Comment on iBank 4 for Mac [Download] by Bob Komischke.
A good alternative for Quicken Mac users.,
I purchased iBank as a replacement for Quicken for Mac. As many Mac users are aware, when Apple upgraded their OS to Lion, that broke Quicken for Mac v. 7 or earlier, due to the removal of the Rosetta code from the Mac OS. Quicken Essentials was not an option for me, due to it’s almost complete inability to track investments. I researched the various alternatives (Mint, Moneydance, Quicken Essentials), and chose iBank. I’m overall happy with iBank, but can’t give it 5 stars because there are still things I’d like to see improved or added.
The Pros for iBank for me were: 1. Ease of Transition. I exported my Quicken file (I was using Quicken Deluxe for Mac v. 6) and followed iBank’s very detailed instructions on the import process and it worked just fine. 2. Thirty day fully functional trial. I initially downloaded the trial from iBank’s website. I was able to use all of it’s functions for 30 days without paying, and it gave me a good opportunity to get the feel for the program and decide if I liked it. 3. Ease of use. While it does do some things differently from Quicken, as an almost 20 year user of Quicken I found iBank pretty easy to learn to use, and I’m very comfortable with it now. 4. Online Banking and Transaction downloading. I decided to try to start taking advantage of these features in iBank, since that really didn’t work too well for me in Quicken, and I’m glad I did. iBank works well, either downloading transactions directly from the banks that support it, or using iBank’s Web Connect feature to download them from the bank’s website using iBank’s built in browser. It’s been a nice timesaver. 5. Mobile Device Sync. While I haven’t tried this yet, iBank has an iPhone mobile version and the two can sync data that I’ve heard works pretty well. I may be giving this a try later.
The Cons (and these aren’t really bugs, more like feature requests): 1. No built in Bill Pay. I was a Quicken Bill Pay customer, and no Quicken alternative has a built-in bill pay feature like that. I use bill pay through my bank now, and that works fine, but I still have to enter those transactions into iBank if I want to be able to see them reflected as upcoming transactions. I can’t get them by downloading from my bank till the day they actually post. 2. Options tracking in investments. While you can enter Options as investments, and you even put in the Option Ticker when you set it up, iBank doesn’t download daily quotes on the Option, so your final result on the option isn’t reflected in your portfolio till you close the Option. iBank says they are working on adding this feature. 3. Account Reconciliation. This feature just doesn’t flow right somehow. It works, and I think it really might be more efficient than Quicken’s, but it still just feels off and a little clunky to me. I think this could be improved.
That’s my two cents on iBank. It’s definitely worth a try if you need to move out of Quicken on your Mac.
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