I recently went on a hunt for new money management software. Since I converted to Mac, I’ve been trying to find something that would replace Microsoft Money. Microsoft Money was good, but it was just too much of a pain to try to use it on my Mac, plus my free trial had ended and I didn’t want to shell out and buy a new version incase there might be something free out there that would work just as well. Below is my list of requirements – the things I find important in the software. Most of the software/websites listed offered these abilities, but the ones that didn’t I made note of it.

Requirements:

1. Easy, should be simple to pick up, and simple to see what I want:
   • Income vs. expenses during given period (month, quarter, year, etc.)
   • Each transactions category (or tag)
   • Ability to drill into each category and see all transactions in a category (including ‘Uncategorized’, so I can easily categorize them)
2. Mac friendly (either online, or Mac application)
3. Ability to create and use a budget, and to monitor how much is spent in each category of the budget.

Nice to have

1. Should be able to change the date of transactions (i.e. move the date of paycheck for the proper month)
2. Ability to track complete net worth over all accounts.

The tests…

www.mint.com

• Pros:
  • Nice layout and design. Very crisp and clean.
  • Computer independent (website).
• Cons:
  • Hard to find a simple view of my income vs. expenses for a given month or time period. 
  • Could not edit times of transactions.

www.wesabe.com

• Pros:
  • Easy to use.
  • Use of ‘tags’ instead of categories, which made tagging transactions easy.
  • Ability to add notes to transactions.
• Cons:
  • No ability to assign multiple tags to one transaction. (e.g. I could not split a Costco transaction where I bought some “Groceries” and also some baby formula which I want to tag as “Baby Expenses”)
  • Not many reports available, hard to drill down into various levels of reporting. 

www.yodlee.com

•  Pros
  • Very complete abilities to track any kind of investment, banking, loan, or credit card account. (Even ability to add email accounts, reward accounts, etc.).
  • Good reporting, able to see income vs spending, also drill down into various categories. 
  • Ability to split transactions.
  • Ability to add notes to transactions.
  • Ability to add real estate value via zillow.com estimate (automatically updated)
  • Ability to add general loan accounts of all types, even if they don’t have an online presence, you can add them manually.
• Cons:
  • A bit complicated at first, lots of options and abilities. (although they are well organized into navigation tabs on the top of the page.)
  • Inability to change dates on transactions.

iBank.app

• Pros:
  • Looks great, very slick interface, pleasing eye candy.
  • Able to change transaction dates.
  • Available on Mac
• Cons:
  • Cost: $60.00
  • Complicated reporting. Couldn’t figure out how to see a simple report of my income vs. spending for a given period.

There are a couple sites that I didn’t get to test yet, but would like to in the future. If anybody reading this has, leave a comment, and us know your thoughts.

• Quicken Online (recently became free)
• Cashbox (http://www.fadingred.org/cashbox/)

For now, it looks like I’m going to stick with Yodlee. Although there is a slight learning curve at first, it still offers the best options, and best overall capabilities to manage all my various accounts.

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