best financial software for mac

This is an excellent post & thx to everyone that's provided a great bit of information! I am a Mac user looking for THAT perfect financial mgmt software, almost ended up buying Quicken Essentials and thankfully didn't given the reviews on Quicken's site, at Amazon & here. I currently use Mint, love that its quite simple etc - but that's the issue I have with it - too simple: I cannot reconcile, or do reports by sub-categories, to point out 2 simple needs. I do have the standard portfolio of checking, credit cards, loans, investments & tax requirements like most and think Mint is too simplistic to handle such requirements In any case, I have read the reviews at toptenreviews, and on this forum, and am a bit concerned about using iBank or Moneydance, 2 S/Ws that are talked about on this forum and there, I like the familiarity of Quicken - used it for years on the Win platform - and am ****** that Intuit does not have a product to mirror Q-Prem for Windows for the Mac platform. Until such time, I guess I am doing the Parallels+Qprem-Windows route, with the hope someday the native version will reach a level of sophistication. This is an expensive route, but I am just not finding a cheaper but equivalent alternative that I can trust and stick with for the next decade.

Everyone -

I'm in the same boat. Prior to moving to Macs in 2009, I used Quicken Home and Business. It was good, on balance, except for Intuit's customer support. When we made the move, I was enormously relieved to have left the Windows environment and never looked back. Using a PC-based product in a virtual environment was not an option. Instead, after lowering of my expectations and a lot of research, I went with Moneydance,

I have just invested a fair amount of time over the weekend evaluating other personal finance programs for the Mac and once again concluded that Moneydance is the least unsatisfactory Mac-based alternative to the Windows versions of Quicken. 1) Its dual-entry accounting engine is totally reliable, 2) Its tax-related accounting is as well, and 3) The initial migration of .qif files is reasonably straightforward and error free, if one follows Moneydance's instructions. After reading user reviews on several sites, I have found that the same cannot be said for iBank, SEE Finance or Money (Jumsoft), the leading options I was considering.

And yet the flaws of Moneydance are not going away: 1) Its reports lack consistent formats and are thoroughly unprofessional, 2) It cannot generate a Net Worth report covering multiple points in time, and 3) Its budgeting features are limited and cumbersome to use.

I have, therefore, decided to explore migrating to QuickBooks or AccountEdge (both Mac versions). This will not be a minor undertaking. Note: It is core accounting and reporting functions that I need to manage our finances and not investment tracking, which I handle separately. I also manage a small landowners assocation with invoicing and accounts receivable.

Do any of you have experience with either? Is this doable? Can I migrate my .qif files? And do you have any additional words for the wise?

Everyone -

Scratch Flaw No. 1 above. Today, as a result of some outstanding Tech Support from the Moneydance Team, we fixed the report out problems I was experiencing. The new reports are excellent. One down and two to go.

Tad

tadcrawfordmv:

I use QB Pro 2013 (now 2014) to run my business.

My company went MAC years ago, but we keep ONE windows box to run QB.

I would LOVE to ditch it and switch to something MAC native. QB Mac is totally uncompatible with QB Windows file formats.

Which means I would not be able to share data with my off-site accountant. Which means there is no benefit to switching to QB Mac, I might as well open up the field and look for the "best" solution.

I'm not "scared" of cloud computing. But I don't like the way EVERYBODY that offers it seems to be giggling with glee at the prospect of wringing money out of me forever! And it may be very hard to get my data out so I can switch software later.

A lot of ex-Quicken users seem to think iBank is great, and I like their support of iPad and iPhone.

Does MoneyDance do anything similar?

Does anyone have experience running MS Money Sunset version on a Mac?

I have been running MS Money with Windows XP for nearly 14 years, but because of Windows 8 will not buy another Windows computer.

Will be purchasing a Mac for the first time, but very disappointed with what I am reading about the performance of financial software for Mac.

Ideal world would be running MS Money on a Mac.

Any experience or suggestions? Thanks.

Thought I would share my experience.

I used Quicken for PC for 20 years. After switching to Mac I used Parallels and like everyone else waited with increasing frustration for Intuit to create a decent Mac product, which of course they never did.

I got tired of having Windows on my Mac and dealing with all the viruses and updates and so forth. I switched to Mac so I could stop dealing with Microsoft, for goodness sake! When I finally got rid of Parallels and Windows I felt liberated.

After reading reviews, I chose SEE Finance. It's a good program, better in some ways than Quicken for PC. But I've been using it for almost three years and development has slowed to a standstill. They haven't yet released version 1.0 and have no timetable for doing so, much less for releasing an iPad version. It's a shame, but this is probably another demonstration that there is just no money in the personal finance market.

I agree that with the age of the PC drawing to a close, the future is in tablet apps, not desktop software. That's why I've decided to switch to iBank. They have a robust iPad product and seem to be moving in the right direction. The market is so limited, there might be room for only one serious player, and for whatever reason iBank seems to be that player.

By the time this plays out, we'll end up with personal finance software with fewer capabilities than we had 20 years ago. Funny how technology works.

While many are upset with Intuit and its relative lack of development for the Macintosh, at the end of the day Quicken 2007 for Intel for $15 is still a bargain for the amount of features that Quicken for Mac offers. I had been using Quicken Deluxe 2002 for years before my purchase of a 2011 Mac Mini with Lion forced me to upgrade to Quicken 2007 for Intel. The upgrade was seemless and my full set of features are consistently available to me.

If I can get another 10 years out of Quicken 2007 for Intel, I will be very happy.

I too have used MS Money for years and love it. However, I switched to a Mac over a yr ago and I have try trial versions of several accting programs and am currently still using my old Windows PC only for accounting which is a big pain in the butt.There was always something lacking in the program....and I am not THAT picky....it is Home Accounting....however I do like Bill Reminders and being able to view and edit a category summary as well as have sub categories. I don't even care about DL from the bank.....I am fine with doing my own entries....I don't trust the DL or the Cloud. MS Money is perfect!!!! Can't some genius just convert that to a Mac????

I have followed this discussion forever and the only consistent info I have seen is to try Quicken 2007.

Can you just use that on the Mac without using Parallels????

I was wondering if anyone has any comments on Quickbooks 2014 for Mac???

Sams has a deal for $50 off and 90 day free Tech support......just wondering.....

Thanks

Tammy

TammyLee69 wrote:

I have followed this discussion forever and the only consistent info I have seen is to try Quicken 2007.

Can you just use that on the Mac without using Parallels????

Yes: Quicken 2007 for Lion will run on Snow Leopard, Lion, Mt. Lion or Mavericks.

QuickBooks is not Personal Finance software. It is software for small businesses with apps like payroll, invoicing, inventory, General Ledger, and the like.

Old versions of Quicken for Windows work except for one thing. They will not connect to your bank. Quicken has started cutting off support for bank connection after three years, so Quicken 2012 is the oldest version that will do the online updates. It seems they are doing this so that people will be forced to upgrade even when there are no new features to speak of.

I really prefer Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money, but they went out of business decades ago. Quicken has never managed to implement budgeting in such a way that is as easy to use as MYM.

MS Money has a productive module called "Lifetime Planner". I have used it religiously for the past 14 years using numerous scenarios for life's financial impacts. Has anyone found a MAC financial software package with a similar module? Thanks!

As you will see from previous posts, I have been in the same boat. I have no interest whatsoever in maintaining

Windows on my iMac. I was a very early Mac user, then moved to Windows for 25 years . . . until I just got fed up with it for the same reasons you cite . . . and used Quicken Home & Business, a reasonably good product. Have never found anything equivalent. Settled for Moneydance. It has been thoroughly reliable and meets my minimum expectations. (See above.)

I'm still looking for something better with: 1) consistent/professional report print output 2) net worth tracking/reporting over time and 3) user friendly budgeting.

Quick Books is not an answer.

NOTE: Top 10 Reviews is now ranking Moneydance No. 1 - See: http://personal-finance-software-review.toptenreviews.com/mac-personal-finance-s oftware/

AppleMan1958 wrote:

Old versions of Quicken for Windows work except for one thing. They will not connect to your bank. Quicken has started cutting off support for bank connection after three years, so Quicken 2012 is the oldest version that will do the online updates. It seems they are doing this so that people will be forced to upgrade even when there are no new features to speak of...

I am not sure this is accurate. My copy of Quicken 2007 for Intel still connects online to two of my credit card providers.

That being said, I do not like their system and I continue to use the older QIF system to obtain my data from the Internet.

That is, I go to the websites of my credit cards and log in. I then download the monthly transactions in QIF format. I then open the register of that particular credit card in Quicken and go to FILE to IMPORT to FROM QIF. All of my transactions data is then in the register (date, payee, amount), except for catagory, which I then enter manually for each transaction. I then reconcile the account against the opening and closing balances.

I expect this method will continue to be supported for as long as Quicken continues to work on my Mac!

It looks like this will be a choice between iBank 5 and Quicken Mac 2014 once the latter is released, presumably this quarter. See this thread: https://qlc.intuit.com/users/345382-johnhardt. I'm still struggling with a Windows virtual machine and looking forward to abandoning it. One important decision point will be the cloud encryption design.

Here is a viable alternative to running Quicken on a virtual machine and updating Windows: use wine. You can download wine from their site, or compile it yourself using the macports version with Xcode (free App store download). You'll also need X11 XQuartz running

Once you have wine, insert the Quicken install CD and run the installer from wine. This will install the qw.exe windows executable in your home directory under ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files . Then you just run Quicken from your OS X Terminal command line. Online updates and everthing works as X11 windows.

This is what the Macports commands look like:

sudo port selfupdate

sudo port install wine-devel winetricks

export DISPLAY=:0.0

xeyes & # test if X11 is running properly

/opt/local/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Quicken/qw.exe

Here's a simple shell script to run Quicken from the command line:

vi ~/bin/qwineken

#!/bin/sh

# Run Quicken from wine

/opt/local/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program' 'Files/Quicken/qw.exe

chmod a+x ~/bin/qwineken