In my quest for new finance software I figure I just have to dive in.

iBank

I started by downloading iBank. I want to like this app. I want to like it for it’s Mac-ness. I want to like it because it looks slick. In playing around with it for a bit, it does seem to be alright. I really like all the tutorial videos on their website, as that helps you get started.

I can’t figure out how to fully import Categories. That is, if you create a new data file, you’re asked if you want to start off with a set of Home and Business accounts. I tried that, and got a fantastic starting list. When I tried exporting my old Quicken 2005 data to a QIF then importing that, I only was given my categories. I didn’t see any way to get their categories. That sucks.

As well, Quicken’s notion of “Classes” doesn’t exist. I don’t mind if someone isn’t a Quicken clone — they should be better! But that way of being able to arbitrarily group things together is so useful. For instance, I could group all the “Christmas 2010” expenses together. iBank does have a notion of “smart accounts”, and it’s possible something like that could fill the bill. But you know… if there’s some way to make it work, some way to replicate it, couldn’t their QIF importer help out with that? I mean, I imagine a Class is well defined (due to the slash character in the Category string being a delimiter).

That’s another thing on the import. It just assumes the Class is part of the category. So now I have a ton of ugly-ass category names. Ugh.

Then a strange thing. I tried playing around with the budget feature. The wizard/assistant walks you through. Oddly, the screen that lets you select the accounts to budget, when I went to the next screen it selected the inverse! For instance, if I selected checking and deselected savings, then on the next screen it assumed I wanted savings! As well, it failed to put all the categories into the list. It was just strange.

Granted, the import didn’t go all that smoothly. Most of my accounts went OK, but my main checking account, with some almost 10 years of data in it, was all messed up. I don’t know where to begin trying to fix it. I just remembered something about how there can be confusion if there are same names, like a category “cash” and an account “cash”, so I may need to do some renaming and try again.

I think what may happen here is I may have to decide if historical data is something I need to keep. I really want to keep it. It wouldn’t be horrible if I lost it, but from time to time I do like going back and being able to review charts and reports to see how things have been over the years.

I’ve sent some support email to IGG Software. We’ll see.

Moneydance

OK. I’m immediately hating Moneydance. It’s a Java app.

Granted, it actually blends into the OS fairly well, but there are still things that don’t quite work right. But well… if it has all the features and power and so on, I could deal with it. Still tho, it won’t win any awards for aesthetics.

I see it doesn’t do Envelope budgeting. There’s a way you can kinda finagle it, but man…. well, it’s not a deal-breaker, but I really wanted to try to start using this form of budgeting.

I used the same QIF file and imported it into Moneydance. First, it was MUCH faster than iBank. I don’t have numbers but I’d say Moneydance took a matter of seconds, iBank a matter of minutes. I need to look deeper to see if the import actually went smoothly, but at least I can tell the balances all look correct, so that is a good sign.

But here’s one difference. iBank doesn’t assume the QIF format is the be-all-end-all. For instance, it asked me to confirm that each account was the type it said it was and allow me to correct it. Moneydance just accepted it all as-is, and I can’t find any way to change them after the fact… but then, maybe there’s no need and I’m just being nit-picky about how I want to do things.

Hrm…. one thing I need to evaluate in all of them. How they handle loans. For instance, when I pay my mortgage, Quicken remembered it as a special transaction, so when I wrote the check it knew how to track the loan, which portion went to principal and which to interest. I wonder if these will be able to handle that. I should HOPE so, but might I have to go back and make a new account “x” transactions into it so it tracks it all correctly? not sure if that’s all in the QIF.

Moneydance seems to have something called “Tags”, which seems to equate to Quicken’s “Classes”. That’s good.

I like how with all these different groupings it totals up things with those categories/tags. That’s nice. You can just see at an easy glance how much you spent on something.

But man… the interface bugs me. Maybe it’s because I spend so much of my day writing software….

Help. Moneydance sends you online to load up a PDF. Simple enough, and looks to cover all you need. iBank’s is integrated, very Mac-like. One thing I like is that well… the general way to do Mac help is to ask questions and get specific answers. But for something as complex and feature-laden as an app like this, you really need to read. I’ll give the iBank guys some credit here for doing something very Mac-like but also very readable. I am curious why Moneydance couldn’t include the PDF as a resource within the app distribution itself and just load it up locally.

Geez. It’s really crazy that the fact Moneydance handled the import, didn’t have glaring strange bugs, and has tags/classes support… that makes me want to use it over iBank. But the fact it looks so damn ugly… I want to not use it. *sigh*  Function or form, I’m torn. 🙂

Moneywell

And so, let’s try Moneywell.

It is great all these apps provide free demos!

My initial impression? This is not an app about allowing you to manage your finances how you want to. This is an app that is geared towards personal finance that uses a budget, and specifically the envelope (bucket, in their terms) method. I think there’s nothing wrong with this, if this is what you want to do. But I don’t ONLY want to function in this rigid way of doing things, mostly because while I like the concept of envelope budgets, I don’t want to be forced into it.

Well, I think it’s slick looking and it looks like they do a very good job of managing finances using this particular approach.

But it’s not for me.

Plus I’m not sure how well it’ll cover everything that I need. But I just don’t feel much gumption to dive further into the app because of the aforementioned “mode” that it works in. Again don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great what they’re doing, it’s just not for me.

SEE Finance

And so, let’s try SEE Finance.

You know, everyone offers free downloads and demos. Everyone deals with it differently, from transaction limitations to timing out. SEE’s approach seems to be that you’re full-featured, you just get nagged for a few seconds every launch. Whatever the limitation is, I think everyone provides a reasonable way to use and evaluate the software… at least a cursory look. I have wondered if 30-days of iBank would be enough time for me to adequately evaluate it, being able to go through all my monthly bills and so on. We’ll see.

Looks like a Mac app… tho, some interface bits seem off. Again, the developer in me.

OH! I love this! I started it up, OK let’s start by importing the QIF. It says “Here’s all the categories we found” and lets me do some editing of them. The best part? I can choose to “Import and delete existing” or I can “Import and merge with existing”. NICE! I chose to merge.

Then it import does a bunch of stuff to help me try to reconcile the import and set everything as I want.

I can see they put a LOT of effort into the import process, more so than anyone. Kudos to them there.

But the kicker is, you import once. How does everything else work out?

OK… I’m looking at the GUI a bit more. Wow, they do do some stranger stuff. cmd-N for “New” is in the Edit menu. Looks like that means “New Transaction” but gee… that’s not the best way to do it. View menu isn’t standard. Transactions menu is really overloaded.

Man, I wish I could put my checking account at the top of the source list… it’s what I use the most, so having to hunt through everything in the source list isn’t fun.

Geez… no way to sort by my check number? Oh wait, there is it… I see the gear button so I can add it. I do like being able to customize the columns. But the table feels really cluttered and overloaded. 2-levels isn’t a bad thing… or maybe just a little more whitespace for the cells.

It’s not bad… but it still seems well… like it’s developing. They even version it at 0.9.12.9, so it’s not even a 1.0. Still, it looks to have great promise. If everyone could handle imports like they do, that’d be awesome. That is a gem of this app, no question. But again, you import once… and while making the switch is a very important thing, it’s all that comes after it that matters more.

What now?

I don’t know.

Moneywell is out of the running.

SEE Finance well… while it’s more Mac than Moneydance, it actually doesn’t feel as right. Moneydance doesn’t feel very Mac, but it does feel better thought out in the user interface. Moneydance also seems like it’s got a lot of power. iBank is slick, but running into bugs and being the only app that couldn’t handle the QIF import…. well, let’s say it’s a mixed first impression.

I’ll see how the IGG guys reply to things. Customer Support matters.

I’ll probably continue to evaluate Moneydance and iBank and see how it goes.