Hi CAadventuress,
This is an industry I'm involved in and previously I worked at Intuit who make the Quicken software that's very well known throughout the US. Quicken and Microsoft Money were the big players in the market, and they've decided to not develop any further for the UK market. However, if you were to get a hold of the last UK versions, which most likely will be 'certified' for use on Windows XP - you could run those to do your home accounting/personal finance tracking.
There are a few makers of software in the UK that do similar products, but aren't really widely known of - perhaps not so effective marketing? or just the general laziness of the UK population to know where their money is?!!
An example is
http://www.banktree.co.uk/Then there's 'cloud' based services
http://www.moneydashboard.com/There's plenty more out there, youll need to have a look and compare and ask questions as to if they'll do what you want them to do
http://www.moneyhighstreet.com/feature/Review-of-free-money-management-software-for-the-Mac/Be advised, not all banks in the UK even offer an option to download financial statements - Egg being an Internet Bank to my knowledge still don't provide downloadable statements to import into Quicken or Money or Excel. Ludicrous! (I had an account with them for 5+ years and often asked/chased for it - but they didn't, so I closed it off 2 years ago, so maybe they do now!)
Have a look at what your bank offers in terms of this, or if they have their own built in money/account statement consolidator - something like Egg money manager, which I think just connects to other accounts you have to give you the balance.
The USA was and is far ahead of the game for banking than the UK for things like this for consumers.
Drop me a PM if you'd like to know a little more about the Quicken side of things as well as an overview of what you could do or might want to know of and I'll help out.
Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!
