best financial software for mac

a few thoughts to multiple prior posts:

1. mint - it is good at aggregating financial data from mulitple sites; it is not quite a functional as quicken...keeping track of where i spend my money and paying bills; it is more like keeping track of investments.

as others said...liked seeing an aggregate of my investments...but was creeped out that some 3rd party had all my data...

i deleted my account...

2. desktop software is a dinosaur

completely agree...

the vanguard site tells me so much more than quicken or any other product can ... it lets me slice and dice the data in many ways...

true it does not aggregate multiiple sights into one the way mint or quicken does ...

but i simply find i do not need quicken to look at my data the way i did 5 years ago (when it comes to looking at investments...)

quicken is more for categorizing my spending; keeping track of tax stuff; paying bills; autobill pay...

3. mac equivalents of quicken

i know you do not want to her it: the most up to date personal finance program is quickeni PC 2013...

it has been developed over ?20 years...ibank could not be as comprehensive no matter how many engineers they have developing it...

quicken PC has the biggest following so it is going to work and be fully supported by the company

your fighting an uphill battle...

if you really use quicken...get vmware or parallels and install the PC version...(most people seem to have quicken for pc and a windows 7 disk...vmaware/parallels is about $50...)

hey i just bought a 2000 imac and was disappointed with this situation...but by all the posts and everything one sees online...i think there is just a practical issue if you really are a power quicken user...

i guess quicken 2007 mac is an option (and am sure i will hear from angry propents...)...why is it "2007" and not "2013"...and when Mac OS gets upgraded one is not sure it will be compatible

(sorry)

Yes, I have considered Quicken for PC and your reasons are compelling (especially the idea that Intuit will keep supporting it).

Perhaps you will have answers to these questions, which keep me from moving over to Quicken PC:

1. Is there an easy way to migrate my current Quicken 2007 for Mac to Quicken for PC or would I have to start over and rekey my data?

2. What features do Quicken for PC have that I am missing on Quicken 2007 for Mac? How important are they?

3. I ignore the "why is there no Quicken 2013 for Mac" on the theory if it ain't broke don't fix it and again, what am I missing that they did not think of in 2007?

Another consideration:

The Question is: what will you do when you are audited or otherwise need access to historical financial data?

That is why I always have access to an environment where I can run any version of Quicken that I used over the years and why I continue to use Quicken for Mac.

My Financial Advisor recommended Mint.com last year and I love it for managing our budget and spending. The shortcoming is that I can't print reports, e.g. taxable items as I could on Quicken. The interface with my bank and credit card accounts is great.

I started using Quicken when it was on floppy disks--I think the 8-inch variety--and have used it religiously for over 20 years. A life-long Windows user, I switched to the Mac in December 2012, assuming (foolishly) Quicken would have a perfectly good Mac version or there would be other, equivalent Mac software. Neither turned out to be true. Considering how essential this need is and the growing number of Mac users, I was stunned by this discovery.

So I moved on to Mint, which I undersatnd was making great strides before it was snatched up by Intuit. It seems the only winners there were the creators of Mint. I considered whether I wanted my personal financial information "out there" instead of locked up in my computer, but in the end decided it's all probably "out there" already, and that's certainly the trend. Plus, using cloud-based tools gives you the access-from-anywhere advantage.

Mint was pretty good but not great. The fact that it kept suggesting new credit cards to me or urging me to consider a different bank was pretty annoying. But I also have relied heavily on Quicken Savings Goals, which Mint does not offer (or at least did not offer four months ago). When you try to set up a Savings Goal, it gives you a list of excellent banks to choose from, all of which will be happy to help you set up a savings account. That, of course, is not the objective.

I ended up cancelling my Mint account and deleting as much off my aging PC as possible so I could continue running Quicken without the PC crashing. Which, by the way, it did while I was typing this.

I suppose my next step is to put Parallels on my Mac so I can run Quicken in a Windows environment without it crashing. I really don't see any other viable options at the moment.

This is very helpful information, thank you. Have you - or anyone else out there - considered or tried CrossOver? They do have a free trial, and they state on their website that Quicken 2013 runs fine. I've been procrastinating about downloading it, in case it's a complete waste of time, so am curious to know what others' experiences might be.

I've been watching this series of posts with great interest. Today I noticed something like 20,000 views? If nothing else, I hope this gets the attention of the software development community showing there's a real market available out here.

iBank update: Adding to my earlier post, I have now reconciled accounts after importing QFX from 2010 forward (the last DB from Q07 I could salvage) and have even started sync between my iPod Touch and iMac running iBank. I'm using the iPod as an electronic check register (very basic use) and so far I've sync'd w/o issues. I have a dozen accounts with many transfers, split transactions, etc. and so far no corrupt data base (my worst repeating nightmare with Quicken). I was able to produce the detailed reports I needed for tax time. I downloaded a recent upgrade released for iBank without charge, and it was transparent with no glitches to data or function (another Q problem for me).

Is iBank perfect? Eye of the beholder.. but no, it isn't. There are duplicate entries when I import QFX files with transfers between accounts. One is for the real dollar amount, no issues. The other is for the same transfer but with a zero dollar amount. Doesn't affect balance but is something I need to manually clean up. (Admittedely, I haven't pursued this with iBank help yet). Given this issue compared to the major stuff I used to deal with using Q explained in one of my earlier posts, iBank is working well.

Am I still looking for the best financial software? Yes, I think there's more iBank or others can do but for the time being, I've settled into working with iBank and continue to test more of what it may offer. Next are automatic downloads...cross fingers. Hope this helps.

I have switched back to iBank, too. It has its limits, but doesn't quit on me all the time and misbehave the way Quicken 2007 does. I find it interesting that so many people are having trouble with Quicken, and yet someone on this board keeps insisting that it is our computers, not Quicken, that is the problem. Well, my computer works great with everything but this crappy 2007 version of Quicken. The Quicken folks even had to send me an earlier upgrade because they admitted that the .3 and .4 versions had problems for many people.

So I'm back to iBank, and lowering my expectations. And I too hope someone can develop something better.

Thanks for all the help and support from everyone.

What do you say we all pool our resources and develop the ultimate home finance management software for the Mac? Between us, I bet we know quite a bit about the required functionality. Who's in? I'm sure I can find $100 or so in money that's been miscategorized in Quicken. Hey, it's a start.

I bought Quicken 2007 for lion in mid-January, after trying iBank for about a year and missing Quicken. Despite also having set up a Mint account, I couldn't transfer my Mint data to Quicken, so I had to re-enter most of a year's worth of transactions (the ones I couldn't download from my band). Immediately, I had problems with Quicken quitting, but I wasn't losing information, so I kept using it anyway. Troubleshooting did not improve the situation. Then as I was starting to prepare my taxes, Quicken asked me to upgrade to 16.1.4. Given the problems I'd had before, I was hoping this version had fixed them. The contrary was true. After I installed 16.1.4, Quicken would not open. It kept "quitting unexpectedly" when I attempted to open it, and I couldn't get at my data. I emailed and called Quicken, and they wouldn't help me, saying I had to upgrade to Quicken Essentials or the PC version to get support, or to pay for support. I have heard horrible things about Quicken Essentials and wasn't willing to do that. I was really upset that they had sold me a product two months earlier that they wouldn't support for free. I contacted a bunch of different people there, and got an email from "Tamara," with four links, some of which were dead and the others inapplicable. Then I heard from George Chinn at Quicken, who was willing to help me, and sent me 16.1.2 to install again. Once I did that, I could access my files, but it kept quitting. We tried a few things that didn't work. He was actually very helpful, but we still couldn't solve the problem. He then sent me a link to send all of my Quicken files from 1997 to present to an email address so that they could analyze them and figure out what the problem was. This made me uncomfortable, and I decided to give iBank another try. Somehow, I'm not minding it quite as much this time!

Let me put in my 2 cents.

LONG time user of windows and quicken; latest is quicken 2013 delux.

I bought a MBP and tried Ibank and See ... both were crappy.

Installed VirtualBox on the MBP to run windows XP, then installed quicken and some other high priced software.

Everything is rock solid. Some may laught of running windows xp on a mac but as far as I am concerned, it is just another app. No need to reboot, just switch desktops.

My new accountant uses Quickbooks on PC manually (enters transactions as she performs them, rather than using internet connections or downloading cvs files) - but I suppose if I were into that, I'd be the accountant. Ugh. She says her one other Mac client uses Quickbooks on Mac with no problem. Quickbooks is overkill for some of us, though. I do have Parallels, and use a state-proprietary web app with it for work, but the resolution never is quite right, and it looks worse than on a decent PC monitor. (Perhaps this bears looking at other threads..)

Hi

You hit it on the head.....I would like to see some reviews/info regarding ifinance, moneydance, which are mentioned in the top 10 ....has anyone had any experience with anything BUT Quicken or ibank?????

TammyLee69 wrote:

.....I would like to see some reviews/info regarding ifinance, moneydance, which are mentioned in the top 10 ....has anyone had any experience with anything BUT Quicken or ibank?????

The November 2011 issue of Mac|Life has an article commencing on page 42: "Replacing Quicken with a real Mac solution!" This was during the era of no Quicken for Lion (which was released by Intuit in Feb/Mar 2012), so missing from these comparisions is how well they compare to Quicken 2007 for Lion/Mt. Lion:

iBank

SEE Finance

Moneydance

iFinance

Mint

I personally have never replaced Quicken, even during this period of time, so I have no direct experience with any of these alternatives.

It was based upon that MacLife article that I switched to iBank. After the problems I had returning to Quicken, I switched back to iBank. It isn't the perfect solution, but I've gotten used to it and it does most of what I want. I'd still give it just a B-/C+ compared to Quicken in the good old days, but I won't use Quicken again until they act like they actually care enough about our business to give us some service.

For those unafraid of the Cloud, Mint is pretty good. You may want to check that out.

Shari

Shari, I used Mint for a while, but had connection problems with several institutions, and felt that the format was a bit inflexible for my needs, as there is little manual control compared to client-side applications. Plus, I decided I wasn't 100% comfortable having all my financial data in one place in the cloud in that manner. (I know, I know, it's out there anyway; nevertheless...)