Buddi: Personal finances without a headache

Although the idea of using an application to manage your personal finances does make a lot of sense, not all of us have the time and patience to learn all the intricacies of tools like GnuCash or Money Manager Ex. In this case, you need Buddi, probably the most easy to use personal finance manager out there. Written in Java, Buddi runs on most platforms with Java Runtime Environment installed. If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, you can download and install a .deb package; otherwise you can opt for a plain .jar file that will run on pretty much any Linux distro.

To launch Buddi, use the java -jar Buddi-x.x.x.x.jar command. When the application is up and running, it immediately prompts you to create a new data file, and there are two things you should keep in mind here. First of all, it’s a good idea to place the data file in a separate directory, so when Buddi generates reports and graphs they are neatly stored in the same location as the main file. More importantly, you should encrypt your data file to make sure that nobody else can access your financial data. After you’ve created the data file, you are dropped into Buddi’s main window consisting of four tabs: My Accounts, My Budget, Reports, and Graphs. Before you start using Buddi, though, it’s worth spending a few minutes configuring its settings. For example, Buddi uses American dollars as the default currency, so you might want to change that if you are not in the U.S. To do this, choose Edit → Preferences, click on the Locale tab, press the Other button next to the Currency Format field, and select the desired currency. If needed, you can change the default date format as well by pressing the Other button next to the Date Format field. When you are satisfied with the settings, press OK to save them and return to the main window. Now you can populate the My Accounts section with accounts. Press the New button, give the account a name and choose its type from the Account Type drop-down list. If the account type you need is not on the list, you can easily add it. To do this, choose Edit → Preferences, click on the Advanced tab, press the Edit Account Types, and add the account you need.

Lastly, enter the initial balance into the Starting Balance field, press OK, and your account is ready. Next, you should edit the default budget to reflect your actual income sources and expenses. Switch to the My Budget section, delete the entries you don’t need and add the categories you want. Here you can also specify subcategories, which allow you to keep better track of your expenses. For example, you can create a category called Books containing several subcategories like Dictionaries, Manuals, etc. Later, you can see not only how much you spend on books in general by also on each specific type of books.

Now you can put Buddi to some real use and start adding transactions to it. A transaction is just a record of what you’ve spent money on, and which account you’ve used to “finance” your purchase. For example, if you bought a magazine at your local newsstand and you paid for it from your pocket, the transaction would be from your Wallet account to the Magazines budget category. To add a new transaction as well as manage existing ones, double-click on the account you want. This opens the Transactions window containing a list of all recorded transactions for the current account. If no record is selected, you can create a new transaction by simply filling out the required fields at the bottom of the window (at the very least, you have to provide the date, amount, and sources); otherwise you have to press the New button first. Press Record to save the transactions. To modify any existing transaction, select and edit it, then press the Update button. Buddi also supports so-called scheduled transactions, which can come in handy when you have to keep tabs on payments that occur on a regular basis, for example, donations, club membership payments, house rent, and so forth. To create a scheduled transaction choose Edit → Edit Scheduled Transactions in the main window. The only difference between a regular and scheduled transaction is that the latter occurs on a specified date, so you have to add a payment schedule for it. Once you’ve done that, Buddi will automatically add a record to the transaction list each time the scheduled transaction occurs.

To make sense of all the entered data, Buddi provides two useful features: Reports and Graphs. The former allows you to easily generate reports of your income and expenses for a certain period of time and grouped by Category or Description. Generating a report is as easy as choosing a time period from the appropriate drop-down list in the Reports section. While you can’t customize the default reports, they provide more information than you’ll probably ever need. The only caveat here is that Buddi generates reports in the HTML format and displays them in the browser. A built-in feature with a printing option would have been a better solution. If plain tables full of data don’t tickle your fancy, you might want to try Buddi’s Graphs feature, which helps you to visualize your financial data. Similar to Reports, you only have to select a desired time period from the appropriate drop-down list, and Buddi takes care of the rest.

Finally, you can extend Buddi’s functionality by installing plugins. While the current list of available plugins is rather short, there are a few rather useful ones among them. For example, if you need to exchange your financial data with other applications, you’ll appreciate the plugin that can import and export data in the CSV and QIF formats. To install a plugin, download and unpack it. In Buddi, choose Preferences, click on the Plugins tab, press the Add button, and select the unpakced .jar file. Restart Buddi, and the plugin is ready for use. If you’ve installed, for example, the ExportQIF plugin, it appears under the File → Export menu.

Final word

Buddi is not the most flexible or powerful personal finance manager out there, but it’s exactly what you need if you want to manage your personal finances with minimum fuss.

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