[ROUNDUP] Personal Finance applications for Mac OS X

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a thread about personal finance applications for Mac OS X. I was inspired to post by the release of Moneydance 2014. SO, my question for everyone is, what are you using and why?

Primary:

Moneydance 2014

Works well overall.
Cross-platform. The Mac and Windows flavor uses the identical file format.
Syncs with my IPhone
The Infinite Kind updates Moneydance regularly
Generous licensing
Tech support is very good

But, the reporting features are still not on par with Quicken 2007 and is missing a few key reports, i.e. reconcile report. Unlike Moneydance 2012, Moneydance 2014 is buggier than previous releases, enough so that I think they released it prematurely. I had a problem with it under Mavericks on one machine and a problem with it under OS 10.7.5 on another and a problem under both OSs.

Under Mavericks, Moneydance 2014 would open after installation. I had to shutdown my machine entirely and start it again before it would work. Under 10.7.5, Moneydance wouldn’t allow me to resize its window. The solution from tech support was to step back to the version of Moneydance 2014 for OS 10.6 and earlier. Not really a solution since it doesn’t resolve the issue with the app intended for the OS on that particular machine but at least I can use Moneydance 2014 on it. Under both OSs, entering the reggie code didn’t remove immediately the warning that it was in demo mode. I had to quit the app and reopen it for the warning to go away.

Secondary

Quicken 2007 for Intel

Works well despite an aging interface
Excellent reporting features. Newer flavors of Quicken and alternatives to Quicken can learn a thing or two from Quicken 2007 when it comes to reports

Robert

I loved Quicken way back when it used to work. Then, Intuit wrecked it by discontinuing feature support and later returned with the utterly worthless Quicken Essentials. That made me flee to Moneydance, which is pretty good and with a support staff that actually cares about the product. However, in many ways it is not as polished a product as the old Quicken. Hopefully it'll continue to improve.

I've done a lot of looking and have been unable to find any mac products that do as good a job as moneydance.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2014 12:49PM by davester.

Is Quicken Essentials good enough for basic use? Just use as check register with detailed categories?

This is pretty timely for me, about a week ago I started testing the conversion of my Quicken 2002 databases to Quicken 2007 Intel, and it still hasn't passed my own testing. I have all of the versions in between and converted to each one as an intermediate step so that Quicken would upgrade the databases one generation at a time.

I'm finding differences between the 2007 PowerPC and Intel versions in the areas of the stock quote database and export/import of .qif files, and some of these lead me to believe that they do virtually no internal testing of the product. From what I can tell, one also has to pay for support in order to report bugs.

I'd love to have an honest conversation with someone on their development team about what they have been doing for the past 7 years. I recall this article below, which seemed promising at the time, but it seems that guy is no longer working there.

[www.tuaw.com]

Last I checked, Quicken Essentials was a worthless POS. Look at these reviews: [download.cnet.com]

Why would you even consider Quicken Essentials when Moneydance is available?

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

I'll continue to use Quicken 2007 until it no longer works or there is a better option.

For me that includes:
- Download credit card, brokerage, bank acct info
- Handles investment transactions
- Generate taxable event reports
- Be able to view multiple account registers at once
- Does not require Java

bhave,

Just a question about downloading credit card info... I'm assuming you mean transactions. I gave that a whirl with an account I don't use much and found none of the programs categorize the transactions to my liking. The only way to categorize them properly was to manually enter them.

Do you rely on the bank/credit card provider/etc for categorization? Or, do you change it yourself as you confirm the transactions once the data is downloaded into the register?

Robert

Last time I looked at this stuff years ago there were quite a few shareware application, although they may have only been glorified checkbook balancers.

And what about Moneywiz? Money? iBank? And wasn't "Money" a Microsoft product years ago, or could they not trademark the word "money?"

Although I uses none of this stuff (or, perhaps because I use no finance software ...) it seems relevant to compare these desktop applications with the various online (web app) companies such as Mint.

So let's say for the sake of argument you're not worried about privacy or hacking issues and have reliable internet. How do they compare for features, generally?

Quote
Robert M
Or, do you change it yourself as you confirm the transactions once the data is downloaded into the register?

This. Yes, I meant transactions. Once I confirm and categorize credit card transactions, Quicken remembers and auto categorizes repeated ones.

I've been using Mac Quicken for well over 15 years so despite lack of updates the workflow is very routine. The other big advantage is having full history without migration headaches.

After trying several (incl. Moneydance) to replace Quicken, I settled in iBank and have been satisfied

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"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

been on MD for a couple years now. It had a bit of a learning curve, but I do like it.
There are some thing I wish were better, but I can't think of them so I guess I've gotten use to it.
I'm using v803 aka 2011

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proofraed by OwEn the c@t.

Quote
davester
I loved Quicken way back when it used to work. Then, Intuit wrecked it by discontinuing feature support and later returned with the utterly worthless Quicken Essentials. That made me flee to Moneydance, which is pretty good and with a support staff that actually cares about the product. However, in many ways it is not as polished a product as the old Quicken. Hopefully it'll continue to improve.

I've done a lot of looking and have been unable to find any mac products that do as good a job as moneydance.

What he said! I would love to see MD kick it up a notch and get some mainstream momentum.

John P. Kelly

I finally settled on MoneyDance after giving up on the antique Mac Money, which ran only on the classic Mac OS. I still have my OS 9 G3, but figured it was time to move to a program that would run on my Intel Macs. MD works well enough for my limited needs (checkbook, basically—I may start linking CC transactions, though I have been loathe to put CC numbers and passwords into application memory of computers on the Internet).

I have used CheckMark's MultiLedger and Intuit's QuickBooks for business. Have toyed with using QB for personal finance, but it's really overkill, and my copy runs only on Windoze.

/Mr Lynn

another for iBank.

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Hi everyone,

Glad to see everyone has found some viable alternatives to Quicken. Here's a tally of them:

[financialsoft.about.com]

It's missing some apps such as See Finance and Moneywiz.

Alternatives to Quicken offer a large number of reports but I find I rarely or never use the majority of them. The one report I do need is a "reconciliation" report. Quicken 2007 (and previous flavors) offer it. I've yet to find an alternative to Quicken that has it.

One question to those of you not using Quicken... Do any of your financial apps provide a "reconciliation" report like the one offered by Quicken 2007? This report is critical for certain accounts and is the only reason I'm still using Quicken 2007 for a couple of accounts.

I'd even consider using mint.com for those specific accounts if it offered the "reconciliation" report and I am definitely not a fan of web based solutions.

Robert



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 01:57PM by Robert M.

Quicken 2007 here.

I bought MoneyDance 2012 and switched to it - but it is so clunky. Many more keypresses to do entries. I switched back to Quicken.

Robert,

what does "reconciliation" do exactly?

Thanks

Space,

It's a fancy term for balancing an account. Think balancing a checking account. I reconcile every account I have be it a checking account, credit card, investment, etc.

Each month, I create a "reconciliation" report for each account that includes starting balance, ending balance, deposits, payments/withdrawals, uncleared deposits, uncleared payments/withdrawals, with subtotals and such. Very useful. My accountant loves it.

I can put together something similar to the "reconciliation" report in other apps but it is difficult. It requires running several different reports which I have to bundle together. Quicken does it in a single report.

Robert

Quote
davester
Last I checked, Quicken Essentials was a worthless POS. Look at these reviews: [download.cnet.com]

Why would you even consider Quicken Essentials when Moneydance is available?

From the "Pros and Cons" section of the first user review at that link:

Quote

Pros
None that I can think of.

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It is what it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 06:10PM by N-OS X-tasy!.

Hi everyone,

Just noticed that Igg software has updated iBank to include a reconciliation report. This is great news. I'm going to download iBank and give it a looksie. However, iBank has one insurmountable problem that may prevent me from making a switch to it from Quicken for the accounts that need the reconciliation report. iBank is Mac only with support apps for the iOS. That means, it isn't cross-platform.

In this day and age, cross-platform compatibility is very important and was one of the reasons I chose Moneydance over its competitors. My wife has a windows machine and I have a Mac. The fact that Moneydance is available for both the Mac and Windows and shares a common file format is very important.

In fact, Moneydance's cross-platform compatibility proved critical recently when I was very sick recently and my wife had to enter transactions, reconcile accounts and pay bills. Rather than do it on my machine, she was able to do it on our laptop. Once I recovered, I picked up from where she left off.

I'm going to give iBank a looksie anyway. If nothing else, I want to see how its reconciliation report compares to the one in Quicken 2007. However, even if the report is great, I don't foresee switching to iBank anytime soon because it lacks cross-platform compatibility.

Robert

The best hope for a platform-independent application is one that runs in a web browser. Or use a virtual machine on the other desktop platform/

Deck,

Nope. A web based solution can't be a viable candidate for "best" because it requires an Internet connection and that you store the data on a the publisher's remote server(s). As Neophyte said in the Quickbooks thread, I want my info under my sole control and my eyes only. This is especially important for financial data.

Robert



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2014 11:20AM by Robert M.

Hi everyone,

Just played with iBank 5.0.4 for a few minutes. It doesn't have a reconciliation report. It fouled up the import of my Quicken data. The interface itself seems clunky. Definitely not a fan. I much prefer Moneydance.

Robert