What Is Best Financial Software For Mac
Whether you have a lot or a little, everyone needs to manage their money. Like so many areas of life, you can do things entirely by hand, or you can turn to software to make your life easier. There's a wealth – if you'll pardon the pun – of personal finance tools out there, but many of them involve having to put your hand into your pocket, dig deep and part with some hard-earned cash. You could, of course, pay an accountant to take care of your money for you, but this involves and outlay that you might well prefer to avoid. Take a look through the selection of free tools we've collected together, and you should find something that suits your personal finance needs, making it easier to keep track of your money. This free personal finance software could hopefully save you some money too or, at the very least, see where you're currently spending it. Cross-platform is simple enough to be used for home finances, but flexible enough to be put to use by small businesses as well.
While the software is easy to use, the fact that it's suitable for small business accounting is thanks to the inclusion of a number of extra features that you would not necessarily expect to find – support for payroll management and double-entry accounting, for instance. Although relatively easy to use, this free personal finance software does really require some familiarity with accounting software, and it's simple to migrate from another program because you can import data in QIF and dOFX formats. Support for expense tracking makes this ideal software for preparing for tax season, and there are a huge number of reporting options to help you to make sense of your cashflow. The software is available for macOS, Windows and Linux, as well as Android, and it's highly recommended that you try out this great tool before you consider any of the paid-for alternatives. Requires Java Proving that free personal finance software doesn’t have to be complicated, keeps things about as simple as they can be. In a matter of minutes, you can set up all of the accounts you need and start keeping track of your incomings and outgoings.
Money can be easily pulled from and moved between different accounts, and Buddi can generate all sort of reports about your spending and earnings broken down in a variety of ways. If you're looking to save money, the program can help you to stick to a budget and for anyone who is completely new to the concept of accounting, the Buddi website has a number of helpful guides to help get you started. On the downside, Buddi requires you to have Java installed which is not going to be to everyone's liking, and the software itself has not been updated for a little while. Neither of these two factors are enough to stop us from recommending that you take a look at the program – it could well be just what you've been looking for.
Doesn't link to online accounts Billing itself as an alternative to Quicken sets a high bar for, but it's a target it manages to reach, even in its free, cut-down iteration. There's only support for two accounts in AceMoney Lite, but this should be enough for many people – and the full edition of the program is only $40 (around £30, AU$50) anyway.
You can even use the program to keep track of your PayPal account. Managing accounts in different currencies is no problem, but you'll have to enter data into this free personal finance software rather than having your transactions pulled in from your bank account. That said, if you download statements from your online bank account, these can then be imported to saved time with manual entry. AceMoney Lite also makes it easy to track your spending and investments, making it a great financial tool for anyone looking to take control of their finances.
Supports unlimited accounts will appeal if you work on multiple platforms, or don't use Windows by default. Available for Windows, macOS and Linux (there's also an Android app in development) HomeBank can be installed normally or as a portable app, and it makes the topic of personal finance easily accessible. If you've been using another program – such as Quicken or Microsoft Money – to manage your finances, you can import data to save having to start from scratch. You can add an unlimited number of accounts to the program, and they can be linked to each other to allow for easy money transfers – it is all entirely dependent on manual editing, though. With enough data entered, it's possible to generate all manner of reports, including helpful predictive reports for car ownership and the like.
Very much designed with the average person in mind, this is a personal finance app for people who hate personal finance apps. Imports data from other apps is an online tool that makes it easy to manage all of your accounts in one place – although there is also an Android app available. There's support for over 15,000 online bank accounts from all over the world, so you should find that yours is there, and then you can pull in all of your transactions without the need for manual entry. Buxfer can also pull in data in from the likes of Quicken and Mint, help you manage budgets and forecast costs and earnings, and track investments with ease. You will have to spend time categorizing transactions manually if you upload them from your statements, but this isn't too much of a chore.
You can set up alerts, track bills, and predict spending patterns; it's a highly versatile tool. There is a free version of service available, but there are also three paid-for tiers ranging in price from $1.99 to $4.99 per month. It's worth taking the free version for a spin to see if it could do the job for you – this will let you work with up to five accounts, which is likely to be enough for most people. Save even more money with our pick of the best.
I'm planning to make the PC-to-Mac switch in the next couple of months and am looking for recommendations for personal finance software for Intel-based Macs. Is Quicken pretty much the only game in town or are there some good comparable choices? I use MS Money presently, which I know has no Mac counterpart. One thing I really like about Money and Quicken is automatic downloading of new transactions from my bank and credit card companies.
I saw iCash listed on the Apple web site but there wasn't too much detail about it. I also searched this forum but didn't see any recent discussions. Thanks in advance for any recommendations! I tried iBank, encouraged by the 30-day refund policy, and I'm 'sending it back.' I have used Quicken on Windows for 14 years and am currently using Quicken 2006 Deluxe.
Having bought a 24' 2.8ghz iMac just 2 weeks ago, I wanted to go as Mac as possible. (I have had Macs longer than my 'Pee Cee of Crap,' as we all call our old gone PC in this household.) So now with Parallels I use Quicken.
Anyway, specifically, I did not like the reconciliation functionality in iBank. It's so different from Quicken that I was having a hard time making the change.
(Why did I buy it if I didn't like it? In order to convert more than 50 transactions I had to buy it. And I needed ALL my data so I could try all the features of iBank.) Does anyone know of a Mac financial program with a similar reconciliation feature? BUT NOT QUICKEN FOR MAC - also, I need the image attachment feature that iBank and the Windows version of Quicken have. If I can't get these features then I guess I'll be maintaining Parallels and WinXXPro just for Quicken!!!
Forget Quicken for Mac, it is a terrible, awful program, and has caused me much heartache and headache, as well as lost data due to incompetent and ignorant technical support (all based in India). I am looking at iBank and fortora Fresh, and am leaning toward fortora Fresh. I have read mixed reviews about iBank, but not seen any independent feedback on fortora Fresh.
Neither of those programs currently allows for on-line billing, however I have Bank of american and can do on-line payments through their website independantly (whether or not I have Quicken). Also, both iBank and fortora Fresh do not have as sophisticated a set-up for categories and classes (they don't have classes at all) that Quicken has, and that is probably the best and only good thing I can say about Quicken for Mac. I switched from my dead Vista PC to a big ol' honking, blazin, screamin Intel double-barrel iMac 2 years ago. I had served about 12 years of hard time with Micrsoft-in-Hell, and I, too, had become dependent upon Quicken for Windows for my personal finances. But I always felt that Quicken for Windows was WAAAY too technical and a lot of overkill. It was like using your SLAP-CHOP to dice one shallot! So I came across iBank for Mac.
Here's the deal about iBank for Mac: it feels and looks a lot like Quicken, so that's a plus for a former Quicken addict. It does all the basics WITHOUT all the MARS LANDER technology!BUT, as an earlier contributor wrote above, iBank's 'Reconciliation' function is way dumb! I still haven't figured out how to reconcile my bank statements!
The iBank manual is not helpful on this topic, either. I haven't checked around the web too lazy and sluggish, but I'll bet there's an iBank forum out there somewhere where some smarty pants could likely educate us dummies on this particular module in iBAnk. Note To Self: 'Look for iBank Forums.'
So I choose to hang on to my iBank because, as I said above, it does everything else easily, visually, and you hardly have to learn any new moves! It's almost Quicken. IBank would definitely be a '10' if only the reconciliation function made easy, logical, visual sense! On balance, I'm staying with it.
As it is, I just print-off my monthly register and do a manual 'ticking' job with my calculator to balance my bankbook. Things could be worse.
I cud still be in Windows Hell! I have been using quickbooks for 5 yrs running up to 4 companies at once (2 of them using assisted payroll).
I decided to make the switch from qkbks 2006 pro (windows) to qkbks 2007 for mac. I have had nothing but HUGE problems: 1) i was on tech support for 4-5 hours (over 2 days) until someone finally came up with this solution: in order to successfully convert from windows to mac, you need to delete all kinds of custom reports, your password, then delete or shorten EVERY MEMO ENTRY LONGER THEN 40 CHARACTERS in length.
I looked back through years of entries and did it anyways. It took hours. They also tried to make me pay for the $79 support fee AFTER paying $200 for the program in order to tell me this ridiculous fix they call a 'conversion'.
2) the mac version does not do direct connect with your bank. I typically enter in checks directly into the 'write check' feature with 'pay online' checked and then click 'online banking' and then transfer the virtual check to the bank (ie.
Wachovia, chase.) and they transmit the payment to the relevant vendor. Forget about this in the mac version. They say you can do it in pro 2009. I found out after buying and upgrading to '09 (4 days after buying and paying for '07). 3) I paid for the 2009 online download and upgraded a mere 4 days after i bought the 07 at an apple store.
(which by the way i need to send back to inuit before they will reimburse me the $200 i paid for it. The apple store wont take it back). So i am now out $400 bucks, have a weak program that doesn't pay bills through direct connect, was a nightmare to convert from a windows version, and has already evidenced glitches. 4) so now i am going to return the 09 version and will run bootcamp/virtual PC or just keep using a windows system to run this program. The mac version just isn't good and the tech support is a nightmare.
Save yourself the headache. 5) as an aside I used to absolutely love this program (my history is Windows based). However, Intuit has done nothing but gone down hill over the last few years.
Tech support has huge wait times, is $79 per encounter and i often have difficulty with understanding the person on the other end, they force you to upgrade every few years, and i find more glitches with each subsequent version (although they are nicer interfaces). I would greatly appreciate a recommendation for another program preferably mac based, but not absolutely necessary. I have heard of MYOB and Peachtree but don't know much about them. But i have just about had it with Intuit.
Best Free Finance Tracker
Any advice would be appreciated. Seems you found this thread a little too late to help you. Intuit has always dumbed down the Mac version of their software by removing bells and whistles that were available, and expected, on the Windows side. Earlier versions of QuickBooks had on-line banking included which made check writing and reconciling an easy, but not necessarily painless, process.
I could never understand how a supposed cross-platform financial program would use a completely different format on each platform for storing the data. That is positively Asinine!
What Is The Best Financial Software For Mac
Akin to M$ deciding to make Excel for Windows use one format and Excel for Mac use another. Neither could open the other without the 'help' of a convertor, Tech Support(Paid) or a whole lot of user editing. The Chairman of Intuit is/was on the Board of Apple, and has always said that the Mac version and Windows version would come into line with each other. They do advertise that the two are 'compatible' but never get to the 'fine print' Despite years of practice, Intuit have failed to deliver a decent product, be it QuickBooks or Quicken, for the Mac.
You may want to take a look at MYOB and see how they compare, although there will still be the expense of purchasing it and 'possibly' a conversion problem. Thanks for sharing, it may save some others from the same fate as you P.
Dear MSTRANKO and others; I have been researching MAC accounting systems for months for a new business and have concluded that Intuit and Quickbooks for MAC is the one to stay away from. I have used Quickbooks 2004 for MAC for years and love it, but it won't work on newer MAC's beyond OS 9.2.2 and when you hit the wall, you had better go shopping for something else.
MYOB, Account Edge, FinanceToGo, etc. Intuit does not appear to be serious about MAC accounting. Their support and policies are awful: they are rude, unflexible, yada, yada, yada. Everybody and everything I read and hear about Intuit Quickbooks for MAC just scares the heck out of me. Old report formats, stoogy, don't work well with banks and credit cards, lose data, you name it. I am still looking and just have not found what I will use, but it won't be Quickbooks!!! I hate Quicken for Mac (but used it with my PC for over 15 years and loved it).
I have just spent a second gruelling round dealing with incompetent, ignorant Quicken tech support who have (for the second time in three months) completely fouled up my Quicken data in their ineffectual attempts to solve what is clearly a software glitch. They insisted I had corrupted data in my system, which I didn't. Everything they did to my program resulted in loss of data, and the underlying software problem is still not solved. In addition, after spending over two hours on the phone with them, I went back to my Quicken account and tried something else - cleaning up my list of categories - which resulted in 6 crashes in the space of a half hour, and further data loss.
I hate Quicken and am very anxious to find a good accounting and on-line payment program for my Mac. And I refuse to run any Microsoft program system on my Mac - it's bad enough I have to run Microsoft Office for Mac in order to communicate with the majority of the rest of the computer-world. Please do advise!!! Maybe it was easier to get then. I haven't used Quicken for Windows since the 2004 version, which I hated enough to buy MS Money.
Intuit is adding functionality to the beta a little at a time so at present there are still things QFL can't do (e.g. Reporting, reconciliation) but those are coming. The basic interface is a huge step up from Quicken for Mac 2007. The only other Mac finance software I've tried are iBank and Moneydance, neither of which impressed me. I sent a question to Moneydance support and got a response around six months later, long after I had removed it. Inspired by this thread and tired of Quicken opening about a dozen windows on my desktop every time I start it, I downloaded a couple of trial software packages yesterday. I really like iBank.
Not only is iBank a Mac software product that is easy to use, it has done a great job downloading and organizing brokerage accounts for me. In fact, my 401k plan is held by Fidelity NetBenefits and iBank is the only financial management program I have found that quickly and easily downloads data from this site. When setting up that account the software warned me that NetBenefits downloads are not yet working for everyone, but I had no problem at all. The iBank program does go a little over the top with the Mac eye candy - who needs to see their transactions in Cover Flow view?
- but the extraneous stuff can be easily turned off by using iTunes-like icons. The iBank support site also seems to include a lively set of discussion boards that are monitored by employees of the company. I just may keep this one.