Solid Forecaster-Needs Finer Grain Resolution Month to Month
It seams all personal finance software is focused on the past which is important but useless without knowing how to apply this to something. If you have other software for budget management and a reasonble history of your typical income/expense you will be amazed how this software can be utilized to understand your finacial future. Read the online manual for specifics but all-in-all this does a great job of what it was designed to do. I have been using an old spreadsheet-based entry forecasting program for many years which is no longer in development so I was excited to see this at the App store. There really is nothing out there to compare Cashculator to except for the little known software I have been using. My current software has one critical ability Cashculator lacks which I will describe here.
My only critisism, and one that has kept me from completely abandoning my previous software is that Cashculator takes the approach that forecasting is "big picture". What this means is that It assumes income/expenses need only be tracked on a "once-a-month" basis as though you receive and spend all your money on the first of the month. In the screenshot above you will see the line from month to month is straight. THAT IS VERY DECEIVING! If you actually plot your income/expenses monthy it is most definately not a straight line (up or down) throughout the month but a series of ups and downs that fluxtuate above and below a straight line depending on when you receive or spend income throughout the month. If you try (or simply have no choice) but to keep your account balances at a minimum, the straight-line method employed here will not show you where in the month your balances fall below zero just because the 1st of the month balances happen to be net-positive! I only like to keep enough in the checking to cover my budgeted expenses plus a buffer. Everything else gets put to work in savings or investments. My previous software allows exact date and frequency income/expenditure control. Say for example I have a 2000 balance at the beginning of the month but a 3000 expense (mortgage due) mid month. Then I know I will have 2000 of income after the expense but before end of month (Im a freelancer). Month to month Cashculator shows net positive straight line but my balances in the middle of month fell below zero if I was not paying attention! It gets way more complicated to track the more income/expense you have that do not correspond to beginning of the month. Forecasting is critical for freelancers but this software trades accuracy for "big-picture" which is unfortunate in my opinion. It essentially lulls you into thinking there is more available month to month than there actually is. Not good for prdicting future expenditures.
I would recommend they implement the ability to assign dates to income/expense entries vs the first-of-the-month-only model so you can really see your spending. Having the ability to look out 1-20 years in a straight line is fine but if you really want to take control of the beauty of forecasting, you need to see your money EXACTLY as it goes in and out within say a 1 to 6-month range. That is really as far as any of us can reasonbly predict our finances. It is a bit more time consuming to set-up but once you do, the power of forcasting becomes apparent.
Overall though very positive and hope future releases will bring the ability mentioned above. I like it so much I will be using both Cashculator for "big picture" and scenario planning and my old software for finer grain month to month detail. More work but really worth it when you see it in action.
Buzzfledderjohn about Cashculator - Personal Finance
