iBank 3 - Finally...

http://arstechnica.com/journals/app...-lands-with-direct-downloads-iphone-sync-more

I might finally be able to dump Windows.

I think one of my very 1st posts on this forum was a big rant about the lack of a decent financial application for the Mac... well this could be it!

http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/

I can't wait to get home to try it out... if it supports Chase, AMEX, Sharebuilder and downloads prices for my 401(k) portfolio, I'm there. This is more exciting for me than Leopard, Office 2008 and the new season of Rock of Love put together!

Woohoo!

I tried it and I wasn't impressed. I'd write more, but there seems to be a chronic lack of interest.

So MS Money is still better?

rogerinlondon said:

So MS Money is still better?

Click to expand...

By quite a margin, yes.

Too bad. That's been a major missing app in the Mac world for me as well. Thanks for the update, though.

Zoolook, you had my hopes up there for a second.

I'm also stuck with Money '07, and it is a really bad version of a program I've been using since 2004 when I finally dumped Quicken (which I had used since the early '90s on a Mac; Intuit has become as bad as Microsoft and Norton in quality and service).

With Money, the downloads take forever, and generating reports and charts even take longer. I didn't have this problem at tax time last year before I foolishly upgraded to '07.

I also tried Moneydance at the suggestion of some folks on this forum, and was not impressed.

A friend of mine who was using MS Money has switched to Money on Mac and is very happy with it. I haven't got around to trying it personally yet though.

I use iBank occasionally, but I'm deeply unimpressed. I find a lot of niggling, inconsistent bugs, and the UI is not as intuitive as they claim. I've seen products before where the developers were more interested in new versions and features than fixing existing bugs (Calligari TrueSpace, I'm looking at you), iBank struck me as one of those apps. I was waiting for version 3 too, but it sounds as if I'll resume waiting for the new Quicken.

I run money in Parallels and the account update does take a little longer than it should, but it's always 100% accurate (more than I can say for iBank or Moneydance).

Also you can pay your bills through MS Money, something you cannot do on iBank, Moneydance or Mac Money.

You need to be able to input your transactions by hand AND then download the bank movement and reconcile the two, if you want. iBank seems to just post everything twice, which is stupid. I don't know if this is a bug, or if it was designed to be this awful, but iBank seems to have a happy habit of duplicating everything.

Set up a transaction to move $1000 from checking to savings... should be easy right? OK, then download the transactions... oh wait, I transferred $1000 twice now, unless I tell the program not to import that transaction. Doh...

iBank 3 cannot update more than 3 stocks at a time without messing up the price. This bug is all over their own forums, and if you switch views from their 26 point font 'designed by a 2 year old' ledger view, to one you can actually read, it takes about 45 seconds to switch and sends the CPU fans into overdrive.

The Leopard only 'coverflow' for transactions is a gimmick. Just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you should. I really can't think WHY I would want to see all my bills in 3D.

Then there is the iBank 2 to iBank 3 license upgrade. It simply doesn't work. My iBank 2 license was ignored and it still tried to charge me $60 for an upgrade. Again, this issue is all over their own forums. Was there any QA or UAT on this software? The 50 transaction limit on the demo is too restrictive, since I'll obviously want to import my current data, which goes back almost 8 years, to thoroughly test out the app.

Speaking of importing data. If you import your checking data, then your savings data, everything that transfers between the two is duplicated. Even Moneydance avoids this very easily, why cant iBank? Importing Credit cards and investment accounts on top, just makes things worse. I don't want to spend 4 days setting up the smart import rules to ignore these... oh wait, you can't create a rule to 'ignore' import items...

When you think this is being price at $60, which is MORE than MS Money, I really have to wonder what IGG were thinking. This puts them in the big league, but they're not worthy. I want to support these smaller companies, I mean I bought iBank 2, but the basics have got to be right. I have no idea how this won any award - looks like the Apple judges were wooed by cover-flow. I mean, that florescent green text for deposits is impossible to read.

I do like the investments analysis graphs, but they're no good if the data is wrong because the price import is messed up.

I hope 3.1 irons out these issues. Something like this is enough to drive a man back to Windows. MS money is not perfect, but it does everything I could want, apart from import ADP pay statements.

Im using PersonalAccountz, its a bit odd at first but once you get used to it its great
You might be able to get a download of it to try it

Has anyone tried Quicken Online?

Zoolook, what version of Money are you running? I've about given up on Microsoft. They have so screwed up what was once a very desirable alternative to Quicken, at least as of 2004 when I made the switch. I'm now on '07, and it is so buggy that I can't get the simplest tasks done without running into problems and delays. How can any company design a product to be WORSE than the previous year's version, while adding no meaningful improvements?

I thought about giving MS a chance by upgrading to the Money Plus (what they call the '08 version), but that product is apparently WORSE than the '07 version, if that were ever possible. Of 41 customers who reviewed the product at Amazon, 22 gave it 1 star, with most of them describing the same types of glitches that I'm running into.

As bad as Moneydance or iBank may be, I'm going to give them a serious try, because the alternative has proven to be abysmal.

EORI said:

Zoolook, what version of Money are you running? I've about given up on Microsoft. They have so screwed up what was once a very desirable alternative to Quicken, at least as of 2004 when I made the switch. I'm now on '07, and it is so buggy that I can't get the simplest tasks done without running into problems and delays. How can any company design a product to be WORSE than the previous year's version, while adding no meaningful improvements?

I thought about giving MS a chance by upgrading to the Money Plus (what they call the '08 version), but that product is apparently WORSE than the '07 version, if that were ever possible. Of 41 customers who reviewed the product at Amazon, 22 gave it 1 star, with most of them describing the same types of glitches that I'm running into.

As bad as Moneydance or iBank may be, I'm going to give them a serious try, because the alternative has proven to be abysmal.

Click to expand...

I am sorry to hear that.

I am using MS Money 2007, and prior to that I was on Money 2004, 2002 and 1999. My Money 2004 install was UK only, and I could not get it to connect to my US bank accounts when I came over here, so I upgraded out of necessity. I was actually pretty happy with Money '04

There is one very specific bug that some up every now and again, relating to accounts not updating online and you don't get any error message. There was a fix posted on the MS web site I found the 1st time this happened, but the 2nd time it did, I could never find the workaround. I back up every 2nd time I run the app, which is crazy but sensible at the same time.

I have found out exactly what causes the crash on my machine though. It's having Money sign you in automatically (remembering the password). I disabled this about 3 months ago, and not a single glitch since - and have 8 years of checking, savings and portfolio activity and it's fine. I do hate the new budget thing though, and the fact you cannot remove categories from the 'spending by category' headline on the home page, although you can with specific reports.

Now onto Moneydance. Nice effort guys, but... why is it so hard to use? Every time you enter a category, you have to select it from a list - you can't just type it in and have it autofill... come on, this technology has been in Java since 1956.. wake up! When you start using an app and realise it'll take you 30 minutes every day just to input your purchases, this kind of thing makes you want to give up.

I've soldiered on with iBank, even coughing up the $29 to upgrade my licesne (BTW, you have to close iBank down after inputting your iBank 2 license THEN purchase the iBank 3 license to get your discount... things are so much easier on the Mac, right?)

iBank's reports are terrible, you cannot even track net worth over time without spending 2 hours configuring a report. Let me remind people this thing costs $60 + tax... it's not exactly shareware.

When you think MS Money is almost entirely done within the IE framework, you do have to wonder why everyone else makes their own financial app such hard work.

Thank you for the feedback. I've got MS Money set so that it does not automatically log on to the internet, and I've also set the internet connection to use the browser instead of MS Money. Still no luck with curing the numerous glitches. I thought that perhaps my large database file (going back at least 10 years) was causing the glitch, but your experience has eliminated that possibility. I may need to spend more time troubleshooting.

I briefly tried Moneydance, but because it only uses qif (and some other open source format), and not qfx (Quicken), and whatever format MS Money is in, I can't download any of my data from Vanguard who seems to favor Quicken and MS Money. iBank seems to be better in that regard, as it appears capable of importing qfx files, but I've yet to actually succeed in making it work. I may tinker with it some more this evening, but I need it to quickly generate reports (especially at tax time), so I may have to abandon that idea as well.

I really wish that Apple would step up to the plate and offer an in-house alternative. The state of personal finance software is screaming out for a competent software programmer to come up with a SIMPLE program. No need for all the bells, whistles and kitchen sink that MS has thrown into all of their latest software to completely gum-up the works.

I have to admit I bought Quicken Mac 2007 and, although usable, I'm not impressed with it. I'm looking at iBank or Money2 as a replacement. Neither are perfect but seem to be better than Quicken. I'll be honest, even if I were stuck with Quicken, it still beats the snot out of being stuck with a Windows machine!

John: What don't you like about the Quicken for Mac? I may as well throw that program into the mix, since all the others have be scratching my head. BTW, I'm running MS Money using Bootcamp/WinXP.