Money Software

Simple question:

Is there a programme for Mac that allows me to import all my old MSMoney files and manage my finances in the same way, particularly downloading statements from Barclays Bank (UK). I have searched high and low and cannot find any software that comes close or any answers in the forums. Many thanks.

Just about all of the financial programs that I know of for OS X will import QIF data from Money or Quicken for Win so that should not be a problem. However, I have no experience with Barclays Bank. I routinely download my bank statements right into my small finance program (Checkbook 2) but my bank is Wells Fargo USA.

I was looking into exactly this as well when I switched the the Mac. Having used MS Money for years, I was very happy with it and also equally unhappy when Microsoft discontinued it.

As yet, I have not found anything quite as good as MS Money. That really was the benchmark, and nothing has come close yet, at least for the Mac. Quicken for Mac was quickly discounted due to the software being very limited and extremely poor reviews.
Money Dance was deleted in minutes as it looked so ugly. Sorry, I don't want to look at a toilet all day.

The two favorites I ended up at the end was iBank and MoneyWell. iBank has excellent reporting and feels close enough to MS Money that I felt comfortable. The downside is that it will not remember your last date, so if I am putting every transaction from a monthly list, every time I have to re-change the date to the past. (MS Money would remember the last date you entered) and likewise, it always starts on a the default "POS" for transaction type, which is odd, since most of my transactions are "Withdrawal's" - I would have preferred to set my own defaults for each account. Both these issues don't sound much, but they do make a difference when entering large amounts of data.

MoneyWell actually had these features from memory but it lacked quite a bit in reporting, at least in the way my wife liked them to be. My wife also didn't like the "buckets" idea they used, and since she actually does the majority of accounts in our house, she had the final decision.

So, although I actually preferred MoneyWell a slightly bit more, we went with iBank.

In both cases, importing all my data from MS Money was a breeze. iBank also offered a FULL 30 day trial period which was a great way to test the program and this also gave us the incentive to keep this app. Afterall, we imported all our accounts, and tested it as a normal working program for 30 days. MoneyWell has a pointless trial version in which you can only import a small number of transactions from your old account to test. This makes it useless for testing the reporting or testing it out in real world situations for a month. A pity really as it is a good program.

In the end we went with iBank, and I'm quite happy with it. I still long for them to add those features I mentioned, but I won't hold my breath. Looking at their forums, people have been asking for a while and no change. Also, they never replied to my email which never makes me happy.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the prompt replies, I will give iBank a try I think and post how I get on.

Shortnick - I too have been longing for a mac replacement for MS Money especially one that is UK friendly. I've spent the last two hours checking out the latest iBank and it does look promising. In MS Money the feature I like most was Balance Forecast and iBank has this. Still getting used to some of the terminology it uses and it took me a while to figure out how to show transfers between accounts but I'm geting there. Still heavily US based, esp for loans and securities. Transfer from MS Money is not perfect (due to a Money failing as far as I can see) and all your Money accounts come over as Categories which means that you cannot then set up Accounts in iBank with these names as they need to be unique from category names so some jigging about is going to be necessary.

So, from what I've seen so far it's the best alternative to Money I've seen in three years but it's still not quite as simple, clear, intuitive or compact as Money, which is a shame.

Take a look and spend a bit if time to review. I'll be looking forward to reading your views.