Demand for personal finance software has grown steadily over the past decade and began to come into its own during the share market boom of the late 1990s when Australians became some of the worlds bi
Demand for personal finance software has grown steadily over the past decade and began to come into its own during the share market boom of the late 1990s when Australians became some of the worlds biggest investors in corporate stock. Software that offered portfolio management was eagerly snapped up and was particularly popular among handheld PC and PDA owners who could use it to keep track of their investments while on the move. It is this same information that can be used to help track your capital gains liability.
There is a surprising amount available as shareware on the Net and a quick visit to Cnet.coms download section will turn up a healthy list of generic personal finance organisers for both Palm and Pocket PC. However, most of the shareware on offer is single-function software and does not offer the full range of applications a home user might be interested in. So while it may keep track of your share portfolio you might require a different application to keep track of your income or purchases and so on.
Microsoft Money, Quicken Personal and Quicken Personal Plus dominate the packaged personal finance software market in Australia, and while they will not fill out your tax return for you, they do have handy basic tax functions.
Microsoft Money even allows you to export data to some tax software. It is currently the market leader and retails for about $70. It is designed to give you a complete picture of your personal and household finances including your investments, superannuation and insurance policies. With links to online banking and BPAY, it will help you keep track of your debts and savings, reconcile your bank statements and tell you your net worth at any given time. Money comes with a utility called MoneySide that can instantly provide relevant financial information when you are banking, shopping or investing online. It is also handy to have it available when you are looking at your potential tax liability or otherwise at the ATO site.
Like their small business counterparts, Quicken Personal and Personal Plus ($80 and $130 respectively) have recently been redesigned to make them easier to use.
Quicken Personal will reconcile bank accounts, track savings and investments and record credit card transactions, mortgages, loans and superannuation. It also has a number of functions for managing your share portfolio and, like Microsoft Money, provides links to online banking. Personal Plus is better for people wanting keep track of their tax liability and offers more extensive financial management tools estimating capital gains tax payable on investments; automatically creating tax reports, handling multiple currencies and providing a series of alerts, planners and inventory trackers.
Both Money and the Quicken Personal programs have specific if limited tax tracking functions and can be of great benefit to anyone wanting to prepare their own return.
The key to doing your own tax return is being prepared before you tackle it. That means having all of the appropriate data and back-up documents available before you start and allocating sufficient time to complete the task.
Although the ATO can be forgiving of unwitting mistakes, it doesnt take kindly to being bombarded with claims that, with a little consideration, should never have been made in the first place.
To quote former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, Life was not meant to be easy and that is certainly the case at tax time.