How to manage your finances on a PC

Q Is there an application that works in a similar way to Microsoft Money? Sadly, at a time when watching finances is perhaps more important than ever, Microsoft has discontinued this useful piece of software.
Dan Ludlow

A There are plenty of alternative personal finance tools that do a similar job. One standalone application we have tried, although not yet reviewed in Computeractive, is YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget.

If you log on to the online banking section of your bank or building society’s website and export the data to your PC, you can import it into YNAB. YNAB supports four file formats, including QFX, QIF and CSV files, although the latter may have to be edited before YNAB can read them.

As with Money, you can assign individual transactions to different categories to work out your monthly spending.

Just as spreadsheet and word-processing software is moving online, budgeting software can now be accessed online via a web browser. Mint is a good example, although it does not currently support UK financial institutions. This may change in the future though.

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