Vote for Your Favorite Mac Personal Finance App
Over the years, no company has toyed with the loyalties of Mac users more than Intuit. The company has published the Quicken personal finance app since the early days of the Mac, and it has received preferred treatment from Apple on a number of occasions, aiding its success. (Apple subsidiary Claris bundled Quicken with ClarisWorks in 1992 and Apple itself bundled Quicken with Performa models in the mid-1990s.)
And yet, Intuit has jerked Mac users around repeatedly. Back in 1998, the company announced it was dropping Quicken entirely (“Intuit Drops Quicken for Macintosh,” 20 April 1998), before reversing the decision just weeks later after pressure from Apple (“Quicken Speeds Back to Mac,” 11 May 1998). Quicken 2002 Deluxe made the transition to Mac OS X successfully, although subsequent versions required the Rosetta emulator to run on Intel-based Macs. That was fine for Quicken 2005, 2006, and 2007, but then development paused, with Intuit announcing that the planned Quicken Financial Life would be delayed from 2008 to 2010 (“Quicken For Mac Delayed Until 2010,” 10 July 2009). It never shipped, and in 2011, Quicken 2007 was eventually replaced by the weaker Quicken Essentials. Quicken 2007’s reliance on Rosetta meant that it wasn’t compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, forcing many users to put off that upgrade (“Intuit Reminds Quicken Users of Lion Danger,” 6 July 2011). But in 2012, Inuit released a version of Quicken 2007 that could run in Lion and later versions of OS X (“Intuit Releases Quicken Mac 2007 OS X Lion Compatible,” 8 March 2012). Eventually, Intuit moved beyond Quicken Essentials to release Quicken
2015, though it too didn’t match up to Quicken 2007 (“Quicken 2015: Close, But Not Yet Acceptable,” 2 October 2014). And finally, Intuit said last year that it was looking for a company to acquire Quicken, a process that’s still underway (“Intuit to Sell off Quicken,” 24 August 2015). Phew!
Back in 2011, when Quicken Essentials was doing a poor job of replacing Quicken 2007, Michael Cohen wrote “Finding a Replacement for Quicken” (5 August 2011) and “Follow-up to Finding a Replacement for Quicken” (20 September 2011), which did a fabulous job of helping readers understand their needs and choose from the available alternatives to Quicken. If you’re considering switching to another personal finance app, be sure to read those articles.
But it’s time to do something different, which is to provide a forum for TidBITS readers to share their opinions of the state of personal finance software for the Mac. As we did with personal information managers (“Vote for Your Favorite Mac Personal Information Manager,” 11 January 2016), we’re asking you to evaluate the personal finance apps you’ve used. The survey is embedded at the bottom of this article on our Web site or you can navigate to it directly.
A few important notes before you start clicking your answers:
- Please rate only those apps with which you have significant personal experience. That means weeks or months of use, not something that you launched once before discovering that it lacked a feature you need. Don’t enter ratings for apps you haven’t used.
- We’ve listed a lot of apps in the poll, but if we missed the one you use, let us know so we can add it. To keep this manageable, we’re focusing on Mac apps that could conceivably replace Quicken — full-featured personal finance apps. Please don’t suggest simple budgeting apps, iOS-only apps, Web apps, or anything that’s not in active development. There’s nothing wrong with using these tools, but we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.
- Some apps will get more votes than others, so when looking at the results (click Show Previous Responses after you vote), take that into account. A lot of votes may indicate popularity (or a successful attempt to game the system), but an app with just a few highly positive votes is still worth a look.
- Ratings don’t give a complete picture, so feel free to say what you like or don’t like about apps you use in the comments for this article; we’ve seeded the top-level comment for each app, and please keep your thoughts within the appropriate top-level comment. Searching for the app name will be the fastest way to find the appropriate comment thread.
We’ll report on the results next week, calling out those apps that garner the most votes and have the highest ratings. Thanks for the help!
Please leave comments about AceMoney as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Banktivity as replies to this comment.
I am a self-employed professional, and have been using iBank, and now Banktivity for several years. There are a few small things that I would like to see improved, but there have been improvements as we have gone along.
I migrated to iBank, now Banktivity, about four years ago. Downloaded qif file from Quicken which included data from the 1990's. Excellent results. Having international investments and activities, the multi currency feature is very helpful. I don't miss Quicken and applaud Banktivity for their innovative features.
I used to beta test Quicken 2005 & 2006. After upgrading to Quicken 2007, which worked great, I wound up stuck in that version until Inuit pulled the plug on the program for Mac Users. When they came back with Quicken Essentials for the Mac, that was a disaster with very few of the capabilities that Quicken 2007 still had.
I used Quicken 2007 until iBank for the Mac was available to purchase. Having researched other financial programs as well, I decided that iBank would be the best choice for me. 4 years ago, I did same as the author of this article. Not sure if I downloaded the quif file, or exported it directly from Quicken 2007. However, importing it into iBank and converting it into iBank files was easy. Been using iBank (now Banktivity) since then. I also applaud iBank and Banktivity for their upgrades and updates, also their innovative features that they added in.
I also don't miss Quicken & look forward to using Banktivity for many more years.
I migrated about 10 years ago. It continues to be the best at tracking your spending and reconciling your accounts. I haven't managed to work out how to budget yet.
One critical flaw in all of the banking applications is that it is very difficult to switch applications without losing your data, (or spending weeks fixing data). QIF is supposed to be the interchange format, but it doesn't really work
Used (and loved) iBank for close to 10 years as a personal finance manager. Though it kept becoming more and more bloated with tools I do not need and, at the same time, dropping some minor but nonetheless useful "details".
When the iPhone came, they took forever to release an iOS companion. It was indeed pretty good but in the following years has has been just "kept alive" (barely).
Recently they completely dropped support (and integration) for that iOS companion app and only choice, now, are their new iPhone and iPad apps.
Well... the new iPad app is nothing more than a visualizer for all the stuff (graphics, reports etc) I do not need: you can't enter/edit transactions from it! :-0 whilst the separate iPhone companion... can you believe it does *not* even show your current "net balance" (across all assets/accounts)? Two years after its release? =:-0
Dropped iBank for MoneyWiz which has excellent integration across all devices. Still missing some iBank features but can live with it.
Switched from Quicken 2015 when potential sale announced.
I find Banktivity has its good and bad points but there are several really annoying functions in the software that should have been changed or fixed. Setting up pension and social security deposits is not easy and there is no documentation on it. I did a tax report for 2015 and in it, unrealized capital gains shows up on the report. This is just poor quality control and the item should never be in the report.
Date handling is another gripe I have. To change the date you have to either highlight the field of use the down arrow to access the calendar. Quicken and others just handle this so much better by providing immediate access to a calendar.
Scheduled transactions is not as easy to deal with as it is in Quicken. I cannot accurately schedule a deposit of my Social Security check as the checks are deposited on a certain Wednesday each month depending on your date of birth. No way to select this as in Quicken.
iBank (iBanktivity) works for checking and savings accounts, but I haven't figure out how to get it download Brokerage account information correctly.
Amending my previous post. Banktivity simply does not work correctly in doing Direct Downloads (and maybe other types of downloads). Customer help does not respond in order to fix this problem, despite promising to do so. The only download that works for me so far is downloading a CSV file into Excel and then importing into Bankitivity.
Please leave comments about Buddi as replies to this comment.
Buddi is solid for handling multiple checking, saving, loan, and credit card accounts. That is all I need. Donationware and updated regularly.
Please leave comments about Budget as replies to this comment.
Budget works, but has not been updated in years. The biggest problem is syncing with Budget Touch, the iOS app, just awkward, could be streamlined. Sometimes it simply doesn't work for no obvious reason. This could also be said for other procedures. I am used to it and am retired with diminished needs so I won't be switching, but would recommend to others that they investigate other options.
Please leave comments about CheckBook/CheckBook Pro as replies to this comment.
I can't vote because I haven't been an active user, but this was my choice when I auditioned a bunch several years ago, and is the one I bought. The only thing I didn't like was that it kept all of the data in Application Support, so I had to set up a symbolic link to an encrypted disk image. (This is no longer necessary.)
The reason I chose it was that it no fuss, and didn't have many features. It was a checkbook that could handle multiple accounts, import what my credit union spits out, and was the best match to my 'one pool of money with some inputs and outputs' philosophy. Any budgeting or other frills were not deeply intertwingled into the interface.
In practice, I never got into the habit of using it; I just download account data periodically as backup. I've heard that forensic accounting can be fun, but the normal stuff, not so much.
Please leave comments about Finance as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about General Ledger as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about GnuCash as replies to this comment.
Not having a concept of payees is a huge downside. You can search for transactions with a given memo, but GnuCash won't total them for you or run reports. You have to copy and paste out to a spreadsheet to see how much you’ve spent at Corner Bar or Pool Hall this year, unless they each have their own discrete categories. And then you can’t group them together under an overarching Dissolute Entertainment category.
(This is as of about two years ago; don’t know if they’ve included payees since.)
This can be done, yet only with "conventional" four-digit category codes and careful set-up of the accounts. GnuCash is, by design, a full-on double-entry accounting application like M.Y.O.B. (which is what my installation replaced when that was abandoned.)
It is very powerful, and with careful planning of the accounts, and diligent entries in the General Ledger, it can easily manage several businesses and several households from a single "control panel", as it were.
I've been using gnucash continuously since May 24, 1994. I love the fact that it's open-source, and I can write my own programs to process the data (in Racket, natch).
Please leave comments about Growly Checkbook as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Home Accountz as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about iCash as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about iCompta as replies to this comment.
I couldn't get used to iCompta's clunky interface. I used it for almost a year, so I think I gave it a fair shot. Entering transactions, which should be the easiest thing to do, was awkward.
It does have some nice capabilities for selecting and editing batches of transactions, so you could, for example, easily change the category on all transactions to a particular payee.
The way I'd describe the application is that it seems like it was written for programmers and engineers. You can see the logic behind how things are implemented, but from a usability standpoint, it's lacking.
Please leave comments about iFinance as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about jGnash as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Liquid Ledger as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Money as replies to this comment.
As a Canadian non package handles Mortgages well. Our compounding is calculated differently from US banks (not sure how) so payments never match up to actual bank charges here.
Money works well for setting up and importing online data into accounts, but its reporting interface leaves a lot to be desired, which makes for difficulty with Income Tax reporting.
Is this the Money by Jumsoft program?
Yes. A lot of the apps in this category have very similar names, but it seems that only one is actually just called "Money."
Please leave comments about MoneyBag as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Moneydance as replies to this comment.
I have found Moneydance to have a few limitations (report formats are pretty inflexible and transaction entry for investments can be a bit funky), but I have found it to be quite satisfactory. My main concern is that export formats are limited, so should I ever find it inadequate, it may hard to move my full history, dating back to 1990, to a replacement.
[This was part of a contribution to a discussion on the Tidbits email list regarding various packages.]
It provides the basics, including investments, but lacks a few features I'd like:
* ability to move e transaction from one account to another.
* ability to transfer amounts from one category to another
* investment data in mobile version.
Moving transactions (perhaps a relatively recent addition as my muscle memory for this is more obscure):
http://help.infinitekind.com/kb/entering-transactions/how-do-i-move-a-transaction-to-a-different-account
The learning curve from Quicken to Moneydance was more arduous than expected but it does everything we require of it. This after 5 years of experience at this point.
I gave up on Quicken and I selected MoneyDance with the help of the TidBits readers' reviews. I needed one that could handle investments particularly stocks. Investment data entry was not all that good in Quicken and MoneyDance sorted out some data problems with some of the custom stock options. MoneyDance has been ok and while its features are limited in comparison to Quicken, I have found it easier to use overall. MoneyDance seems bit slow in making feature enhancements and improvements and some I want have been mentioned. Two dimensional reporting improvement is needed. Sometimes the capability to do things looks to be there but can't be bought into action. Being non US I dont use the online downloading of accounts. Documentation is good but could be better. Support is very good and very quick to respond and help. MoneyDance hasn't crashed once and is easy to backup. I have been using MoneyDance for a number of years and I haven't missed Quicken at all. I recommend MoneyDance.
I've been using Moneydance on a variety of platforms for 15 years (the last half dozen on the Mac). It does what I need, upgrades have either been free or reasonably priced, and support (rarely needed) has been very good. The biggest negative is that it's sometimes not easy to get the reports that I want. Drilling down to get more information on specific report entries can also be difficult. Still, I haven't seen anything else on the Mac that's good enough to tempt me away. Part of the reason for that is that Moneydance supports resizable register text. Many of the alternatives not only don't but use minuscule text or gray on gray fields in areas where visibility is important.
Moneydance has a Java dependency. You will need to install Java (from Oracle) to run it. It has its interface quirks that takes getting used to.
I started using Moneydance years ago after, as Tidbits reports, being jerked one too many times by Intuit. It is a competent and is an app I would recommend interface warts and all.
Money Dance all the way. I switch to MD after Intuit abandoned me for the umpteenth time and never looked back. My needs are simple -- just tabulating income and expenses for 20 years over multiple categories and sub-categories. MD is simple, straightforward, and stable. It is simple to set up and use, it has never crashed and it has never made a downloading error. MD has its quirks -- the interface needs customization options, reports are too limited, and it needs a proper find and replace option, But the learning curve to switch was easy, I had no trouble importing years of Quicken data, documentation is good, and customer support has been surprisingly helpful.
There is fairly full featured Find and Replace Extension, free download, should try it.
Been using Moneydance since 2008.
It's true that it runs in Java so it doesn't have a 100% native Mac interface but, it does a good enough job of faking it. Ignore the commenter who said you have to install Java to run it. It comes packaged with its own internal JVM so you do *NOT* have to install Java.
Moneydance's killer feature for me now is the ability to directly import transactions from my credit union into my checking register. It also has the ability to merge imported transactions with hand entered ones. Now I can't imaging using a money program that can't do this.
2nd most important feature is the Reminders. I have all my recurring bills setup so that each payday I can pay everything up to next payday. Whatever's left over is my discretionary income. This type of forecasting has proven to be the only budgeting method I can actually do.
Also, has companion iOS apps the sync via Dropbox. Useful for entering transactions or checking balances on the go.
I've been using MDance for over a year when I finally threw in the proverbial towel on Quicken. MDance does everything that I need except that MDance doesn't like showing Capital Gains gains/losses in their Income Statement.
I have played around with that lack of reporting CGains and have found a workaround for getting that done-manual that it is.
I also find that having MDance download one's credit card information is at the best tedious. I found that just entering the credit card information by hand and then showing the entry as "cleared" is more convenient for me.
I have no issues with any of the reports and like the fact that I can export any report to 2011 Excel without a problem.
Likewise I like MDance's budget report. I can set up one annual budget and then track my spending all year with that one report.
I am a retired investor, so having a stable financial program is critical to my overall happiness. MDance fills that bill quite well.
I started using MD in 2002 after a brief encounter with Quicken. I did evaluate the alternatives at the time and opted for MD, I do not have personal experience with the other contenders this time. I am a satisfied user and I would recommend it.
Some of the main advantages:
Runs on OS X, Win, Linux with the same data file so e.g. you can send an MD file to your children, accountant etc who may run MD on Linux or Win;
Multi currency support;
Third party plug-ins;
Data file is an XML file so is user editable in the 'if you know what you are doing' sort of way and at least theoretically
readable without the front end should that cease to work in a future OS update;
Under active development, user forums etc.
iOS version.
The user interface has improved over the years but it still isn't up to the usual Mac standards, this is likely the result of the three flavours: OS X, WIN, Linux.
Please leave comments about moneyGuru as replies to this comment.
MoneyGuru, for me, is the only software I can use. It's the only app that properly imports both my US bank, QXF files, and my Polish csv files. Those CSV files cause all the other apps to choke. Plus, MoneyGuru seems the best app for dealing with multiple currencies in a practical manner. It is weak on reporting, but since the pdfs it produces contain text, I'm able to munge the data into something presentable. It's next big plus is the speed with which I can bulk edit transactions. I can work my way through an entire month's downloads in seconds. Maybe it would be nice if it automatically added categories, but in my past experience with other apps, I still had to edit, and I find it simpler to just add the categories (transfers) myself in bulk. MoneyGuru is simple and fast. Hard to beat, IMO. If someone has simple needs, or really weird ones like mine, I recoomend it.
(I left a comment outside this thread, so am reposting it here.
Please leave comments about Moneyspire as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about MoneyWell as replies to this comment.
Made the jump from Quicken to MoneyWell many years ago and never looked back. Fits my simple household and small business very well. Easy use for end of year tax statements also (Canada)
Developer sold it, and development is finally moving forward again with the new owner. Syncing with iOS has always been a squirrelly process, but that's supposed to be fixed this time around. If they were abit further in the process I would have given it a top rating, but as it stands I had to give it the middle, simply because I'm still not totally confident they can keep development going.
I love the fact that it uses the envelope system. This is why I bought it in the first place. I don't just want to track where I spend my money. I want to discipline it.
I have found MoneyWell to be very stable and a pleasure to use. The program can now duplicate a split transaction, preserving all of the details. If only the qif format could export split transactions properly, with all of the memo lines preserved, people would be able to move from one program to another easily.
I was using MoneyWell and it seemed to do a great job, but I was having lots of problems importing QFX files. Can't direct connect to banks in Austrlia through it. Transactions were missing from the import, and no way of working out what was missing.
I've now moved to Banktivity (iBank) and it seems to do the job well. Still setting it up and working out how to do envelope budgeting which was my main criteria in a money app.
Please leave comments about Moneywiz as replies to this comment.
MoneyWiz 2.x v good, but not without initial concerns when released.
They use there own sync system.
Also auto down load of bank account transactions. Using an intermediary.
Auto assignment of categories very poor at first but has improved some what.
Other than those comments, it has all the usual features.
The website blog talks of a major upgrade, outlining the proposed new features.
2.0 was a bit buggy, but firtually issues now resolved.
This future makes me feel in easy, that we will get a repeat of the 2.0 scenario
Please leave comments about My Checkbook as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about PocketMoney as replies to this comment.
I've used this since 2008 on my iPhone and 2010 on my Mac. After the passing of the developer, Hardy Macia in May 2013, it fell on hard times as his heir didn't follow Hardy's wishes. However, it has been purchased by a fellow user and will be updated after the Android & iOS versions are updated.
Please leave comments about Quicken 2007 as replies to this comment.
Quicken 7 does everything I need it to do very well. I have been using it from early versions to balance my check books, credit card accounts and maintain my assets and have 15 years of history accumulated. What I like about it is the flexibility of reporting to facilitate tax accounting, reconciliation of accounts, and asset management. I purchased the latest version of Quicken 15, but was reluctant to commit to this weaker version.
Once I used Quicken, but Intuit's distributor in Australia had no interest in selling Quicken for Mac platform - only Windows. I had to buy updates for Mac when I was in the States. There was no way of transferring Mac Quicken data to my Windows Quicken even if both were on the same computer. So I was stuck by having two Quickens and was struck by the differences between the Windows version to the Mac version. After doing an evaluation of Quicken alternatives I moved to MoneyDance and while it is short on some features and reporting capability I haven't missed Quicken and its dismissive service to the Mac.
How could Apple keep Campbell on its board is something I could never understand. I will not shed a tear if Intuit goes under.
Quicken 2007 meets my needs and has a decent interface. I dumped it because I don't expect it to keep working for much longer as OS X continues to evolve.
Given Intuit's history with (lack of) support for the Mac, I didn't see the point of sticking with the company's products and moving to the newer version of Quicken. Plus, the reviews of Intuit's offerings were mediocre at best.
I still use this very old program. I manually download a webconnect file from my bank. Q2007 does a good job suggesting categories for checking and credit card items. The reports are very flexible allowing different views of data from charts to reports. I'd like to upgrade to a well maintained finance app with a more modern Mac interface. I've tried a few option; but, they seem a little more cumbersome in entering data; charts and reports are less flexible.
I looked briefly at a couple of other things, one of them Moneydance, but nothing else came close to being able to fill my needs. I am not happy relying on the unreliable Intuit, but I need access to my old business and personal records, the powerful reporting to track my finances, and the ability track retirement accounts.
Except for a mobile app, Quicken for Mac Lion Compatible does everything I want and need. Plus, it still runs on the current version of El Capitan!
I am still using Quicken 2007 for Lion (with OS X Yosemite for my wife and Snow Leopard for a client). It's like an old shoe -- I know how to work it, so I am not changing until I have a very good reason. (I did buy Quicken 2016, but I have not run it yet.)
Like many of the other commenters, I still use Quicken 2007 (with El Capitan) as I have yet to find a replacement that has equivalent reporting capabilities and the ability to export reports to Excel. Perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough. Q2007 is creaky around the edges (I periodically have to rebuild the database) but it continues to work solidly even with a 30MB database and transactions going back to 1992.
I had been quite happily using Quicken since the 1990s, and Quicken 2007 since 2008 when I switched over to Apple machines. I’d been using Quicken for all of my wife’s and my household/personal financial tracking, including cash, savings, checking, credit cards, and investments such as mutual funds, IRAs, 401k, etc. I liked 2007’s user interface, its efficient ledger design, its customizable reports, and its user preferences customizing options. I liked its ability to directly download all of my various investment fund data.
Then Intuit started rocking the boat by clinging to Rosetta even after Apple killed it, and then Intuit began offering weak non-Rosetta substitutes for Quicken 2007. Fortunately, Intuit finally got around to dealing with the Rosetta issue for Quicken 2007, but I got worried about the long-term viability of 2007 and the likelihood of Intuit ever offering a serious upgrade to it, so I started searching for an alternative to Quicken AND Intuit — I don’t feel that Intuit can be trusted. And if they succeed in finding a buyer for Quicken? Who knows what that may bring.
The obvious difficulty in trying to find a replacement is that you can’t do a really good evaluation of any financial management application without really using it for some significant time period, and meanwhile you want to keep your data entry current in your current application, doubling the time and effort spent doing your bookkeeping while also doing new app evaluation. So I was reluctant to dive into an alternative app without reading enough reviews and user’s comments to lead me to think that this or that alternative might suit me.
Based on that kind of search, iBank seemed like it could be a good alternative. I installed iBank (4) in 2011, used it for a couple of months, but it just wasn’t Quicken 2007, and I couldn’t get comfortable with it. I went back to continuing with Quicken 2007 until recently, when I tried the by now upgraded version of iBank (5). Used it for almost 3 months. Still couldn’t get to the point where I felt like it fit me. I didn’t like the ledger design, or the paucity of user customizing options, or the fairly lame report generation. I also didn’t like having to pay iBank a monthly fee for access to direct download of investment data. But mostly it just overall didn’t “feel” like a good fit for me. I returned to Quicken 2007, but I am now also running SEE Finance beside it. And while it’s too early to say decisively, I’m liking SEE Finance a lot. So far, it seems to be able to do everything 2007 could do — doing many things better (like direct access to investments), but some things not quite as well (I’m not yet finding reports in SEE to be quite as customizable as in 2007, although probably good enough for my needs). But I think it’s safe to say that SEE Finance will be my replacement for 2007.
Like many, many other commenters, I still use Quicken 2007, because it still does what I want it to do. As a bonus, it sometimes shows me the old watch cursor while it is thinking, which reminds me of when I first used Quicken on my Mac LC.
I've been using Quicken since 1992. I've stayed with Quicken 2007 since I need categories (along with subcategories) AND classes, and need to run a particular report with categories down the column and classes across the row.
Please leave comments about Quicken 2015/2016 as replies to this comment.
Having used Quicken for over two decades, I cannot imagine making any other software work for me. During the "trouble years" of Quicken, I purchased iBank, and totally gave up on getting any of my Quicken history imported. While Quicken 2016 still has some missing features compared to Q2007 (notably loan amortization), I am satisfied with it and would not consider any other software as long as Quicken is available.
The problem with this kind of survey is that while there are a plethora of apps that do basic finance, there are some key features that are only in a couple. If you're a user that wants one of those features, it doesn't matter how popular the apps are that don't do them.
Case in point: Quicken 2007 is, in my opinion, the gold standard on OS X for tracking and reporting lot based investments. If you do not track investments then Q2015/Q2016 may be perfectly adequate for you. But if you do need to track investments, Q2015/Q2016 still can't do it. (Just one example: you can't display your portfolio as of a particular date.)
How the apps handle budgeting, reporting, transfers between accounts, multi-currency, special account types, option trading, account reconcilation, iOS integration, check writing are all similar points of differentiation between finance apps. Just look at Intuit's list of Quicken 2007 features that are not yet in Q2016 to get an idea of what's still missing.
Way overpriced! I tried it for a year and it SUCKED! Not as good as Quicken for Mac 2007 Lion Compatible, even though it does have a rudimentary mobile app. I could not see wasting another $75 for the 2016 version.
I have used Quicken for decades. I loved it in 2007. I upgraded and can tell you the most of it is either the same or better but NOT the reports. Intuit has taken away most of the best part of the reporting section. You can not, as someone mentioned, get your portfolio on any particular date so trying to reconcile with a statement is impossible. Most of all, I used to be able to click on the column heading and sort by that column. That's totally gone. I have forced myself to live without these features hoping that with my complaints and what I would assume are hoards of others' Intuit will come through. (Didn't know it was being sold. Very disappointing.) BUT now I found that I can' download my Paypal statements into Quicken. Paypal won't use the same interface. They say QIF and Quicken no longer imports QIF into anything but a cash account. (Not even sure it will do that.) So, It's getting worse so even though I hate change and really love Most of Quicken, I'm ready to change.
Please leave comments about Quicken Essentials as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Quicken for Windows as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about Savings as replies to this comment.
Please leave comments about SEE Finance as replies to this comment.
I have been using SEE Finance as a replacement for Quicken 2007 since its inception. As an owner of rental property I appreciate it's transaction downloading capability, fast search engine, ability to create custom reports and tax code indexing. The customer support is the best I have had with any software.
I've been using SEE Finance since 1/1/11 to manage 20 separate checking, savings, investment, and credit card accounts in two currencies (US dollars and Thai baht). I agree with Steve Mattson who also appreciates its easy transaction downloads, fast search, customizable reports and tax coding abilities, and first class tech support.
While there is really nothing in my digital world that falls into the "can't live without it" category, SEE Finance continues to be a perfect fit for my needs, just as it has since day one.
With "Four weekly" Pay periods not monthly See Finance has an update next week to allow 4 weekly Overview, Budgets & statements etc. Can already set recurring transfers etc to four weekly. Great service and a stable app.
Have used several finance apps in the past incl. iBank & MoneyWiz. See Finance suits me..
Imported my Quicken file. The import log helped me find corrupted transactions in Quicken, fix them, and do a clean import. Great for reports for taxes, tracking investments, loans and mortgages. Superior customer support.
I switche to SEE Fonance from Quicken many years ago. I tried many alternatives at the time but SEE was among my favorites and was the only one that could import my data correctly. Support is excellent. It is reliable. Data entry is decent. My main complaint is reconciliation, which is very clumsy. They promised to improve it years ago, but no sign of it so far.
After being tied to Quicken since 1993 and finding early iterations of the 2007 version to be eerily unstable, I spent some time looking around for a replacement and settled on SEE Finance a year ago. It imported my data cleanly, is very stable, fast and meet my needs well. Some complain that it does not print checks, but this is not one of my needs. I find that I now enjoy doing finances again after having come to dread it with Quicken.
I migrated from Quicken 2007 to SEE Finance finance in 2012, having used the various versions of Quicken for 16 years. I have never regretted it. Intuit would have to pay me a six-figure sum to return to Quicken.
I am retired and have a considerable number of investments. I run 31 accounts of varying types with it.
Importing from Quicken was zero problem. It worked first time without any hiccups.
It is very stable.
I agree that reconciliation is a little clumsy, but I learnt to live with that ages ago. I hadn't realised it didn't print cheques. Here in the UK, cheques died out ages ago!
Support is absolutely superb. On those rare occasions when I have needed it, I have posed my question as I go to bed here in London (the real one!) and a bespoke comprehensive reply is waiting for me when I wake up the following morning.
The application is subject to regular hasslefree updates.
For the functionality it provides, it's cheap.
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Mint may be web-based, but it's just too important to leave out. You have products with far smaller audiences included. I can't see the sense in that.
If we add the Web-based Mint (which explicitly discontinued its Mac app - oh, right Mint is owned by Intuit! :-)), then we'd have to add every other Web-based financial package, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. (And then people would complain vociferously of not wanting their confidential financial information in the cloud.)
Everything is vociferous on the internet, no matter how idiosyncratic. Or maybe _especially_ when idiosyncratic.
Mint also has a native iOS app, but then I guess your comment to David W. about "insanely long" would also kick in.
No web apps? We're still in 1998? I use to use Quicken. In fact, it was the first program I got back in 1980-something. We needed it to help balance our three checkbooks (my wife, my own, and our journal checkbook I used to pay bills). When I got my wife her new iMac, Quicken wouldn't work. It was still a PowerPC app. However, it allowed me to reevaluate our use of Quicken. We rarely used checks. We no longer had to balance a bank statement. My 401K, Bank, and Investment accounts were all on line. I didn't need Quicken to balance my checkbook, or tell me how much money, or pay my bills. I didn't need Quicken any more. We switched to Mint which does everything I need.
Nothing wrong with Web apps from a general perspective, but we already have 34 Mac apps, and if we open it up more broadly to online apps and iOS-only apps, the list will become insanely long.
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Is this the same as the KDE-based kMyMoney?
UK - VAT registered. I have given up trying to find a Mac replacement for Money Manager which i have used for years. Mac finance packages are either bloated or trying to be too. clever so end up being inflexible and unintuitive. Continuing to use MM is the only reason I still have a pc.
A number of people have suggested You Need A Budget, or YNAB, but as far as I can tell from reading the service's Web site, it doesn't fit into this survey on two counts. First, there's no Mac app - it's only a Web service with mobile apps. Second, it appears to be only a budgeting app, not a full-featured personal finance app like Quicken or the like.
I have used GnuCash for many years as a linux user before crossing over to the Mac (and iOS). That it is cross-platform is the biggest advantage. I use it exclusively for checkbook management. I run into trouble navigating it for other purposes, such as reports. When I first started on the Mac in 2006 I did not find GnuCash, so I used MoneyDance. It was OK, but when I found that GnuCash was available, I returned home.
Adam, I tried several of these back in 2014 to have as a replacement if PocketMoney ever stopped working. I ended up using iFinance, Quicken for Mac 2007 Lion Compatible and Quicken for Mac 2015 the longest. I've dropped iFinance and Quicken for Mac 2015, but stayed with Quicken for Mac 2007LC as a back up to PM. I'm also using iCompta as a backup; it has a few quirks but is usable.
I am using Quicken 2007 for tracking expenditures and budgeting. I find that the recent versions of Quicken not useful primarily because they lack annual budgeting. Quicken 2007 has very good reporting formats including expenditures in each category and a comparison of expenditures versus budget. The results are helpful when it comes to income tax preparation and for budget planning. It is also possible to download bank data to the program. I do not use Quicken for investment planning since I find Microsoft Excel and other tools more useful. I would like to find more up-to-date software that builds on the extensive feature set of Quicken 2007. For example, the program could allow sharing among devices and it could use more graphics since storage cost is now so much lower. The interface between bank websites and the application could be improved - maybe with browser plugins. The program should also address security issues that are even more important today.
I found this statement curious: "Please don’t suggest ... Web apps". If there is a web app that is as full featured and capable as Quicken 2007, and has guarantees of security and ability to export in a standard format if the web site goes away, I'd switch to it. My wife and I use Quicken 2007 and today that means she has to physically use my computer, rather than her own.
This seems like an odd constraint in 2016. All apps are moving to the cloud.
The reasons are twofold. First and most importantly, we already have something like 34 Mac apps here. Who knows how high that number would grow if we included Web apps. Second, there are an awful lot of people who are unhappy about trusting confidential data to a cloud-services provider.
Quicken 2007 still has by far the best report feature including custom reports.
MoneyGuru, for me, is the only software I can use. It's the only app that properly imports both my US bank, QXF files, and my Polish csv files. Those CSV files cause all the other apps to choke. Plus, MoneyGuru seems the best app for dealing with multiple currencies in a practical manner. It is weak on reporting, but since the pdfs it produces contain text, I'm able to munge the data into something presentable. It's next big plus is the speed with which I can bulk edit transactions. I can work my way through an entire month's downloads in seconds. Maybe it would be nice if it automatically added categories, but in my past experience with other apps, I still had to edit, and I find it simpler to just add the categories (transfers) myself in bulk. MoneyGuru is simple and fast. Hard to beat, IMO. If someone has simple needs, or really weird ones like mine, I recoomend it.
I still use First Edge which BARELY works in El Capitan - but works enough for my Caveman accounting system--Over the years I've tried to upgrade so i demo Accountedge Light or whatever it is these days...but they added so much other stuff I don't need. Really, Invoicing,Contacts, yearly "wrap-up" report for Taxes and my marginal lazy bookkeeping works for me.
Used Moneydance for a long time, having transitioned from Quicken and M'soft Money. MD is OK but limited in reports and budget setting which seem too complex to be useful. Would like to use the shares and security side, but once more too complicated to be bothered .
Have tried half a dozen others, but they all lack an important feature or two for my needs. So I endure MD.
Always felt M'soft Money was the best - sad it's gone. Nothing does it all, easily and simply.
I started using Quicken on a Mac in 1992-3 (about the same time I started reading TidBITS!). From about 1998-2015 I used Quicken on a Windows Machine. Last summer, I tried migrating to Quicken 2015 on a Mac, but it was just too painful.
I then investigated web-based alternatives. After weeks of investigation, my wife and I settled on a combination of personalcapital.com and mint.com (they are free, and you can use more than one at a time). They are not perfect, but then again Quicken substantially deviated from perfection, to say the least...
We also used iBank for about 6 months last year. It is good overall, but slow and suffers from poor visual design.
I wish I had the list of products this survey provides 6 months ago...we would have checked more of them out!
Am using QFM 2007. I value Quicken over other programs ; and I would upgrade to QFM 2016, but this update does not have a simple Quickfill list of transactions from which I can add transactions to my register. I know, I know, QFM 2016 has an alternative function to replace Quickfill, but it is much less efficient than Quickfill in 2007.