Home Accountz

Home Accountz is the updated version of Personal Accountz, which we reviewed a few months ago.

Like its predecessor, Home Accountz is an easy-to-use personal financial planner with which users can forecast future finances as well as managing bank accounts, investments, credit cards and general expenditure.

We’re pleased to see that despite the name change, all of the best features of Personal Accountz have been retained and there have also been some substantial improvements.

An improved look means Home Accountz is easier to get into than before, which makes taking on your finances less painful. The entire user interface has been upgraded to make accounting records simpler to navigate and manage, which is the most impressive thing about what was already a good program.

Whereas in Personal Accountz there were two distinct windows to navigate between – Accounts for listing accounts in folders, and Entries for entering transactions – Home Accountz cuts this down to just the Accounts window, next to which is a series of easily switchable tabs for entering transactions, checking balances, budgeting and reviewing financial periods. This new approach is more intuitive, making following the numbers a great deal easier for the novice bookkeeper than it was in Personal Accountz.

Other improvements include the addition of multi-currency support and the ability to import CSV files. We particularly liked the inclusion of the single-click-entry calendar function from Business Accountz Basic.

After setting up the program using the wizard and then registering it, a simple set of bookkeeping accounts is presented that will be adequate for most users. If not, the clever design means that nearly every feature of the program can be personalised, the most useful aspect of which is the ability to create presets for viewing specific sets of data, for instance all payments made over the previous week or all income due in the next month.

Our main quibbles were that the program froze several times during testing, so regular saves are required, and like its predecessor it still can’t calculate interest payments.

Data entry is unglamorous but once your accounts are set up and initial transactions entered, Home Accountz offers superb features with which to manage your personal finances.

Most important for those new to bookkeeping, Home Accountz is simple enough for everyone.