Essential Budget

Creating a plan for any activity increases chances of success, because it provides visual support of the series of events to follow. Budget also benefits from planning, and specialized computer applications greatly help in this regard. Essential Budget is a suitable example, allowing you to track accounts and transactions in an intuitive environment.

The application is good to go from the moment download is done, since there’s no setup involved to take any of your time or effort. However, it relies on Java Runtime Environment to function, so you need to make sure it is installed before you can take Essential Budget for a spin. On the other hand, it’s easy to carry around on a thumb drive to have a personal budget manager wherever you go.

It can be a little tricky to figure out at first, especially if you ignore the helpful details provided in each pane. Adding new entries and removing them is done through hotkeys only. Tab support keeps all management areas in an organized manner, with quick access to accounts and categories, budgets, and transactions.

The main tab lets you quickly create accounts of different types, as well as budget categories which can either be inflow or outflow. However, items here are only created with associated names, because amounts are handled in the budgets and transactions tabs.

Budgets make it easy to track yearly incomes. Multiple categories can be created, each with dedicated fields and automatic calculus of values. Transactions are stored in a table layout. An entry can either be inflow or outflow, with values and calculus reflected in the main tab. Sadly, there’s no possibility to generate reports or print budget sheets.

In conclusion, Essential Budget comes with good intentions, and is a simple method of keeping track of expenses and incomes. Unfortunately, it feels a little rough around the edges overall, while the lack of export options keep you tied to the application’s tabs and functions even for simple lookup of details.