iBank 4

Worthy successor to Quicken 2007 for Mac, November 29, 2010

By 

Carrie W. “Carrie Waterston” (Nashville, TN) –

  

Like many others, I’m a longtime Quicken for Mac user who was greatly disappointed with the release earlier this year of Quicken Essentials for Mac. (For a long list of its deficiencies, see the reviews – and one star rating – of Quicken Essentials for Mac here on Amazon – basically it’s Accounting Lite and not a real program for adults with complicated finances.)

I had looked into prior versions of IBank but had been put off by its lack of comprehensive reporting features. This past weekend I was delighted to learn IBank 4 now has customize-able reporting. You can report on only one payee or category, or virtually any combination of accounts.

Although, in a sense I won’t need reports as often – you can search by Payee, Category, or virtually any keyword in the main Document window for each account, and then see all your transactions. EDIT: I had said in the first draft of this review that you can’t search for keywords across accounts but just now I stumbled upon the solution: If you put your active accounts into a Group (mine is called ‘2011 Credit Cards’), then enter a keyword in that Group window view – all of the transactions in any of that Group’s accounts containing the keyword will pop right up in a list. I had also thought you couldn’t search using numbers but that is also incorrect – I had just been going about it the wrong way. You absolutely can search for numbers in your accounts, either individually or by group, which is incredibly helpful if you reconcile by hand as I do…mystery transactions containing amounts like “12.87” or “5.34” are instantly available once entered in one of the search windows.) These search windows also make finding Payees and whatever you’ve written in the blissfully-not-truncated Notes field very easy. The search is instant, as opposed to the slow, clunky, single-transaction view offered by Quicken 2007.

There are a couple of features in IBank 4 that make me nearly weep with relief after my struggles with Quicken 2007. Firstly, you can CUT AND PASTE TRANSACTIONS!!!! It’s so wonderful!! How many times have I spent hours trying to remove mistakenly-downloaded transactions from one of my accounts in Quicken. (If you accidentally import or your bank accidentally downloads transactions into the wrong account or re-downloads transactions, you could have hundreds of bad transactions that will take you literally hours to remove in Quicken 2007. Quicken 2007 won’t allow you to select more than one transaction for deletion – ever; contains “are you sure” type prompts you can’t turn off any time you try to delete a transaction; and contains no deletion-related keyboard shortcuts. It makes a tedious task, hitting an “are you sure you want to delete this: OK” button dozens, or hundreds, of times to remove error-filled transactions.) Of course, you could always restore your Quicken file from a backup you made before the bad data was entered, but then you’d also lose any other (good) changes you had made since that backup was created.

Quicken also will only allow the user to move transactions one-at-a-time between accounts…again, with no multiple transaction selection or keyboard shortcuts allowed. In IBank 4 deleting and moving multiple transactions takes literally seconds. Actually, it’s so easy one worries about mistakenly altering something. Fortunately, the inclusion of an “UNDO [last action]” (coupled with “REDO”) option in the Edit menu prevents disaster. You can also export your transactions to QIF or TXF format, or back them up whenever you like. Additionally, you can set up IBank 4 to back up your transactions whenever you quit the program. This means restoring from backup is an option here too.

Another vastly improved area over Quicken is the use of Categories in IBank 4. It’s basically the same methodology – you use different Categories (Grocery, Restaurants, Books), but again you have a lot more flexibility. When I migrated over to IBank 4 I was able to reassign transactions with ease – IBank 4 will let you reassign current transactions to a new category if you decide to delete one of the old ones. Also, it’s easier not to mistakenly re-create similarly named categories (mine are always ‘Grocery’ and ‘Groceries’) with IBank’s easy pull-down window which autopopulates when you start typing. IBank’s IPhone client (IBank Mobile) also helps create uniform Payees and Categories – no more variations on a business name and street address for the same location, since you use the same Categories and Payees for both versions of IBank. My better, more accurate reports are going to come in handy at tax time.

IBank Mobile is a piece of cake as well. Your data syncs with one click – in seconds and error free, creating a…

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A ‘Quicken for Windows’ Competitor for Mac, December 15, 2010

By 

S. L. Patterson “Early Adopter” (Salt Lake City) –

  

I moved to Mac over six years ago and have had to maintain a Boot Camp partition (and multiple versions of Windows) all this time because the Quicken for Mac products could not even come close to the versions of Quicken for Windows I had used since 1994.

I have purchased and uninstalled at least 4 versions of Quicken for Mac (including the latest Mint-inspired ‘Quicken Essentials for Mac’) because of the poor user experience and truncated feature set (can’t track my 401(k) — seriously?). I have also tried a slew of Mac financial products such as Cashculator, Jumsoft Money, MoneyDance, MoneyWell and Cha-Ching. None of them came close to Quicken for Windows and into the trashcan they went.

I figured I was stuck maintaining a Windows partition and paying Intuit another $69-89 for the annual Quicken update (which strangely seems to not add many useful new features, but some years got prettier) because I always wanted the current release, just in case.

Then I stumbled across iBank 4 (I had previously tried and uninstalled iBank 3) and figured I would give it another shot (what’s that definition of ‘insanity’, again?).

I did a QIF export of my Quicken accounts and imported it into iBank 4 and it populated the data, transactions, categories and pretty much everything I needed (I had to reset up the online access, but that was anticipated) — including my 401(k) and IRA accounts. I can now click the ‘download’ button and literally within 10 seconds every single account — credit cards, bank, savings, credit union, investments — are updated and ready to “import” into their correct accounts with a single click (Quicken takes much, much longer and errors out frequently).

The most important thing for me was seeing my checkbook register and knowing that I know exactly how much is in there for the next 30+ days (I schedule bills a month in advance). Something that only Quicken for Windows seems to have mastered prior to my experience with iBank 4.

I can easily add a recurring bill by simply right-clicking on it in my bank register and selecting “Make scheduled transaction from selection”. It adds it to the running list in sequential order and future bills can be scheduled (I pay them online via my credit union’s website) by a single click to “post” to the register.

I have used this successfully (including a nice single-click backup ability — even to my Dropbox account) for almost two weeks and have not felt the need to launch Quicken for Windows in that entire time (and I am a daily updater/checker).

I think I finally have found a winner in the Mac financial software sweepstakes.

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