Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

I recently made the switch from Windows to Mac OS. I’ve really been enjoying my new Mac unfortunately it seems that companies who make financial software haven’t realized that they are missing a huge market.

Before I switched I used MS Money to manage my personal finances and Quickbooks Simple Start to manage my business finances. Unfortunately both of these arenas have poor counterparts in the Mac world. Below are some quick reviews of some of the software I’ve found and evaluated.

Business Accounting

• Connected

  This is my least favorite of all. The UI is lackluster to say the least and none of the reports can be user modified.

  The UI looks like it was designed by Software Developers or by someone with no idea about UI design. The menu is filled with acronyms and instead of drop-down menus the user must click different buttons to bring up the menus they need.

  The reports included in the application are sufficient but they can not be customized. They seem to be designed for people that sell actual items, and not services. In itself this is fine, but the other programs I used allowed me to modify the reports to fit my needs and the needs of my customers.

• MYOB FirstEdge

  This has been my favorite application to play with. The UI is superb, the application is extremely easy to figure out and the reports are customizable.

  MYOB definitely spent some time designing the UI. The application is easy to navigate which makes it easy to learn even for us non-accountants.

  Although the reports are customizable the tool for modifying the reports could use some work. Resizing boxes and fields is difficult because you must click in exactly the right spot inside the “resize” icon or else you’ll move the whole box or field.

  It also seems that snap-to-grid is always on when using the arrow keys and I couldn’t find a way to disable it. Snap-to-Grid is a great feature for lining things up, but in some instances I needed greater flexibility and the mouse (the only way to move an object without Snap-to-grid) wasn’t accurate enough.

  There are two features I wish this had. One of them is the ability to group transactions with the same account number. I do consulting work and, as per the clients wishes, I charge to certain account numbers depending on the work I perform. It would be nice to see these transactions grouped together so both of us can see how much is being charged to each account number.

  The other feature is one that would allow me to track Sales Tax without charging it to the customer. The hourly rate I charge includes all taxes so I can’t charge it to the customer, but I would to print a report at tax time that shows me what I owe to each agency.

Personal Accounting

• Liquid Ledger

  Another great piece of software I just didn’t find it worth the price considering I already own Money and Parallels.

  Unfortunately the application is missing two things that are important to me - a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank account.

• iBank

  This is my favorite out of the personal finance software I tested. The UI is slick, and importing from MS Money was a breeze once I formatted the date correctly.

  Just like Liquid Ledger, it is missing a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank.

• Money Dance

  Another great personal finance application. It has a slick UI and is pretty easy to use. Unfortunately it has the same flaw as the other two - lack of Palm support and limited ability to sync with my Palm PDA.

For now it looks like I’ll be sticking with doing every financial using Windows running on Parallels. I was really hoping to switch everything to Mac OS unfortunately that seems impossible given my requirements. If anyone has a suggestion, please email me or post a comment!