I use Quicken 2005 for the Mac to manage my finances.

It’s a love-hate relationship.

Quicken has been a long-standing icon in the field of finance management software. Long ago it was really the best player in the market. But then, Intuit started to not care. The Mac product languished and suffered, lagged way behind the Windows counterpart. There was all this talk of a new version that would cure all ills, and sure enough a new truly “native” app came out, but its feature set is way too small — “essentials” they call it, and I guess if all you need to do is track your checkbook and credit cards it’s fine. But if you do more, like I do, it doesn’t cut it.

Let’s not forget how crappy the interface is. If nothing else, the fact it wants to use cmd-A — a reserved keystroke for ‘Select All’ — to bring up the Accounts window? Argh. And then there’s still no way to Select All to ease editing. Arrow keys are handled in a non-standard way. Oh, the list could go on. So it’s just a pain to use, but there’s really been no good alternative. And as much as you want to hate it, there’s no question they had the legacy behind them that enabled the software to really have a lot of details right. Sure, the user experience might suck, but they knew how to do reports, graphs, and really generally manage money in the right way.

While it’s obviously the oldest piece of software I own and I’ve had zero reason or desire to upgrade well… if the rumors are true that PowerPC emulation “Rosetta” is going away in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” then Quicken 2005 will no longer work for me and I must upgrade or switch. Trouble is, upgrading to the latest Quicken is not an option.

So what is?

I’m starting to look around at alternatives and here’s what I find:

• iBank
• Moneydance
• Moneywell
• SEE Finance
• GnuCash

I’ve been spending the past few days reading up and trying to see what might be right for me.

I have no idea. 🙂

For every report of X is good, you get a report that X is bad. That Y imported all my years of Quicken data without a hiccup, that Y totally botched everything up. That Z lacks this feature, that Z is great because it does this.

It’s really just hard to tell what will or won’t be good, and I get the feeling that no matter what I try, I’m somehow going to be left unsatisfied. That the process of switching is going to take months. That I might download and try an import, but then I’ll probably need to use both Quicken and the new software side-by-side for a while to see how they do.. at least a month, maybe more, to run through the normal course of monthly bills and transactions to see how it does for things.

Some preliminary biases.

iBank I want to like. It seems cool. It’s truly a Mac app, with Mac people, and trying to be Mac. I like that. I like the fact it’s a small shop and trying hard. But with that, it also means that they’re a little slow to get things developed because finance software is non-trivial. Still, iBank 4 appears to strive to address many of the complaints I’ve read about, so maybe by now it’s become rather robust enough that it’d be good to use.  I also really want to try out this “envelope” system of budgeting.

Moneydance I don’t want to like because it’s Java. Not that I don’t like Java, but it means there’s going to be weirdness in how it works and exists. But it’s also a bonus that it works on Windows and Linux because you know they are striving to write for a large audience, and with a larger audience that means a lot more coverage, a lot more dealing with bugs, features, and improvements and so on. They sound like a responsive company and trying to do well. A lot of people also like how well Moneydance handles reports and investment tracking, so that’s a plus. I’ve dealt with Quicken’s strange interface issues for years so I’m sure I could learn to live with this.

Moneywell seems cool, but I’m not sure it has enough of the features I need, like investment tracking.

SEE Finance… hard to say. Haven’t spent much time looking at it yet.

GnuCash. Well… I like open source and all, but I’m not sure I want to bother going here right now. But the open source advantage is undeniable because it makes me wonder about one very key thing:

Exit Strategy.

See, if I need to move away from Quicken now, what about in the future? What if whatever I choose ends up going belly-up and now I’m left hanging? Is there a good strategy for being able to get all my data OUT of their app so I can move it somewhere else? That perhaps uses a better solution than QIF files? To me, this is key. Sure once I find the right software I’ll be a loyal customer until I’m given reason to not… but having worked in professional software development for over 15 years I know that data is king to the customer and we need to always allow them to preserve and move their data around freely. That things can happen that cause us and our apps to have to come and go, but we can’t let the user’s data become inaccessible. So what’s their strategy? That will be a very key factor in my decision.

Another small point is being able to do multiple totally separate accounting practices. That is, sure this is mostly for personal finance, but I also want to be able to track Hsoi Enterprises LLC financials there (i.e. small business). That means I can have totally separate data files for personal and for business. That means I can at least do simple and basic things for taxes, reporting, etc.. And that I can export the data in a way that my accountant can handle it.

I know about things like Mint.com too. But I’m going to be honest. I’m sore at Intuit. I don’t feel they’ve treated their Mac customers right for many many years. I feel they jerked us around, neglected us, treated us like crap, and all out of the arrogance of “where else you gonna go?”. I really don’t want to give them my money any more. Plus, something about putting all my personal finance information in one place like that… just waiting for a data breach. Call me paranoid, but I just don’t feel like I want to do that. YMMV.

But whatever I do, I need to start doing it now. It’s going to take a long time to evaluate stuff. Heck I just thought… what I might do is continue doing online research and settle on the top 2 or 3 apps. Then download and run ALL of them simultaneously and see how it goes. Yes it will mean a month or two of pain because my bill paying sessions may take 2-3x as long to deal with, but this may give me a better chance to really compare these guys head to head.

We’ll see. 🙂

If you have any experience with or comments about these, please comment.