Good home finance software for Mac? (2 Viewers)

[Michael_K_Sr]

Not sure what features you are looking for. Quicken Essentials has received several incremental updates and I'm quite happy with it. If as you say, you are picky, you probably won't be satisfied.

 

[DaveF]

Last I heard, it couldn't track investments. I also have it in my mind that it can't do budgeting; as the website doesn't mention budgeting I take that at implicit confirmation. And there's no indication it can import financial data from bank / investment websites like every other version of Quicken and Money can.


But Intuit's website is so lousy, it's hard to know for sure what Quicken can or can't do.

 

[mgdvd0]

I have used Quicken for the decade and have NOT found anything BETTER for the mac platform so far - overall it does a good job

The fact that INTUIT's web interface is not the best can hardly be blamed on the software itself

that's my 2 cents

 

[DaveF]

Are you currently using the latest Quicken Essentials for Mac? Do you know if it has budgeting tools?


I'm inclined to buy it, try it, and get a refund if it doesn't work. It's worth the bother compared to my current plans


Strangely, the electronic purchase, a download from Amazon, is $49.99, while the full packaged version with free shipping is $38.72.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

There's a Budget menu item with an option to create and edit budgets. Not sure whether it will suit your needs...it's not a feature I use. For quite some time now it's had the ability to track investment information either by connecting with supported banks/brokerages or by setting up your investments manually (I do the latter.)

 

[DaveF]

The investment feature won't track the individual buy/sell/dividend activities, which is data I've tracked for a while. But I give up that level of detail if QE is otherwise suitable. My wife is a bit...zealous...when it comes to the budgeting tool, so she'll be the judge of that.

 

[DaveF]

A hopefully easy question: can you set up recurring entries that automatically input data on a repeating schedule? That is, can you make a biweekly paycheck that auto inputs your paycheck, with taxes and deductions and net pay? Or setup a monthly mortgage payment entry with principal and interest categorized?


http://katiefloyd.me/quickenessentials/


https://qlc.intuit.com/post/show_full/asxELW0CKr34lCacfArImM


According to the first comment after that review, you can't even do recurring auto-entries. And Intuit's forum confirms that. But that's such a basic feature...is there a new approach that old-school users wouldn't immediately tumble to?

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

That review is nearly nine months old. You can definitely schedule recurring transactions. Probably the only way to categorize those transactions is with a split.

 

[DaveF]

Thanks. Unfortunately there aren't reviews subsequent to the last big update. What confused it further was the comment and answer in Intuit's forum, from October, which seemed to confirm that review that it couldn't do recurring transactions.


How about loans and mortgages? Originally it couldn't do those, either, from what I'd read. Has that been added?

 

[DaveF]

"Completely inadequate" was my wife's flat assessment of Quicken Essentials, when she called me a few minutes ago.


Within an hour of purchasing it, she found it lacks:

* Proper paycheck distributions (single input, with splits, to track paycheck, deductions, and 401k investments).

* Annual budgeting tool, seeming to only do month to month budget

* In-line calculations--the ability to execute e.g. 2+2 in a numeric entry field for easy input of manual splits from receipts


It has some nice features, she said, but it's too basic and missing too many features that she's used to.


I've realized over the years that I'm much more detailed in my personal finances than most, and my wife, being a very detail-oriented person, and having been brought into my world of tracking and managing household finances, has taken it further. And having been doing my personal finances on the PC for over 16 with increasingly mature programs, I have (apparently) high expectations. Which seems odd, since my expectations are based on features common to $40 programs since at least 2003, perhaps 1999. Yet here we are in 2011, watching everyone reinvent (or worse, abandon) the wheel and losing all the details and niceties that we had a decade ago. I'm living a micro-Black Ages in personal finance as last millenium's knowledge is discarded and lost.


If you're not as detailed as I am, I come across as a loon. I know, I've had this conversation with coworkers


So, the full Monty it is. Upgrade to Parallels 6, Buy Windows 7 and install it on my wife's iMac. And buy Quicken Premier for Windows and install it on my wife's Mac.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Have you tried the new version of iBank? They're up to v4. The feel is significantly different from Quicken, and it's definitely not as feature-laden (as the Windows version), but it's working fine for me. The biggest adjustment is that I had previously used Quicken since '93, so moving to new software was tough. There are still some things are maddening, but they participate on their forums, and are receptive to user feedback.

You can download and try it for free, full featured, for 30 days. www.iggsoftware.com


Mostly, I'm so livid at Intuit for not giving a crap about Mac users at all, so I don't want to go to the trouble of spending $300+ just to run the Windows version of their software.


Crikie, that reads like an ad.

 

[DaveF]

We tried three popular OS X finance apps last Fall, including I think iBank, since it had major upgrade just then. They all were missing significant features or worked in weird ways (we're not Dave Ramsey / Envelope / Bucket people). While iBank would be fine for many, we're a picky lot here in the DaveF household and I believe it lacked certain subtle interface features my wife expects. In any case, my wife vetoed it and that's all that matters here.


So we've gone whole hog, and upgraded to Parallels 6, Windows 7 Home Premium, and bought Quicken Premier. I installed everything on my wife's iMac yesterday. I copied my MS Money 2006 mny file over. From Microsoft, I downloaded the free MS Money 8 trial, and converted the mny file from 2006 to 8. That done, we ran Quicken 2011 and imported the Money 8 file. Now my wife has the unenviable task of learning a whole new finance program, dealing with the oddities of importing 11 years of personal finance, and making it all work.


Yes, we're a bit loony spending over $200 for a "simple" finance program upgrade when there are many native OS X programs for $50 and under. But we want what we want, and I've not paid for a finance program since 2003, so on average I'm going OK


On the plus side, Quicken Premier 2011 costs the same as Quicken for Mac, but, at first impression, seems superior in all ways with lots of nice UI and features to help us out.

 

[HellBoy]

If you do not need wide functionality you can try Flair Finance personal finance software http://www.flairfinance.com it primary aimed for personal use and has simple GUI

 

[Sam Posten]

Anyone have any updated input on this? A coworker asked me about iBank this morning, he told me it had to be good cause it was made by Apple... /facepalm.... I straightened him out on that but then had no good alternatives for him...

 

[DaveF]

Quicken + Windows + Parallels remains my solution. it's a shame Intuit destroyed Quicken on the Mac.

 

[Sam Posten]

About what we figured, thanks.

 

[DaveF]

Other people like iBank, MoneyDance, etc. But for us, only Quicken had MS Money compatibility, longevity, and complete feature set.

 

[Sam Posten]

Quicken Essentials is now (overpriced) on the Mac App Store.... Thoughts?

 

[dmiller68]

This is excatly what my wife does. We bought Quicken for MAC and it was bad. So we just went the Parallels 6 | Windows 7 Home Premium | Quicken Premier. We already had Quicken because I moved my wife from windows to Mac. I got the copy of windows from the empoyee store so for me it was a cheap way to get the functionallity back to on par with Windows.

Originally Posted by DaveF

We tried three popular OS X finance apps last Fall, including I think iBank, since it had major upgrade just then. They all were missing significant features or worked in weird ways (we're not Dave Ramsey / Envelope / Bucket people). While iBank would be fine for many, we're a picky lot here in the DaveF household and I believe it lacked certain subtle interface features my wife expects. In any case, my wife vetoed it and that's all that matters here.


So we've gone whole hog, and upgraded to Parallels 6, Windows 7 Home Premium, and bought Quicken Premier. I installed everything on my wife's iMac yesterday. I copied my MS Money 2006 mny file over. From Microsoft, I downloaded the free MS Money 8 trial, and converted the mny file from 2006 to 8. That done, we ran Quicken 2011 and imported the Money 8 file. Now my wife has the unenviable task of learning a whole new finance program, dealing with the oddities of importing 11 years of personal finance, and making it all work.


Yes, we're a bit loony spending over $200 for a "simple" finance program upgrade when there are many native OS X programs for $50 and under. But we want what we want, and I've not paid for a finance program since 2003, so on average I'm going OK


On the plus side, Quicken Premier 2011 costs the same as Quicken for Mac, but, at first impression, seems superior in all ways with lots of nice UI and features to help us out.

/t/271609/good-home-finance-software-for-mac/30#post_3771759

 

[DaveF]

Quote: Originally Posted by dmiller68


This is excatly what my wife does. We bought Quicken for MAC and it was bad. So we just went the Parallels 6 | Windows 7 Home Premium | Quicken Premier. We already had Quicken because I moved my wife from windows to Mac. I got the copy of windows from the empoyee store so for me it was a cheap way to get the functionallity back to on par with Windows.



Glad to know I'm not alone

Originally Posted by Sam Posten [url=/t/271609/good-home-finance-software-for-mac/30#post_3891795]

Quicken Essentials is now (overpriced) on the Mac App Store.... Thoughts?

Has it been upgraded in the past 12 months?