Budget: The Financial Software for the Mac

Budget is a financial software application for the Mac that lets you budget your finances. It is designed to help you master your finances so that you are not always living from paycheck to paycheck.

A Preliminary Look at the Software

The 'Welcome to the Set Up Assistant' explains how to set up your budget document and what you need to set it up your document. It also explains the Envelope Model so that anyone can understand the concept.

Setup Assistant

Budget lets you import your Quicken or OFX data files so that you won't have to do reenter your financial data from scratch. If you do not have Quicken or other financial software, Budget will have you set up your bank and credit card accounts.

Creating envelopes is easy. Click on the pull down menu, and you will find a list of categories listed. Alternately, you may enter your own categories. The next step is setting up how much money you would like to allocate to each category.

Once you enter in your totals, you will see a grand total at the top. Negative balances are enclosed in parentheses. Any amount of money left over after your budget allocation is placed in an 'Available' envelope.

The Main Interface

For some reason, it would not let me continue to the other set up options. I clicked Finish and found myself staring at an interface with the envelopes that I had created during the setup process. You may edit the amounts of these envelopes or delete them altogether. If you decide later that you want to create a new envelope for a category, you can do that, too.

You will find all kinds of tools in Budget. It has a currency converter, a savings calculator, a variety of budget reports, investment allocator, and a calendar for tasks and reminders.

My favorite is the Document Statistics in the Envelope menu. The Document Statistics gives you a birds-eye view of your monthly deposits and expenses so that you will know exactly how well you are doing with your budget. You have the option of showing your average balance versus your cumulative balance. Plus you can opt to show your transfers in the report, as well as show a date range.

Conclusion

Budget financial software for the Mac is a solid piece of software that will help you start and maintain a budget.