Buddi 2.9.17.0 RC2 / 2.6.4.2

A personal finance and budgeting software that is aimed at those who have little or no financial background Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting software that is aimed at those who have little or no financial background. In making this software, I have attempted to make things as simple as possible, while still retaining enough functions to satisfy most home users.
Main features:
- Accounts
Accounts are the sources where you can transfer money to or from. They can include things such as a chequing account, a savings account, credit cards, or even your wallet!
There are two main kinds of accounts: Credit and Debit (an accountant might call these liability and asset). Credit accounts, such as a credit card, are accounts which you owe money to; Debit accounts on the other hand, are accounts in which you have money.
As long as the balances for the different accounts are positive, credit accounts are red, and debit accounts are black. (Note that if you owe money on a debit account, it will turn red; likewise, if you pay off all the money on a credit account, it will turn black.)
- Budget Categories
Budget categories are where money comes from, or goes to. When you first start the program, there are a number of preset categories; these can be modified to better suit your needs.
With each of these categories, you can enter the amount which you think you will spend (or, in the case of income categories, receive). This will be used in reports and graphs to show you how well you kept to your budget. As well, it can help in your monthly planning to ensure that you dont spend more money than you recieve. The Budgeted Net Income / Month, shown at the bottom of My Budget screen, shows the difference between the budgeted income and expenses.
There are two types of categories: Income and Expense. Income categories would include such things as your salary, interest earned, gifts recieved, etc. Expense categories are anything that you spend money on, such as groceries, fuel, etc.
- Transactions
The transactions screen is where you will likely spend most of your time while using Buddi. In it, you define money transfers, either between accounts (for instance, witdrawing $20 from your savings account) or to budget categories (for instance, spending $100 on groceries, or getting your paycheque for the month).
- Reports and Graphs
Buddi includes a strong reporting system, which helps users monitor (and hopefully tame) their spending habits. The reports are pretty much self explanatory: you get to select a report and timeframe, and the results will pop up in a new window. As with all other windows, you can choose to print these for your own records.
Some of the graphs and reports include:
- Textual breakdown of income and expenses, compared with the budget estimates
- Pie charts of expenses and income, over a given time period
- Breakdown of net worth, and changes in net worth over time
- Backup and Restore
As of version 1.8.0, Buddi will automatically keep a rolling backup of the most recently used data files. You can change the number of files to keep in the Preferences.
To restore a previous backup, you can select Restore from Backup File from the File menu. This will overwrite your existing file with the contents of the selected backup file. It is recommended that you make a copy of your data file beforehand.
Buddi also supports having more than one data file. You can create new files, or load existing ones, from the File menu. Buddi automatically remembers the last one you had open at startup.
- Prepaid Liability Accounts
The theory behind this is that you can create a Prepaid Liability account, which acts a virtual account - each month you can pay yourself a certain amount, which is put into the liability account. This can accumulate over a number of months; when you spend that money, it is transferred out of the liability account and does not show up in your budget categories (since it has already been budgeted for each month when you paid yourself in the first place).
- Scheduled Transactions
Scheduled Transactions allow you to define repeating transactions which Buddi automatically inserts at the correct times. Some of the uses of this include bill payments, automatic savings, etc.
To define scheduled transactions, use the Edit menu in the main Buddi window, and select "Edit Scheduled Transactions".
System requirements:
- Java 5.0