PearBudget

Unlike conventional financial software, PearBudget isn't a piece of software as such. All it is is an Excel spreadsheet, made into a template for entering financial details.

It's extremely easy to use, with one sheet in the workbook for each month. Entering details in each of these sheets will produce results in the final sheet, Analysis, which shows you how weel the budget has worked over the year.

There are detailed but easy-to-follow instructions given on the first page of the workbook, and the author has also provided a pre-filled monthly sheet as an example.

While it's not suitable for complex budgeting, it's perfectly adequate for home use, and it is well worth giving it a try if you think the full-on budgeting programs might be too much like hard work.

Because the spreadsheet was written for Americans, everything is in US Dollars, but mentally translate these to British Pounds and it works perfectly well.

You will need a program that can handle .XLS files such as Microsoft Excel, or OpenOffice.

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