[israces]

Operating under the following ground rules: 1) Quicken for Mac sucks; 2) Neither Microsoft nor anyone else is going to port MS Money to the Mac; 3) Using MS Money through Virtual PC is too much of a pain to actually be useful;

Is anyone using any one of the following who can give some pros and cons? Is there something similar that is not listed below, that is any good? I'm going to pull the trigger on one of these sometime in the next couple of days, and I'm just looking for some direction.

The contenders (in no particular order):

iBank

Liquid Ledger

Money

[Mr. Blur]

i personally use quicken 2003 as it suits *my* needs just fine. a review/shootout of all the mac finance software was done recently by macworld so why not read what they had to say (if you have not already):
http://www.macworld.com/2004/03/revi...nancesoftware/

[velodev]

Only if you give three GOOD reasons why Quicken for Mac sucks.

I use it with no problem with PocketQuicken on my treo. Never had a problem.

[squilla]

I've just been through this; compared iBank, Moneydance, Quicken (which I was using) after ruling out some of the others. I settled on Moneydance, because it was the most comfortable and feature-complete.

The review in Macworld is obsolete; there's a more recent edition of Moneydance. The support is outstanding. The program treats categories of expense and income as full-scale accounts, which means you can track where money is coming from/going to very conveniently-- it's one of the more useful features of the program.

It's written in Java to be cross-platform, so the interface isn't Mac pure. It takes one session to get used to it if you've been using Quicken. Questions are answered by the programmer in less than 24 hours.

Importing from banks via QIF works well, configuring is flexible and convenient, features like transfer between accounts, reminders, auto-complete of account and payee names, memorized transactions, etc. etc. are all pretty good.

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by israces:
Operating under the following ground rules: 1) Quicken for Mac sucks;

Why

I use Quicken 2004 and it works great a couple of minor issues with categories but nothing I wouldn't expect from anyone. So please document why this product doesn't live up to your expectations, or did not try it.

Mike

[turtle777]

Originally posted by israces:
Operating under the following ground rules: 1) Quicken for Mac sucks; 2) Neither Microsoft nor anyone else is going to port MS Money to the Mac; 3) Using MS Money through Virtual PC is too much of a pain to actually be useful;

Why the heck is MS MOney better than Quicken anyways ?
And who would want more MS products on the Mac...

I'm using Quicken 2004, and I'm content, it does mostly what it is supposed to.
The only complaint I have is that it doesn't handle Bank of America Military, for some stupid reason...
The "regular" Bank of America (non-military) works fine...




-t

[israces]

I used Quicken 2002 and it hosed my finances. Entries were screwed up at random and it absolutely could not calculate various investments and interest rates, including my capital gains, correctly...when it wasn't crashing. Quicken's support for these issues was abysmal. However, their Windows product seemed to be well-supported and had many feautres that worked just fine. I understand that this is still the case today. Up until the latest update, I understand that Quicken 2004 for Mac was crap, but that the Windows version was great.

To the guys who have Quicken working for them, I'm sincerely happy for you. One less problem for you guys to deal with. I wish that this was the case for me. However, please don't play dumb in your posts and act like Quicken is the end-all be-all of rock-solid programming by asking me to document its faults. If you guys have been using Quicken for any appreciable length of time, you are as well-aware of these problems as I am. These issues are more or less common knowledge. For me, they were unacceptable.

Not that I have much love for M$, but Money has actually worked for me very well. For me, it kills Quicken. However, I too agree that the less M$ I have on my Mac, the better off I'd be. Hence this thread.

So, let's not derail here. I'm looking for a non-Quicken, non-M$ Money, financial program that works great and runs native in OSX and I'm wondering if anyone has any input within those parameters. The suggestions so far have been great, so keep them coming.

[kjb]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Why the heck is MS MOney better than Quicken anyways ?
And who would want more MS products on the Mac...

I'm using Quicken 2004, and I'm content, it does mostly what it is supposed to.
The only complaint I have is that it doesn't handle Bank of America Military, for some stupid reason...
The "regular" Bank of America (non-military) works fine...




-t

What type of support do you know of for BoA (the regular, non-military one)? I'm under the impression that Direct Connect (bill pay, transfers, etc directly in Quicken) isn't supported on Quicken for Mac by BoA, but Web Connect (downloading and importing QIF files) is. I'm really wanting Direct Connect, as the convenience is tremedous.

[cpac]

chalk up one for iBank - I used to be a huge Quicken fan, but I got fed up with it's bloatedness/minor feature bumps/bugginess, etc.

iBank is very OS X like (read, not a port from OS 9 or java or X11 or anything), and it does what it's supposed to. On top of that it's developer is very responsive, and seems to answer any question or feature suggestion posted in the iBank forums personally.

I haven't missed not being able to do the direct connect thing - and after a small adjustment period (during which you might think things missing just because they don't work the same way they do in Quicken), I must say that I much prefer iBank to Quicken.

That said, your milage may vary, so download iBank and give it a try for a month or so. If you're not happier with it than Quicken, then there's no need to buy it. (the only limit on the demo is something like 75 transactions per account)

[itai195]

I've tried iBank but wasn't that impressed. It choked on importing Quicken files, crashed a lot, and I didn't care for the interface in general (more contextual menus, please). I'll give it another shot when there's an update.

I've been using Quicken 2002 for nearly three years and it's worked fine for me. I'm not totally enamored with the software, and I wish it was better at handling a 401k, but I haven't had any major problems. I'm considering getting MS Money 2004 when the new Virtual PC comes out.

[madmacgames]

I use iBank. So far I have not really had any problems. It imports QIF or QFX files no problem for me. Only occasionally when trying to import an MBNA QIF file, it will crash, but looking at the QIF file, it seems MBNA has something messed up in it. MBNA also offers QFX files, which work just as well with iBank, so I download those for import.

[dampeoples]

I use Quicken, probably only about 1% of it's features, but it works for me, it came installed too
If I ever decide to d/l the info from my bank, I can do that without having to worry if some other package is compatible, that's bound to be a bonus.