Financial Software for Mac – A Canadian Brief Review
Christina
- posted on
- 16 Comments
I’m trying to manage my finances better. When I was unemployed I had the time to take care of all my transactions in my spreadsheet and I had a handle on how I was spending my money. Even if I wasn’t always being as frugal as I would have liked, I was consistent and knew exactly where my money was going. But it’s time consuming and meant that I was adding in everything manually, or importing from my online banking and then reformatting everything. I’d started doing this because I couldn’t get the old version of Quicken to really do things the way I wanted to and at the time the idea of looking at anything historically was a bit overwhelming. Anyhow, I started to use a spreadsheet, and it served me well at the time. But, now that I’m in nursing school, I don’t have the time to spend doing my finances the way I did before. BUT I feel even more pressed to make sure I know how I’m doing, because all my spending is currently on credit. I do have a part time job, but it doesn’t really help with paying the bills, it just gives a bit of a cushion, so that my interest is paid and so that I don’t feel as guilty every time I go out and spend money for a social event.
So over the next little while I’m going to work on a bit of a review of some software so that I can see if it’s worth spending the money to get financial management software for myself
Spreadsheet
I already have the software so it’s free. BUT it’s time consuming to use and it’s tedious to get it set up the way I want it. How it’s set up now, doesn’t really fit my needs anymore so it’s taking hours (I’m not an Excel/Numbers expert) to get it to work well, and it doesn’t give me a quick glance at where my money is. Though it is handy for managing transactions and I don’t have to worry about format — CSV works well for importing, even if I have to rearrange and modify the file once it’s imported. Overall it’s very time consuming and the past 6 months have shown that I wont maintain it.
Quicken
It’s what I used to use, before I switched to the spreadsheet. I would like to test the current version, but as I’m a student I can’t fork out the money to buy the software just to test. The idea of buying and returning software is inconvenient, as I’d get busy and likely run out of the 60 day time frame and lose the money I’d spent — if I’d decided not to keep it. Fortunately MacWorld will do an in depth review of the software so I’ll just read what they have to say. BUT, I must say that the inability to test the software myself puts this software in the highly unlikely to buy category (particularly as I’m in Canada and I want to make sure that the Canadian specific things — RRSPs, TFSAs etc work correctly).
iBank
The first thing I did for both programs was look through their video tutorials to lessen my learning curve. The makers of iBank have few tutorials to help me get started — beyond importing from Quicken (which doesn’t help as all my old quicken files are 6+ years old). I managed to get my account information downloaded and imported into the software, but it feels very cluttered and not easy to use at first glance. Plus when I looked at the categories it was all very ‘american’ in terms of how their tax management and registered investment stuff was set up. I’m in school so I’m not using a tonne of that right now, but I do still have some RRSP stuff coming off my paycheque and have an RRSP account. I’d rather just have a location button to select that says I’m in Canada so that the software would remove anything that’s related to US Taxes or their investments etc. Maybe if I move to the USA after school’s done it’ll be useful, but my first impression is that it’s not as simple to use as Moneywell.
While iBank is more complex than Moneywell, one thing I do like is the ability to have sub-categories. Maybe this is left over from my quicken days or from how I had my spreadsheet organized, I liked knowing how much money I spent on things like coffee and dining out specifically rather than having them lumped together into ‘dining’ I know I could set Moneywell up like that too, with separate ‘buckets’ but iBank had it automatically done and has them set up so they’re subcategories. One drawback of this is it makes things more complicated. With the spreadsheet, the time it takes to organize and categorize things is where the barrier comes in for me and if I had to spend a lot of time figuring out where to place a transaction I wouldn’t maintain my finances (such as did I buy LUNCH at the starbucks or just a cup of tea??).
Reporting for iBank seems more comprehensive than MoneyWell, so if you’re the type that likes to see where your money’s going in a pie chart, it will do this for you fairly simply.
One note about iBank, MacWorld has several articles that may provide more insight than I am providing here. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to keep trying to figure out this software since I need something easy. But the link for a review of an old version of iBank is here. Also for more information about iBank and it’s associated iBiz software MacWorld has an article too.
Hopefully those links will be useful. I think this is a good piece of software, and though it’s very American in feel it seems to work well. But, as I said I am looking for easy and it has been taking too long for me to feel comfortable with this software. Using Moneywell in parallel made it clear, Moneywell was much simpler. So iBank has features that I would want once I’m investing again and may likely be the software I use once school is done, but for now I’m going to uninstall it.
Moneywell
When I first installed MoneyWell, like iBank I reviewed their tutorials. MoneyWell has extensive Tech Support online discussions and video tutorials. This program was very simple, like iBank, to import my accounts into the system and having the ‘buckets’ on the left hand column is nice. I haven’t figured out how to fill each bucket yet, because I’m living off of debt and my money comes from a debt account rather than from my income account. I’m still playing with settings. BUT it’s simple to use, and already I’ve started clicking on it to see balances. It feels ‘easy’ and streamlined. It feels like I’m already using it rather than intentionally playing with it.
I haven’t played with this software’s investment, or RRSP stuff yet. But at least the tax information is hidden from me so that I don’t need to worry about figuring out the US system and how to convert it to Canadian. As I mentioned, another thing I like about Moneywell is they have several tutorials available to help me figure out how to carry out some functions, like reconciling transactions etc. A drawback, so far, is that they don’t have Moneywell for the iPhone and as I’ll probably be buying an iPhone soon that makes iBank’s iPhone app a strong bonus.
Regarding investments, in Moneywell there is the possibility of having an investment, so that movement of money is possible, but detailed tracking is not really possible — that I have been able to find. Right now as a student, I have a few small accounts of investments, but not much. I can make transactions into an investment account I’ve designated as ‘RRSP’, and really I wont be putting much in there until I’m done school, but when I get my RRSP statements I can make a transaction to update the value of the investment. I haven’t played with the iBank investment but it is more extensive. In 14 months school will be done and I will be putting money into investments, so if I go with Moneywell, as it is it may not have enough power to manage investments. The good news is the developers are working on the investment side of things. The annoyance would be if it’s not ready by the time I need it.
Another cool feature of money well is the ability to add receipts to a transaction. SO, for example, every time I make a tuition payment I make a PDF of the receipt and save it. NOW I can just click on the box in the display and add the receipt. It uploads a copy to the software so that I can access it. Very useful.
Reports are quite simple in MoneyWell, it tells you how much over or under your budgeted amount you are, or you can have reports by transactions, a cash flow summary etc. To be honest, for a home finance software, at least right now in my life, I don’t need more. I am the slightly geeky type that would like to generate graphs occasionally, but realistically, I don’t need it and never used it when I had software that did that for me.
So all in all, I have decided to purchase MoneyWell, it’s making it much simpler to input receipts and track my spending. Hopefully it will help me to cut down in certain spots. I may switch to iBank after I’m done school but for now I need the simplicity that’s offered by MoneyWell. The handy thing: I’m often attached to my computer so I don’t have to worry about MoneyWell not having a mobile option at the moment. I hope that is developed soon — ideally once I get a new phone.
For those reading, I hope this review has helped. I was doing this review for myself to help me think through this purchase, but if it benefits someone that’s great. I’m not affiliated with any of the products mentioned and this blog post was my initiative. No compensation came my way. Oh, and no offence intended to any company if someone’s offended… just sayin’. 🙂
Pierre
Hey Christina,
Interesting read. It reminds me of the process Sylvie and I have gone through over the years.
Years ago, just as we moved to BC, as poor students, we decided to split expenses half/half and just tally things up on a simple piece of paper. Once in a blue moon, (when the piece of paper was filled-up with transactions) we tallied things up and figured out who owed how much.
That amount (who owes how much) was copied to a smaller piece of paper pinned to a board. We kept this system for a few years (7 years), until we both worked and had a condo. At that point, the number of transactions went significantly up (mortgage, condo fees, business expenses and so on). Working for a software company, we purchased MSMoney 2005 for a good deal and started entering all our transactions in it. It was really good to automatically importing and categorizing expenses and keeping track of how much was in the bank. Unfortunately, it really sucked at figuring out the 50/50 split of shared expenses.
After searching a lot on the web, I found a cool tool that linked excel to money and I created a spreadsheet to take care of the 50/50 calculation. Needless to say, the spreadsheet simply took all the transactions from one software and re-categorized them and totaled the numbers for who owed how much.
After a few years of suffering this ordeal (4), I went looking around and found GNUCash. A free finance software. I was able to convert (with lots of effort) all the MSMoney transactions into it and I am now using it for keeping track of transactions. Although it is free, it does come with a few strings… It is not really easy to learn and setup. However, once you get it, you can do wonderful things. After all, some small businesses are using this software for their own finances.
Being a free software, developed by users, it is somewhat US centric in how it handles investments reports (especially the capital gains). Here in Canada capital gains are based on average cost. While in the US, it is based on the actual cost of the batch you are selling. Big difference when you go down in the details. Needless to say, I don’t really use GNUCash (anymore) to keep track of my investments nor my tax deductible expenses, both of which I don’t have much.
I looked at creating my own report in GNUCash, however, after looking at the code behind them, I realized that it was way too complicated and too much effort compared to the benefit it would give me. I am really looking forward to the next releases where, at some point, the reporting engine will be replaced.
In the meantime, I keep updating it with all the transactions, and once in a while, I do update it to see who owes how much – which was what we wanted in the first place… Unfortunately, it does not do it automatically.
Pierre
Hey Christina,
Interesting read. It reminds me of the process Sylvie and I have gone through over the years.
Years ago, just as we moved to BC, as poor students, we decided to split expenses half/half and just tally things up on a simple piece of paper. Once in a blue moon, (when the piece of paper was filled-up with transactions) we tallied things up and figured out who owed how much.
That amount (who owes how much) was copied to a smaller piece of paper pinned to a board. We kept this system for a few years (7 years), until we both worked and had a condo. At that point, the number of transactions went significantly up (mortgage, condo fees, business expenses and so on). Working for a software company, we purchased MSMoney 2005 for a good deal and started entering all our transactions in it. It was really good to automatically importing and categorizing expenses and keeping track of how much was in the bank. Unfortunately, it really sucked at figuring out the 50/50 split of shared expenses.
After searching a lot on the web, I found a cool tool that linked excel to money and I created a spreadsheet to take care of the 50/50 calculation. Needless to say, the spreadsheet simply took all the transactions from one software and re-categorized them and totaled the numbers for who owed how much.
After a few years of suffering this ordeal (4), I went looking around and found GNUCash. A free finance software. I was able to convert (with lots of effort) all the MSMoney transactions into it and I am now using it for keeping track of transactions. Although it is free, it does come with a few strings… It is not really easy to learn and setup. However, once you get it, you can do wonderful things. After all, some small businesses are using this software for their own finances.
Being a free software, developed by users, it is somewhat US centric in how it handles investments reports (especially the capital gains). Here in Canada capital gains are based on average cost. While in the US, it is based on the actual cost of the batch you are selling. Big difference when you go down in the details. Needless to say, I don’t really use GNUCash (anymore) to keep track of my investments nor my tax deductible expenses, both of which I don’t have much.
I looked at creating my own report in GNUCash, however, after looking at the code behind them, I realized that it was way too complicated and too much effort compared to the benefit it would give me. I am really looking forward to the next releases where, at some point, the reporting engine will be replaced.
In the meantime, I keep updating it with all the transactions, and once in a while, I do update it to see who owes how much – which was what we wanted in the first place… Unfortunately, it does not do it automatically.
Christina
Thanks for the comment Pierre! It’s an interesting challenge, and definitely one that I’ll face again and again I expect. I’m glad for your canadian comments and I hope, eventually, developers will start making things more canadian. Not being a programmer I can’t look at something and just program it the way I want. Though that would be nice.
Is it more complex now that the two of you are living in two countries?
Christina
Thanks for the comment Pierre! It’s an interesting challenge, and definitely one that I’ll face again and again I expect. I’m glad for your canadian comments and I hope, eventually, developers will start making things more canadian. Not being a programmer I can’t look at something and just program it the way I want. Though that would be nice.
Is it more complex now that the two of you are living in two countries?
weirurowind
Hi there!
I’m new to this forum and just wanted to say hi. So Hi!
bye!
weirurowind
Hi there!
I’m new to this forum and just wanted to say hi. So Hi!
bye!
Roy McConnell
Thanks for taking the time to post these reviews. I found them very helpful.
Roy McConnell
Thanks for taking the time to post these reviews. I found them very helpful.
Online Financial Software
Great information on financial software.Thanks for sharing this useful information with all of us.Keep sharing more in the future.
Online Financial Software
Great information on financial software.Thanks for sharing this useful information with all of us.Keep sharing more in the future.
John mickle
Large amount of people looks for these details but they will not get efficient one. I truly several thanks for talking about it https://www.accounting-guru.net/features.html
John mickle
Large amount of people looks for these details but they will not get efficient one. I truly several thanks for talking about it https://www.accounting-guru.net/features.html
Financial Software For Mac Canada | getnewmoney
[…] Financial Software for Mac – A Canadian Brief Review | The … – I’m trying to manage my finances better. When I was unemployed I had the time to take care of all my transactions in my spreadsheet and I had a handle on how I was spending my money. […]
Financial Software For Mac Canada | getnewmoney
[…] Financial Software for Mac – A Canadian Brief Review | The … – I’m trying to manage my finances better. When I was unemployed I had the time to take care of all my transactions in my spreadsheet and I had a handle on how I was spending my money. […]
Sarah bo Beara.
This was really helpful thank you!
Sarah bo Beara.
This was really helpful thank you!