Does anyone know of a good zero-based budgeting app that is NOT EveryDollar or YNAB?
I’m currently using FaithFi (formerly Moneywise), which is okay, but they don’t actually keep their own running totals and use current balances retrieved unless it’s a manual account. This is fine, but I want to be able to reconcile accounts and make sure electronic imports didn’t miss something, which doesn’t happen this way. Mvelopes used to be the best at doing everything I needed, but of course, Fincity closed them down. YNAB doesn’t allow for negative rollovers, which bugs me. I have too many reimbursement-type categories, so they need to be negative until paid back, and I don’t care about how many months advance money I have, etc. I will not use EveryDollar for a multitude of reasons, so please don’t even mention it unless you want to know why not.
In the past, I have examined several apps, but maybe something changed with them? I loved Monarch at the start, but they don’t really do zero-based as you can make your budget way bigger than the income amount, so there’s no real reconciliation process. They kept renaming transactions to something bogus - like my hardware store or insurance once came in as a Roller Derby - and they didn’t have a way to turn off the renaming feature. Budget with Buckets is liked, but I really need a mobile app feature and know he was working on it. There was another, but it only worked on Apple products, and the other half is Android, and he needs to see the budget or will overspend!
Centsible is something you can look into. However, transactions must be manually entered and are only available on mobile devices. File import is being worked on by developers. Negative balances are acceptable. Additionally, it offers a clever credit card feature that fits well into your spending plan.
Really not an app, however have a look at Aspire Budgeting. I’m on a mobile device and don’t know how to connect to the budgeting talk, but it exists. Basically, imagine if ynab were a spreadsheet on Google. It was effective throughout the roughly six months I used it.
You can check out Centsible. Mobile only though and you have to enter transactions manually. Dev is working on file import. You can carry negative balances. And it has a nifty credit card feature that works great with your budget.
Thanks, but manual transactions aren’t feasible for me. It would take hours to manually enter everything just to catch up. Manually importing files isn’t an option either due to the sheer number of accounts. I understand that services like Plaid are expensive, which is why many companies avoid them. However, there’s a more affordable alternative called SimpleFin that could handle individual accounts. I realize I won’t get exactly what I need until I write my own solution, but I don’t have the time for that, especially since I already started once when Envelopes ceased operations.