You'd be forgiven for thinking that budgeting is something of a lost skill in today's borrow-all society. Although given the possible harshness of the oncoming world economic depression, it's one that might well come back to the fore. And should you need help planning your finances, then this program is certainly priced at a budget friendly level. It's a completely free, open source project (though donations are welcome, of course).

You can design your own budget sheet from scratch, but the easiest thing to do upon first running the program is to use one of the provided templates (which can always be modified as necessary). There's one designed for students, one for single people and married couples, another for parents and finally one for the retired population. In reality, there isn't much difference between them: for example, if you select 'parent' then a child support income entry is added, but that's all.

The basic templates list all your expenses, including fixed payments (monthly rent, council tax) and variable outgoings. SimpleD Budget works on a month by month basis, and once you've filled in your first month's budget, you can copy it across to the next month's sheet and adjust as necessary. A running total of your monthly income is kept and all outgoings are expressed as a percentage of this in neat bar charts which automatically adjust themselves to keep everything to scale.

The program is easy to use and it's a snap to edit the various categories, or reposition them simply by dragging and dropping. However, some Americanisms are evident, so you'll need to use that edit function. For example, the "gas" category doesn't refer to your utility bill as you'd expect, but the fuel bill for your car.

SimpleD Budget also works out pie chart and graph displays to view your finances with, at least in theory, although we found these didn't seem to work properly. Not that this is a big deal, as the bar charts are perfectly serviceable. Another clue that the program isn't quite finished is the missing help file, although to be quite honest everything is self explanatory so it isn't necessary anyway.

The only other function the software offers is the ability to print out your budget reports, and that's your lot. Considering it's free, this is a useful little utility, but it's still rather rough around the edges as of version 1.05.

Verdict
It's very basic and still in need of finishing touches, but nevertheless this finance program does allow you to obtain a decent overview of your household's monthly spending and, hopefully, help you to manage your money.

Company: Soichi Hayashi

Tags: budget computer program pie chart bar chart council tax chart flowchart microsoft excel