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Financial Software

V

virgomac

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 10, 2008
91
0
Small rant of frustration :(

I think I have tried just about every piece of financial software under the sun and I am about as frustrated and let down as you can get at this point.

Previously I've used Microsoft Money for years, when I switched back to a Mac figured it would be a piece of cake to find a comparable piece of software. Boy was I wrong. Either the ability to make half decent reports is missing, or the ability to search through transactions based on category or payee is not there. Or something as simple as reliably splitting a transaction is gone.

I mean seriously, are these just monumental feats of financial programming? Money isn't pretty, but damn if its not a reliable and functional piece of software, there isn't any combination of data that I might want to look for that you can't configure for it to find and display for you. Why is it so difficult to find the same caliber of financial software for the mac?

Best I've found so far is iBank, but its reporting is absolutely horrid. Financial Life for Mac is well, more like unLife. The new Cha-Ching isn't bad, but much like QFLM is beta and still very incomplete.

So I guess I am stuck using Money in Paralells? What have you chosen to do?
 
virgomac said:
So I guess I am stuck using Money in Paralells? What have you chosen to do?
Click to expand...

I created a spreadsheet for myself about fifteen years ago because I couldn't find a single application that would allow me to PLAN my finances. Everything I found allows you to track what has happened, which for someone as financially irresponsible as me was no good. I added in my salary, added in all my bills and I can easily add anything I plan on spending to see if I will go overdrawn at the end of the month.

I would tell people what you HAVE tried, because if you are saying you've tried everything and you don't like them, then people can't offer much help.

I personally looked at iCompta, which is free and looked quite nice. But again, came nowhere near as good for planning my finances as my trusty old spreadsheet. However I worked in Management Information and have had many years experience in Finance, so I appreciate that a spreadsheet is not an option for everyone.
 
reclusivemonkey said:
I would tell people what you HAVE tried, because if you are saying you've tried everything and you don't like them, then people can't offer much help.
Click to expand...

iCompta, Liquid Ledger, Quicken, Moneywell, IBank, Moneydance, Splash Money, Cha-Ching, QFL, probably a few more than I can't recall LoL
 
The new quicken should be coming out soon and is totally redesigned from the ground up. It has a very slick look to it as well.
 
The only ones that I have tried so far are Quicken Online (free) and iBank (demo). I generally liked Quicken Online except for 1) it is slow and 2) I don't feel comfortable with an online solution. The current version of iBank seems like a toy, looks ugly, couldn't access one of my accounts, and got entries out of order when I downloaded my account via their web browser; overall it just seemed like beta software. What is the current Quicken for Mac 2007 like? I'm not holding my breath for QFL, since they said it would release last year and now they are saying summer this year, but even their FAQs say it lacks many features.

Also, since I have never used anything like Quicken before, how do they reconcile downloaded account info with your manual entries (or do they)? iBank even says in their manual just to download once when you create the account and to use manual entries from then on.
 
SkillsToShow said:
I have found the best way to manage all my accounts and money is mint.com
Click to expand...
Isn't that completely online though? Somehow I just don't feel safe keeping all of my financial information online, esp. with a company that I don't know much about. However, it does seem to answer my question about downloading transactions vs. manual entry; mint.com says that it automatically downloads entries every day and categorizes them. How does it categorize them? Is it configurable? Can you go in and modify the categories later?
 
I did some reading on mint.com, and it sounds like it is read-only for monitoring only. IOW there appears to be no way to keep a current check register with all outstanding transactions, but only to view the current status on your account; this could be a VERY large discrepancy if you have some large outstanding transactions that haven't yet cleared. I can see that it serve a purpose and could be quite useful, but not for tracking what you have available in an account.
 
Yeah, when I switched from Windows to Mac in early 2008 I searched high and low for an application comparable to Quicken Home and Small Business. I wasn't able to find anything that I would even begin to try - I have at least 20 accounts, and I do invoicing and lots of report generation. Conversion of data is a huge issue too. I don't know when I'll be able to stop using Parallels.:(
 
redwarrior said:
downloading now.:)

Edit: It's not playing well with my quicken files. :( As much as I want to get away from Windows, I'm not too excited about figuring out a new package.
Click to expand...

That's a problem with quicken files in general. The standard is very loose, changed often over the years and any application will struggle to get good compatability as apps export formats will differ meaning its even harder to maintain a good importer.
 
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