Personal accounting/bookkeeping in Excel

[Dave Boland]

I'm looking for something like Quicken/Quickbooks and I'm
open to using Excel to doing this. It will mean some
programming, but that is fine since it gives me complete
control over my destiny. I didn't find much on this on the
'net, so I was wondering if anyone has done this? What were
the problems? Any other advice? Is there some way to do
online banking/bill paying via Excel?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Dave O]

What level of accuracy do you require in your reporting? If you need
only to keep accurate records of transactions for your personal
finances, then you can do this in Excel of course. However, while it
"give you complete control over your destiny", it also opens you up to
the possibility of making collosal mistakes. That's not intended to
denegrate or question your abilities in Excel- if you're level of
accuracy requires you to provide bookkeeping records for a company, or
if you have to report to the IRS, you may *want* the level of detail
and accuracy provided by Quickbooks.

To answer the other question, I've never heard of Excel used for
Quicken-like check writing and execution.

Just my $0.02. I'll stop pontificating right now.

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

What level of accuracy do you require in your reporting? If you need
only to keep accurate records of transactions for your personal
finances, then you can do this in Excel of course. However, while it
"give you complete control over your destiny", it also opens you up to
the possibility of making collosal mistakes. That's not intended to
denegrate or question your abilities in Excel- if you're level of
accuracy requires you to provide bookkeeping records for a company, or
if you have to report to the IRS, you may *want* the level of detail
and accuracy provided by Quickbooks.

To answer the other question, I've never heard of Excel used for
Quicken-like check writing and execution.

Just my $0.02. I'll stop pontificating right now.

I agree, and given that Quickbooks is fairly inexpensive I would definitely
go for that

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

Right now Staples have Peachtree Accounting 2005 for free (after mail in
rebates)