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Recent Comments by J. May \”J May\”
Worthy successor to Quicken 2007 for Mac,
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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