14 DAY TRIAL // It's said nothing is certain but death and taxes. Those who hope to cheat death either end up in alien spaceships or hell (just kidding...), while many (well..., few actually) of those who try to trick the IRS end up in jail. I'm not much into occultism (not these days, anyway), so I won't say anything about the serene embracement of death, but I will talk to you about a simple way to avoid accidental (or not so accidental) miscalculations in due taxes.
The software I'll be reviewing today is called My Money Minder and it is a tool to be used at home for financial management off all kinds. Keep a close eye on your expenses, on your incomes and revenues and on your bank account situation. Everything is clean and simple, you can view several kinds of summarized data to get an overall perspective of your financial status.
I'm particularly satisfied with this piece of software, for as much as I was able to learn while testing it today. My Money Minder is the type of software I see people actually using, it's friendly, highly customizable and easy to use, and for the $12.5 Ben Blake is charging for it, it won't make a hole in your budget.
Speaking of budget, let's see what this baby can do. Well, basically, it helps you monitor your money, given or received, shaped as income, expense or bank account. For each "transaction" you make, be sure to add the appropriate entry to your records. This is the only way to assure your calculations will be accurate, and you won't be surprised at the end of the month by the little (or much) money you have left.
The software is highly customizable. You can create your own categories and groups for financial transactions, and the software remembers your 100 most recent entries in drop-down lists and you can easily choose between them. You can choose to view predefined reports of your data (such as "Total Taxes", or "Monthly Income") or custom your own graph, for comparative views as well.
The interface of My Money Maker is tabbed, listing "My Money", "Graph", "Yearly Summary" and "Scheduled Entries". Use "My Money" when adding new transactions and the Graph will give you an overview on predefined or customized financial aspects and comparative views, the yearly summary showing you the numbers (all sorts of overalls). The Scheduled Entries tab is particularly interesting because it is here where you can add periodical transactions, such as the monthly pay, your utility bills, the annual tax payment and so on. This is really useful, as it frees the user of recurrent tasks.
All the information you store and the data you calculate using My Money Minder can be saved, printed and exported to QIF, QFX, OFX, OFC (MS Money), CSV or TSV format and you can even import data that was previously recorded in one of the mentioned forms.
You can use the Preferences pan to set the value of the tax rate (VAT) and the beginning of the financial year. You can also customize styles, fonts and colors, to suit your every need. You can perform unlimited Undo / Redo actions and you can have the software automatically update all reports.
The help menu is very well made; trust using it whenever in need. The tool picks up your computer's date format, month and day names and currency from International preferences. The developer also says it has been partially localized for Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.
The Good
My Money Minder is a very well-developed home financing tool that allows you to monitor your cash flow. Keep an eye on your income, expenses and account situation. The tool is really good and it's cheap. You can also try it on for free for a period of 30 days.
The Bad
I really can't name anything bad about it, but my experience was limited. It's very important how the tool works in time and how well it knows the financial accounting and the math. Where interface and usage is concerned, I have no observations to make.
The Truth
If you can't manage your money on your own (or simply don't want to), My Money Minder is a great pick for a financial assistant. You just make the money, and the software will take the task of managing it. It's affordable and very easy to use and you can try it free of charge for a month.
These are the screenshots:
