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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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