Keeping track of your financial accounts can be time-consuming process. Fortunately there are a slew of great accounting software’s out there to help make the job easier.

The biggest and most well-known is quick books. QuickBooks is great for tackling all kinds of heavy jobs. You can input financial information regarding your employee taxes, You can manage your credit cards, and even investments, taxes, loans or even pay day advances. The problem with QuickBooks is that it’s too many things for too many people, which means that for the average person it’s a lot to learn, and difficult to use. I would highly recommend using a more niche software unless you have some complicated financial matters and need to fall back onto QuickBooks.

The first and most under rated software for handling accounting matters as an individual would be Excel, Or any spreadsheet program for that matter. Excel is fantastic work keeping track of profits, losses, expenses, and much much more. The problem most people have with Excel however is not knowing the basics of accounting. So rather than learn basic accounting, what most people do is fall back on a “do-it-yourself accounting software” that magically processes the numbers behind the scenes. Personally, I think it’s a lot better to learn how you’re accounting software works, and if possible uses software like Excel. The best way to get started with excel, especially if you’re not sure how to proceed, if you do a Google search for an Excel template relating to the type of accounting you would like to perform. This way you get to see how someone else has decided is the best way to do that accounting, and start to learn some accounting principles.

Another great software out there is mint.com. I love mint because it’s free and web-based. It ties into your credit cards, your banks, and even your investments, retirement funds and much much more. It allows you to see balances for all of your accounts separately or aggregate them together to get a good overview of where you are financially. Mint can also help you put together a budget, and alert you when you’re not sticking to the budget. It can also give suggestions, for instant, the bank I was using had very high foreign transaction fees. Each time I traveled outside of the country Mint would alert me that I was being charged these fees, and show me a list of banks that did not charge foreign transaction fees.

All in all it’s a complicated world today. Software makes our life easier and simpler, but it’s not always easy to find the best software for you. I hope you give some consideration to the solutions outlined above, and that reading this makes your accounting life easier.