Personal Accountz (PC/Mac) |
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By
Accountz.com Ltd
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: £39.99
Our Price: £38.92
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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Accountz.com Ltd
EAN: 5060104130053
Label: Accountz.com Ltd
Manufacturer: Accountz.com Ltd
Platform: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X Intel, Linux, Mac OS X
Publisher: Accountz.com Ltd
Release Date: 2006-10-27
Studio: Accountz.com Ltd |
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Don't waste your money, 2008-12-30
Having used MS Money in the past, I reverted to Personal Accountz as Money was no longer available. I shouldn't have wasted my money. I didn't expect an exact replica of Money, but for £40 I expected a good accounting software. This isn't it. One entry sheet for all account transactions, you can't close accounts without deleting all entries, you can't enter advanced transactions using the recurring bills sheets and there's more to add! I've now reverted to an Excel spreadsheet. A lot easier. One plus point, Customer Service is very good, but that's about it.
Where is Microsoft Money for Vista???, 2009-01-03
Never before have I felt compelled to write a review. This is a very poor product only worth buying if you have no other way of tracking your finances. Anyone with a reasonable knowledge of Excel could create this. It is not that difficult to set up - but oh so nasty to look at and use and not at all helpful. Better than nothing I accept - but as soon as Microsoft launch a UK version of Money for Vista, I shall be ditching this. If you can hold out, do. If not, accept that this is basically a very poor spend.
Great Support, 2009-01-08
After Money and Quicken decided to ditch the Uk (why do they do this?) and wanting a Mac based accounts system anyway I decided to try Accountz. Its too early to tell if it will be ok, but one of the things I wanted to mention is the support from the company (email and phone) has been superb, they respond very quickly, often within a couple of hours, they provide clear answers and are patient, sending examples and making suggestion. In the end they have even offered to have a look at my accounts etc structure and sort it out to be more effective. So far I'm very impressed. Now the not so good bits. The import from Money works to a point, in sense all the information went over but I could not reorganize my accounts, etc in way to make them work properly,so decided to start working from scratch, it may be me rather being a bit thick rather then the programme, I don't know but at least it can import Money files unlike MYOB, which, they tell me, will only do Quicken.
The system seems easy to use, but of course involves a bit of a learning curve. I found Accountz not nearly as intuitive as Quicken or Money. Accountz only has a single column tracking the money, I liked Money and Quicken because it always showed Income and Expenditure in two columns. A couple of other niggles, the manual is not as clear as it could be, for example it is not clear where you enter the name of the company you have paid money too or bought goods from (the reference or comments columns it seems), also you can't download for a free trial prior to purchasing. Personal Accountz (PC/Mac)
So too early to tell yet, but if it does not work for me it wont be through lack of support from Accountz, amazing for such a relatively cheap application.
rock solid, 2008-12-12
It's amazing how varied are the experiences that have been reported for this product. I have used the pc version for about 3 years and it really is one of my favourite pieces of software. Really really fast data entry with real time updated balances.
It is indeed a bit different from other accounting packages - my previous experience of Quicken made me think that Accountz was a bit simple and basic when first I tried it but once you get the idea of everything being an account into which or from which money is paid, it all falls into place. For instance if you pay for petrol with a debit card the money will come from your current account in one column and into your motoring account in another column. Accounts can be set up very quickly (seconds) and just need to be identified either as a real account eg your current account or as a nominal payment eg motoring account or nominal income eg salary account. Thus your monthly pay cheque goes from the salary account and into your current account, for instance.
Data entry so very fast once you get the hang of single keystrokes - it's really a delight to use. But, like so many things you have to persevere up that learning curve - it doesn't take long, to appreciate this programme and I think it is a shame that some people bail out too early and then rubbish what is a great piece of software.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that because this looks like a spreadsheet then that's all it is. Someone a lot cleverer than I may be able to make a spreadsheet do some of the things that Accountz is capable of but believe me, this would be way beyond the average user's ability.
Would I go back to Quicken? No way!! I don't miss the fancy bells and whistles one bit. This programme does everything that I need and much better and reliably. I have never had one instance of corrupted or lost data. Reports are instantaneous and very flexible. Forcasts there for the asking. Graphs - well no - you need to take one minute to export to Excel if that's important.
One of the most helpful bits about the programme is the facility for forecasting your balance say, one month ahead. This alone has saved me the cost of the programme by avoiding bank charges.
Excellent foundations but doesn't build on them, 2008-12-10
Personal Accountz (PAZ) has a simple concept at its core - everything is an account, even income and expenses. This may be new to users of other software used to bank accounts and expenses categories, but there isn't really any difference. As a long time MS Money user I have occasionally blurred the line by using a category of "Loan : Fred" when I lend to Fred and later when he repays me. As long as the sum of the category transactions is zero then I know that Fred and I are flat.
Accounts are very easy to create (or delete) and the hierarchy is constructed with drag and drop. Getting the most out of the software requires planning this hierarchy, but there are examples layouts with the program and more in the user forums that will help you on your way. If you've already set up 'categories' in other software you can rebuild the hierarchy in PAZ and will soon realise what an artificial construct 'categories' are.
PAZ then captures transactions between accounts (for example buying groceries with your debit card would be 'From Current Account / To Groceries'); provides a facility to reconcile these to your bank statements; records and forecasts calendar payments; and provides some reports on these transactions.
That is between 60-95% of what you need personal finance software to do. Buying shares just means creating an account for 'Company X shares' and transferring to that from your 'Broker cash' account. Investments can be split up between husband/wife/joint just by dragging and dropping in the hierarchy. A loan account can have principal and interest sub-accounts which capture those separately and so on. The software does seem limited here in that you can see you spent £100 on shares but not that you actual bought 10 shares.
I won't be continuing with PAZ though, as there are a few key things missing. The main items are lack of support for multiple currencies; the inability to define/save custom reports; and the lack of holdings information from investment accounts (i.e. number of shares). There are other annoyances like a lack of split transactions (e.g. if you use your debit card in Tesco to buy groceries and a TV then you have to enter two transactions into your card account which complicates reconciling it) and there's no payee field. There are workarounds for the last two but they add complexity where it isn't needed. It's not something I miss but other packages provide facilities such as a loan wizard that can calculate principal and interest repayments. Note that I haven't contacted the company about any of these problems so there may be solutions.
PAZ does what it does very well but it depends on you setting up your hierarchy properly. It also depends on where you fall on that 60-95% scale and whether you are happy making up the remainder yourself. If your finances are single currency and you can track investments yourself, and your budgeting is pretty straightforward then it could certainly be worth a look, particularly if you are happy importing CSV data into spreadsheets to further your analysis. There doesn't seem to be a trial version but if you buy the software from the company themselves then there is some sort of refund period.
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