Essential Software: SimpleD Budget

Budgeting is an area that a lot of people probably procrastinate in.  SimpleD Budget is an elegantly simple and easy to use budgeting program that makes it a breeze to set up and manage your information on a monthly basis. 

Setting up a budget with SimpleD Budget is pretty straight forward:

Step 1 – New Document (starts the wizard)

Type in a title or leave as the default – each page you set up represents a month. 

Select one of the following:
Copy from other page: This is only relevant if you already have budgeted for a month resulting with a final income after expenses – very convenient.
Choose From Template: Presets with categories included relevant for that sort of person eg. Student or Retired. 
Open Blank Worksheet: Ends the wizard so you set up the categories and income yourself. 

Step 2

Specify income (amount)
Give a description of the source

Step 3  – Time to set your budget up the way you like it..

There are 3 main tabs at the bottom of the screen; Budgeting, Expense and Balance:

Budget Page:

Here is where you create, rename or delete the categories for your budget, and you use the nifty slider mechanism to easily allocate a percentage of your overall income to a given category. 
You have the ability to ‘Fix’ a category (denoted by a padlock icon) so that it has to be allocated the specified amount per month.
You can also add new sources of income if you wish.

Expense Page:

For each category, you enter your individual purchases for a given day.  You have the option of inputting ‘Date’, ‘Where’ and ‘Description’. 

Balance Page:

Provides you with the necessary graphical information on how well you are adhering to your budget.

• You can add categories as you go, see how much you have left to an allocated category and how fast you are spending.
• It supports multiple currencies

This software really does take the seeming burden/tedium/inconvenience out of committing yourself to a budgeting regime.  It allows one to efficiently input and track whatever expenditure information necessary – and it’s free!

Version at the time of writing: 1.05.
Supports: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista

Here is the URL:
SimpleD Budget