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Finance app discussion!

Gokunama

Gokunama

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 13, 2008
958
0
So I've tried a lot of finance apps.

[app]Bear Money[/app] was hard to figure out, and I hated the graphics anyways.

[app]SplashMoney[/app] had great graphics, good graphs, budget support, but it took too long to make a new entry. There's also no hope of back up besides their desktop program that has tenacious sync problems.

[app]PocketMoney[/app] had a fast interface, but pretty boring graphics. The graphs are google's online graphs, and google clips a few of the category names.

[app]TapExpense[/app] had very fast entry! It only had expense graphs, and no multiple account support.

[app]Active Money Pro[/app] has fast entry, great graphs, budget support, and great looking templates. My choice for the moment.

Personal finance apps you've tried and your thoughts on them?
 
Tried a number of them but settled on Mint.com and the companion iphone app.

manually typing in expenses worked for me for a few days, then well, it just became too much work. Mint.com does it all for me with one exception, haven't found a way to enter cash expenses, however i used my debit card for almost every purchase anyway so 95% of what I want capture gets capture so hasn't been a problem for me.

At first i was extremely hesitant to provide my banking/credit card company log in information for mint.com to pull down my data but a few coworkers of mine have been using mint.com for a while and said they haven't had any problems so i bit the bullet and did it. and i haven't been more pleased.

bottom line is, it saves me a TON of work!!! no more manually logging expenses.
 
I use Day Bank for keeping track of my bank balances. I've used it for a few months and I have no complaints. I like the UI and I can get graphs for each category so I can see where my money is going. I also have ifinance which lets you do a bunch of different financial calculations.
 
I use cha ching on my mac and iPhone but I don't recommend them. I'm really put out with them. Their mac software had been in beta for like a yr. Now randomly this weekend it doesn't work on leopard anymore. The iPhone app crashes daily.
 
I would suggest maybe holding out for the MoneyWell iPhone application coming out within the next year, hopefully before the end of 2009.

I use MoneyWell on desktop; tried ChaChing and iBank, but bother are inferior, because MoneyWell masters the budget system like no other.

Soon a full-featured companion to the desktop version will be released. I haven't found anything suitable to use and then go type into MoneyWell, so right now I mark my expenses in my OmniFocus app and then add them to MoneyWell when I get home.

If I had to pick one that is currently available, I would vote for Pocket Money, I enjoyed using it but don't like having to enter it into Pocket Money and then MoneyWell again when I get home. I haven't had the chance to check out Active Money Pro though, and don't feel like spending $6.99 to test it out.
 
[app]iBank[/app]... I really like it for the Mac and this native app complements in excellently. The old web based app was not usefull for me but so far the wifi syncing has been great. If you use iBank for Mac, this purchase is no brainer: enter information when waiting in line, ect so your computer time is more for you and less about entering data. It is easy to use, intuitive and simple syncing through MobileMe. Highly recommend!
 
Ledger

I've been using Ledger for about a year now, after trying several others. It uses the double entry method of accounting, which seems complicated at first but is actually very simple. To give some idea of what that means, a typical transaction would credit an amount from an expense account and debit an amount from an asset account. I had no exposure whatsoever to this when I started using it, and I quickly realized the advantages of the method. It's a great app and it will have you managing money and accounts like never before. It also has a great UI and great backup and export/import features.
 
diesel said:
Tried a number of them but settled on Mint.com and the companion iphone app.

manually typing in expenses worked for me for a few days, then well, it just became too much work. Mint.com does it all for me with one exception, haven't found a way to enter cash expenses, however i used my debit card for almost every purchase anyway so 95% of what I want capture gets capture so hasn't been a problem for me.

At first i was extremely hesitant to provide my banking/credit card company log in information for mint.com to pull down my data but a few coworkers of mine have been using mint.com for a while and said they haven't had any problems so i bit the bullet and did it. and i haven't been more pleased.

bottom line is, it saves me a TON of work!!! no more manually logging expenses.
Click to expand...

I gotta agree with this recommendation. Mint works flawlessly. Very easy. No manual input is awesome.
 
Quicken looked good on the old POS (piece of *****/Palm OS) but it was very functional for US users and stood those of us north of the border for way too long.

Maybe we should all band together to write our OWN Quicken app and sell it to Quicken or write a letter for them to chop chop and do it already??

Quicken,
QuickTax
and the like should start making more apps like this. I see no reason for a taxation app to be on iPhone.

However I'd like to see mint.com/app embrace 256bit security from RSA but most likely it costs them a newborn for that. Looks like a solid choice; but I'd like some information on what happens to your financial and user data if their sold or go bankrupt.

I'd really like a stock tracking function similar to Yahoo's app and sub-panel tab function for different banking functions like this.

Reuters & Bloomberg for those big dawgs is top notch and solid. But its not for personal budgeting.
 
I've tried Daybank and Ledger as well.

Daybank requires I change my region setting to get yen to display, but changing my region settings sets all my Google searches to Google Japan (and I can't read Japanese).

Ledger didn't have graphical reports when I tried it, and I like seeing graphically where my money is going and where it's coming from.

I've heard a lot about mint.com, and I'd love to try it, but it's not available to us in Japan.
 
I'm using MoneyDance for the Mac. Very full featured app, more like Quicken than some of the others mentioned. They have an iPhone app in the works (hit Beta testing a couple of months ago).
 
I use money Strands. Very similar service to mint.com, but available internationally. I use with my first direct bank accounts in the UK. Syncs transactions daily (automatic), and manually whenever you want to refresh, both from the website and the iPhone app. You can assign categories & tags to transactions, as well as setup annual/monthly budgets and alerts. I find the reporting the best feature. If you categorise your transactions properly, you can then view accurate piechart reports for monthly/3-monthly/6-monthly/annual spending. Great for seeing how much I've spent on the appstore!
 

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