The ability to count money will never hurt a person, regardless of the level of wealth. This is especially true for home bookkeeping, because we must calculate our funds so that there is enough for food, and for rent, and for other needs. The more we know about how we manage money within our own household, the more efficiently we will be able to plan a budget, allocate money for purchases, or save a certain amount.
Method 1. Maintaining home bookkeeping on paper
Get yourself a separate notebook or ledger in which you will write down all the income and expenses of your family or just you, depending on whose spending you want to control. Using simple calculations, you can determine how much money is spent over the period, what is the income stream. You can manipulate the data however you want, however, this method has several disadvantages.
- Record information for a long time
- Long to count the sums
- Difficulty in data manipulation, since you cannot see everything at once
- Easy to get confused
Method 2. Maintaining home bookkeeping on a computer in MS Excel
This method is convenient because it is much easier and faster to manipulate data through Excel. You simply create a table of income / expenses, enter the necessary calculation formulas, and the program calculates everything for you. However, before that, you need to spend a certain amount of time to draw up a balance template. This method is suitable for people who do not want to waste time looking for information in accounting, as well as if they have few items of expenses and income. The more articles, the more difficult it will be to create a user-friendly template. Despite the fact that working in Excel is faster and more convenient than paper-based bookkeeping, it also has its drawbacks:
- To draw up a template, you need not only a PC with the installed program, but also the skills to work in it.
- When drawing up a template, most of the time is spent on identifying all types of items of expenses and income.
- You need to know where and what formulas you want to apply to calculate
- It is difficult to manage budget planning
Method 3. Maintaining home bookkeeping on a computer through a downloaded program
On the Internet, you can find programs that allow you to do home bookkeeping without an online connection. In essence, they duplicate calculations in Excel, templates have already been built for you, you just need to enter the data. The main disadvantages are as follows:
- The interface is not always convenient / beautiful
- Non-advanced users will understand the functionality of programs for a long time
- Like any program, it may not install on the computer.
- There is no way to sync with other devices, for example, a smartphone, if you really want everything to be always at hand
Method 4. Maintaining home bookkeeping on a computer or smartphone via the Internet
There are a large number of websites dedicated to online bookkeeping. For the most part, they are quite user-friendly, contain many functions, and you can easily plan your budget for the year ahead. These sites often contain visual information, tables and graphs, which makes them more attractive - you can compare indicators in different periods just by looking at them. You will only be required to enter the amounts of income and expenses in the fields for filling out on the site, calculations are carried out automatically. There are also online smartphone apps in which you can record data as soon as any transaction occurs with your money. This method, on the one hand, seems to be the most attractive of all, but it also has its drawbacks.
- Not suitable for those who do not have a PC or smartphone with constant Internet access
- Your expenses and income will be online, which means that this information can be hacked and transferred to third parties. Who knows how they can use it.
- Some sites provide only paid services, although there are free resources on the Internet.
Of course, you can do without home bookkeeping if you are confident in your abilities or think that it is ineffective. However, if you do decide, weigh the pros and cons of each of the methods that you find. Perhaps you will come up with something of your own. In any case, the chosen method should be convenient for you and simple enough so as not to take a lot of time.
