Banking software

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Has anyone used iBank or Squirrel to manage their banking? I have used MS Money on my PC, for years, but don't want to load Windows on my Mac.

I contacted the help desk at Quicken and they assured me that it would be a piece of cake. They gave me a free copy of Quicken for PC, with directions for and exporting my Money files, to Quicken for PC, then, they said I could move the data over to Quicken in the Mac.

I spent several hours following their instructions for exporting data from Money to Quicken on my PC, to the letter, and finally got to the point of transferring the data. It failed. Another phone call to India. New instructions, so complex and convoluted I was appalled and completely discouraged.

I went to the user forum at Quicken and the word "nightmare" was frequently used when referring to a switch from Quicken for PC to Quicken for Mac. I returned the software and am still using Money on my old laptop, but I want a solution for my Mac.

I am considering finishing this year with Money on my PC and then saving it on my external hard drive. Then I will start afresh with some sort of banking software on my Mac. I don't want to track investments, just keep track of several bank accounts, transfer funds between them, and download transactions from my bank.

Anyone have any suggesstions?
 
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I use vmware to run windows just for Quicken. It simply works better that way.
 
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I too am looking for a replacement to M$ Money. This is the only reason I'm still tethered to VMWare and would love to get rid of Windows once and for all.

I've been a hardcore Money user for many moons and this was my biggest concern when taking the plunge into the Mac world. I used Quicken for 3 months and was so frustrated with balancing and paying bills that I soon started trying every piece of software I could find, (iBank, ChaChing...) and I still haven't found anything with a simple interface to pay bills online, balance accounts, and transfer money between accounts like M$ Money.

For those hardcore M$ Money users I'd like to hear what you've gone to. My biggest problem is finding something that does online integration with banks and allows for automatic and manual balancing.

Jason
 
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I too am looking for a replacement to M$ Money. This is the only reason I'm still tethered to VMWare and would love to get rid of Windows once and for all.

I've been a hardcore Money user for many moons and this was my biggest concern when taking the plunge into the Mac world. I used Quicken for 3 months and was so frustrated with balancing and paying bills that I soon started trying every piece of software I could find, (iBank, ChaChing...) and I still haven't found anything with a simple interface to pay bills online, balance accounts, and transfer money between accounts like M$ Money.

For those hardcore M$ Money users I'd like to hear what you've gone to. My biggest problem is finding something that does online integration with banks and allows for automatic and manual balancing.

Jason

Jason, I am glad to get your post. I have used MSMoney since it was first released. I need to replace it, so I can retire my PC.
You said you had tried ChaChing and iBank. What is your opinion of them. What features did they lack that made them unacceptable?

My primary concerns are downloading transactions from my bank and credit cards. AX and Visa both download to Quicken and Money, but don't offer any other options, so I expect that is one of the problems you are encountering. I wonder what one does for a work around. Wonder if one could download those files to "Numbers" and keep them that way. Only need them for tax time.

Any information you have will be welcome.

Marty
 
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My biggest issue, was exactly what you need... The lack of integration with any of my banks (WaMu, USAA, Discover...). My banks offer a way to download files I could then import in, so maybe if you only need to do it once a year it will work better for you. I'm the anal retentive type that will balance all my accounts to the penny twice a month and the lack of good integration of any type turned this project into a couple hours instead of a couple minutes.

If you're going to use ChaChing you might as well create your own simple spreadsheet.

iBank was a little more robust with integration with the banks, but it's simplistic approach to everything was too simplistic so a more complicated transaction than a simple in and out would always seem to get screwed up and the account balancing online was never right in the 2-3 months I tried to work with it. It always seemed like things were getting double dipped or not recorded at all. I thought maybe it was due to the data I had imported in so I started from scratch and within a month I was right back in the same boat and frustrated as ****. Tracking bills and when their due is a big part of what I use in M$ Money and there wasn't anything useful like that in iBank.

Quicken on the other hand was so robust I felt like I needed to call a CPA to help me pay bills, it only lasted a month before I gave up maybe I should have given that more time but I started reading forums and everyone's gripe was the same as mine so I flipped that out quickly.

I really did give it the old College try because I didn't want to cave and load VMWare but finally gave up and created a 2GB partition and caved to the need.

Jason
 
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One of the biggest issues for banking software on the west bank of the Atlantic (that's the UK) is that many of these otherwise excellent programs mentioned are not localised (or localized !) for the UK market. We need "cheques", "shares", "current accounts" so we're pretty well stuck with MS money.
 
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Maybe, if you cannot ditch MS Money, but don't want to install windows try running MS Money in Crossover for mac (part of the Darwine project)

But agreed, a proper solution needs to be created for the mac
 
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I use iBank now that I have switched to Mac and I love it. It's is better than MSMoney in my opinion. Get the free trial and give it a go. I don't think you will be disappointed.
 
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Well since I've never used quicken or MS money, this may not be what you're looking for but Mint.com is a great financial site to keep track of all your accounts in one place. And the great thing is that you don't have to download anything and it's secure.
 
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I use MINT, and while it's great for understanding your finances and looking at your balances at a quick glance it doesn't give you the ability to enter transactions, it simply reports your bank information.

Jason
 
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I've completed my first year as a Mac "switcher" and am getting off the Windows bottle soon. The last two things are my MS Money 2006 replacement and of course, the most important, UT3!

If you Google "Mac Financial apps", you'll find a few articles about there not being a good finance app for Mac, how Quicken sucks, and how MS Money is still the best finance app out there. Alot of negative reviews about iBank as well and IMO that was for prior versions and releases. I downloaded a lot of Mac finance demos and some were insanely humorous by calling themselves a finance app or an MS Money killer. Most of them were still "in initial development".

The two I came down to testing more in-depth were MoneyDance and iBank 3. Since I have a Mac, I want my software to look like Mac and not like an old Linux program. With the vast reconciliation improvement from iBank 3.4 to 3.4.1(still think it should be bumped all the way to 3.5), the new reconcile feature is what sold it for me. If you use MobileMe, then you'll love the free iPhone app that it comes with. I understand an improved widget is forthcoming for the Dashboard, so all the development to refine and add new features to a functional software is very encouraging to me.

Overall, I am content with iBank. While it doesn't have every feature that MS Money has(none of the Mac Finance apps do), I believe with the active development AND the active input of the end-users, iBank will certainly become the MS Money killer it needs to be. As of last weekend, I've imported 10 years of data into iBank(without a flaw in the data) and have closed out MS Money.

There is a demo available and the iBank forums have alot of valuable info...check them out!

IGG Software | Personal finance, money management and small business applications for Mac OS X
 
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Help!

Just downloaded iBank. It will not communicate with Bank of America. I called BofA, as suggested, and they were unable to help me. Any suggestions? This banking program conundrum is a nightmare. Thanks - have a wonderful day.

Judi :D
 
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I've used Quicken for years and years (on PC), and this is the one item that switching to Mac just made impossible. Quicken Mac is not worth the price of the box they pack it in. As generally poor as the program is (compared to its Windows counterpart), a few years back Intuit decided it could charge a licensing fee to participating banks if they wanted a fully integrated Quicking platform (which, BTW, you previously had for years with Quicken as a basic feature). Many/most banks said "no thanks" to paying the fee, so the Quicken implementation in many banks is just the ability to manually download account statements in the proper format. In a fully implemented mode, Quicken automatically connects and gets your info, imports and categorizes, and reconciles the statement.

A couple years ago I went through the evaluation process on a number of Quicken alternatives. My conclusion? There's nothing out there that really is much better than an Excel spreadsheet. I found nothing that properly integrates with your bank accounts (by "proper" I mean the way that Quicken PC automatically retrieves, downloads, and imports and categorizes your banking statements of all kinds). Combined with most larger banks now implementing "online banking" for bill pay, balance checking, transfers, etc., and the real advantage of a finance program (which to me is budgeting and tracking) is gone unless the program can do the manual labor itself (see note on "proper" integration above). If I have to manually download, import, etc., I may just as well use an Excel spreadsheet and save the money I would have spent on some "specialized" program.

I suppose there is just not the consumer demand for an application, but you'd think completely porting Quicken PC to Mac would not be that hard a thing to do.
 
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iBank Tech Support

I have been using iBank and I always find that their tech support is really, really terrible. No phone capability. Only e-mail exchanges. It would be better if they had a "chant", but they don't. It takes them days to get back to you on each e-mail. You never get your problem resolved on the first e-mail, so you're falling behind with the work you want to do.
Any Apple user is used to great customer support. It's too bad that IGG Software doesn't take a cue from Apple.
I'm looking for a replacement for iBank myself.
 
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What's ironic amongst all this praise for MS Money is that MS discontinued Money.

For Mac users, I'm no expert on this at all -- but I only saw Moneydance mentioned once, and Liquid Ledger not at all. There are at least plenty of options for the Mac, I'm sure you'll find a suitable one.
 
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Old thread. OP probably has found his solution already.

But I have to comment here. Banking software seems to be mostly obsolete, since all modern banks have online banking now.

I just to use my bank's web-based software. It is available from any computer I care to use. I can pay bills, transfer funds around, and get up to the hour updates with no effort on my part.

As for something to double-check the bank to replace a checkbook, I just use Excel, and password protect the file. Quick & easy. Excel will be around for a while.
 
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I was also looking for a banking program not too long ago, but found out that it was literally easier to remember transactions off the top of your head than to take the time to record the transactions on excel or other data/banking programs, especially because I want it to total the balance out. The only software I use now is on my iphone and ipad, called PocketMoney. It's pretty good! It allows you to automatically calculate balances of multiple accounts. As jeremyZ said though, almost all banks have an online feature. The only problem with that is that they manipulate when a transaction was placed...that's wy I don't use online activity sheets.
 

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