawal soon. We also spend quite a bit through cash as many smaller stores prefer cash and our budgeting is just that little more accurate for working out future projections.

It's said that YNAB4, which is no longer supported from 2017, will stop functioning with Dropbox as it is using the old API which will be shutdown in the mid year. I've been looking at alternatives and found Financier (financier.io) to be what some would suggest, what nYNAB should have been. If you're considering to keep track of your budgeting with high level of flexibility, do take a look at it. I've probably tried 5 other apps but they fall short for different reasons (some were mentioned above).

 

been using Expense IQ app for over a year now.

 

I'm making the jump as soon as financier.io releases its companion mobile app. Quite an amazing effort for one guy.
I do sometimes wonder the number of users that are holding out on YNAB4 waiting to make the jump.

 

I love YNAB4 too, but haven't changed to subscription service because it doesn't have the net worth tracking. I've never heard of financier....thanks!