finance software

I'm using iBank right now, but I've started looking at others. I tried moneywell but that was horrendous.

Next on my list is moneywiz but they do not offer a trial. I'm not sure I'm willing to gamble on 20 bucks

 

The interface is not all that great for iBank. I think the import process with the rules could be improved.

The last time I played with the budget module, I didn't care for it. I thought it was lacking.

Reporting is a bit weak. It has canned reports which are ok but don't appear all that flexible. I'm still playing with the demo and I could be wrong on this.

Edit: it also faiils to connect to Bank of America. Not a huge issue since it will import a downloaded qif file, but still it cannot handle on of the largest banks in the US?

 

I have been using iBank for several months and have been pretty happy with it. I don't really use the budget or reporting modules at all, so can't comment on that aspect.

I have found the import rules work really well if you tweak some of them a bit. If you click on import rules under manage in the left panel, then click the "Import Rules" button I marked for a specific rule it gives several options to allow you to fine tune a rule. The couple I had that were inconsistent I was able to fix here.



I have several Bank of America accounts and iBank has always worked fine for direct download. I just used the "Setup Online Account Access" wizard under the Account menu and selected the Bank of America option, entered my BofA user name and password, and it worked. Something is up if you can't get it to work. I think years ago when I first started with Quicken downloads I had to call BofA and get them to enable downloads or something.

 

I did the same and it gives me an error. In googling it, I find I'm not alone. I don't have the error message handy at the moment, but when I have time I'll do more investigating/troubleshooting.

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Don't know if other finance apps allow you to adjust the rules and then re-apply them but I too found this a bit of a bummer. I have a gas rule and basically any payee from gulf, exxon, etc gets this category. As I add gas stations the rule gets large and a little difficult to deal with since the dialog box doesn't grow. I can and will add a second rule that does gas stations that won't fit the original but its a little ungainly.

 

I took the plunge and bought moneywiz, mostly because of the positive reviews and the money back guarantee. I'm going to give it a chance but while its probably the best look app, in terms of UI polish. There's a few things I don't like about it.

Importing my bank file. It creates a new payee for every transactions. Say I have 5 payments to American Express. It creates 5 different payees.

When trying to import the QFX file, it prompts me to either import ATM/withdrawals or the bank statement. I cannot do both at the same time. When I select ATM it shows me all the transactions (not the ATM ones) and I import. While it states it imports, it doesn't. When I select the other, it goes through the motions but it doesn't include the ATM transactions. Basically it never imports my ATM transactions

If I download my transactions as QIF, it doesn't present me with the ATM question but it does import everything. I sent a message to the author on this issue.

Reporting is nice but I'm trying to find a report that shows me the expenses per category, i.e., my gas expense was 123.00

I'm leaning towards getting my money refunded and going back to iBank. It has a few issues but it does everything I want. I'll first give moneywiz more time to see if I can get it to work the way I need it too

 

iBank vs. Moneywiz

I've been using Moneywiz for the past day really getting into the nitty gritty setting up my accounts, categorizations, running reports etc.

Here's what I think between the two apps.
Moneywiz is a great program and is probably the best looking most polished app. The developer has gone to great lengths to really make this a beautiful app.

Importing is limited but functional, assigning the incoming transactions to existing payees or creating new ones seems unnecessary. There are no rules for assigning categories. If you assign the payee to an existing payee, it will default to that category as well. The problem is if you're importing 30 transactions that's a lot of work to click through individually.

Entering and/or maintaining is done fairly easily.

Reporting, a handful of canned reports that should cover most users but lack of customization and/or creating new ones is an issue (with me).


Overall its a nice program but rigid and lacking in options that the other apps use.

iBank
Import is much more flexible, using the rules helps automate the process. It offers multiple ways to get the data into the app, though I've been largely unsuccessful to download the transactions directly. From what I can see is that I lack the online banking feature which would increase my fees, so I'm not about to add that feature.

Entering and/or maintaining is done easily. The screen is your typical check register view that most finance apps use.

Reporting, a handful of prebuilt reports are included but then you can create a large set from the canned reports. A bit more flexible in deciding accounts, dates and type of reports.


Overall while I really do like Moneywiz it doesn't fit my usage patterns as well as iBank. I understand that Moneywiz is a newer product and may grow in features but for now I think iBank has the edge.

I'm not an expert in either app but from my usage I provided these opinions

 

I actually wrote an fund accounting system using excel and vbscripts for my church. It was set up with the check register, journal, ledger, various reports. It was quite powerful and flexible.

I could have done something similar but to be honest, the current apps offer a lot of features so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Its like baking, there's a reason why most people use cake mixes over baking a cake from scratch. The mixes have been formulated to provide the best consistent taste/texture with the minimum of work. So goes the financial apps, you can use a spreadsheet but with less effort and more features you get the finance app.

To each his own, some people still like to bake cakes from scratch with great results and some like to use spreadsheets