HMAUS Signal 30 years of helping people with technology

iBank 3.4.2

Review by Bob Carpenter and originally published by the ApplePickers User Group
Developer: IGG Software (http://www.iggsoftware.com)
Price: $59.99 (Upgrade price from earlier versions of iBank: $29.99)
Pros: Mac-like interface, numerous features
Cons: Price

Throughout history, people have searched for the Holy Grail. Alas, my search hasn’t been quite so lofty. However, at times, it has appeared to be just as fruitless. I’ve been searching for a Mac personal finance program that I was completely happy with. Like most of you, I first started out with a version of Quicken that came pre-loaded on my Mac. Unfortunately, while the Mac version of Quicken may share the same name as its Windows’ cousin, it’s not the same program. I also found it to be very finicky on my Mac and likely to crash when I upgraded OS X if I didn’t buy a new version of Quicken. Also, don’t even get me started on Intuit’s upgrade policy.

As a result, I started looking into various personal financial management programs. I was never happy with any of them, but I was happiest with Moneydance. Unfortunately, its Java interface meant that the program never works exactly like a Mac program would. However, it did what I wanted it to do and I just learned to live with the entry quirks. Entering transaction splits were especially frustrating. However, because of an announcement in the Apple User Group bulletin, I decided to contact IGG Software for a review license of iBank to see if it finally filled my personal finance management need.

QIF (Quicken Interchange File) import This was vital to me because I wasn’t willing to start out from scratch. I needed to be able to export my Moneydance data and have iBank seamlessly import the data so I could hit the ground running. I give credit to iBank that I was basically able to do this. I say “basically” because when iBank took my original QIF file that I exported from Moneydance, it created both accounts as checking accounts.

It didn’t affect the data, but I wanted to be able to use the visual cues to distinguish my savings and checking accounts. I also found that if I renamed one of the accounts, it messed up my account balances. On further reflection, that made sense because my money transfers from one account to another couldn’t find the other account name. It would’ve been nice to receive a warning before I renamed the account that this could happen.

However, since iBank allows you to selectively import transactions from the QIF file, I simply created the accounts prior to importing the QIF file and selecting which transactions went to each account. It would’ve been nicer to use the “Create accounts for this file” option, but it caused the problem of making every account look like a checking account. Since I know that QIF files can differ from program to program, it’s possible that the QIF file that left Moneydance didn’t have all of the information that iBank needed to know that these transactions belonged to a savings account and to choose the appropriate account icon. While manually selecting the transactions was a bit tedious, I only had to do it once and I had the accounts set up the way I wanted them.

Transaction Entry

To me, this is where “the rubber meets the road”. If entering transactions isn’t easy, you won’t do it and having the program is worthless. After using iBank for a month, I’d give it an A- for entry. As you might expect, you simply select “Add New Transaction” from the Transaction menu or simply hit Command-N as I do. When you first start entering transactions, you’ll have to type out your Payee, Amount, Category, etc. After having this information defaulted in for me in Moneydance, I was disappointed. However, as I started using iBank, it started remembering my transactions as Moneydance did. I was hoping that by importing my data that iBank would start the memory process. Unfortunately, it only remembered the transactions that I had actually entered by hand. Luckily, since most of my transactions are the same from month to month, it only took until the beginning of the next month to see that iBank started remembering what I entered last month.

In transaction entry, there are three views: List, Cover Flow, and Thumbnail. I have to admit that I don’t see the need for having Cover Flow in my finance software, but there’s probably someone out there that loves it. The list view takes up the least real estate, but I actually prefer the thumbnail view (pictured in screenshot). I do wish the actual graphic that went with the transaction could be resized to be smaller. However, I found the thumbnail view the easiest to read.

I do like that iBank has different graphics to go with your different income and expense categories. That can be useful for determining at a glance what type of transaction it is. I only wish that IGG included graphics for all of their built-in categories. It will allow you to drag in your own graphics. However, your graphics will look very grainy unless you use 512×512 pixel icons like IGG uses. The graphics that IGG includes look very professional. I just wish there had been more of them.

Another part of transaction entry is entering a split transaction. A split transaction is a transaction that belongs to several categories. The easiest example I have is my credit card bill. I pay for many things with my credit card ranging from food to a software purchase. Being able to separate these expenses gives me a much better idea of where my money is going. Entering splits in iBank is easy. Simply click on the “+” button in the Splits section. By default, you won’t see this part of the screen unless you click on the blue triangle to show the expanded transaction entry screen. iBank does a nice job of keeping track of how much money is remaining in your split transaction. That makes it easier to avoid mathematical errors where your splits don’t add up to the original transaction amount. I do wish that iBank saved my split information from month to month as well as the transaction itself. If I start entering “Disc”, iBank knows it’s my Discover Card and puts in the previous month’s balance (which I do have to re-enter each month). However, it doesn’t remember my split information. That’s unfortunate for me since a lot of the splits are identical each month (cable bill, phone bill, etc.).

Reporting

If you’re not looking carefully, you might not see reports in iBank. That’s because they’re hidden under Charts. When you create a chart and select which income and expense categories you wish to see, there’s a “Generate Report” button that gives you a PDF report by month and income and expense category. I found the pie chart useful to look at for my expenses. I would’ve preferred a nice graphical representation of income vs. expenses. iBank does have their bar graph of income and expenses through time, but I didn’t find that chart as useful to me. I also would’ve liked the option to have iBank have intervals like “Current Month”, “Current Quarter”, etc. Right now, I have to change the dates if I want the chart to reflect the current month or quarter. That’s not as convenient as I would like.

Budgeting

iBank does include the ability to create a budget. It was sufficient for my needs since my past budgets have been simply “hey, stop spending money now”. As a result, the budgeting that iBank includes is much better than I’ve done for myself in the past. Doing this review forced me to think about how much money should be spent on each category based on my past spending and what my spending should be. Just going through the budgeting exercise made reviewing iBank worthwhile. Knowing that I should review this module made me sit down and think about how much I should be spending in each category. However, for more sophisticated budgeters, I’m not sure that iBank will have enough features for you. For instance, I didn’t see a way to do an “envelope budget” where you save your money for a future expense. With the way my teeth are going, that might start coming in handy.

With iBank’s budgets, you simply choose the income and expense categories and how frequently they occur. I did have to change my paycheck to monthly because the “every two weeks” option isn’t the same as being paid twice per month. Once you set up your budget, you simply click on the budget monitor to see how you’re doing. Unlike with the reports, you can simply choose “month to date”, “last month”, etc. without having to worry about entering any dates. I only created one budget, but iBank does allow you to create multiple budgets. I don’t have the need for this, but I can see how other people might.

Investment accounts and smart import rules

I’ve lumped these two together because I really didn’t test either of these. I tried setting up my Roth IRA as a investment account but iBank expects this account type to be used when you are buying and selling shares. I couldn’t find a way to simply enter my gain/loss based on my monthly statement using an investment account. Looking at iBank, it does allow you to download current share prices for your stocks or mutual funds.

iBank also allows you to download your account information directly from your bank if your bank supports this option. To be honest, I wasn’t interested in giving iBank access to my bank account information. I have no reason to distrust IGG, but I’m quite paranoid when it comes to my financial account information. However, iBank can also import a file that you download manually from your financial institution. My institution, JP Morgan Chase, does support downloading files in the new OFX (Open Financial Exchange) format which replaces the old proprietary QIF format. iBank easily imported this file and automatically reconciled the imported transactions that I had already entered that matched the transactions in the file from the bank.

The smart import rules go one step further where you can eliminate hand entry of your transactions and simply download your transactions from your bank. The smart import rules screen looks like a Finder “find file” screen where you can choose multiple conditions where if a payor matches “X” and some other field matches “Y”, then the category should be “Fuel”. If I downloaded transactions from my bank, I can see where this would be useful. Otherwise, you end up having to re-categorize your transactions that you just downloaded which eliminates much of the time savings.

Reconciling accounts

Along with transaction entry, this is the other vital functionality for me. If it’s too hard to reconcile the account, I’ll drop the program like a hot potato and find something else to use. iBank doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true Quicken reconciliation process, but it does add a slight Mac twist to it.

To reconcile your account, you create a new statement. iBank will ask you the beginning and ending dates of your statement. Those dates are normally easy to find on your bank statement. One nice thing about iBank is that it defaults to reconciling all transactions between those dates. Moneydance, by comparison, will only reconcile those transactions automatically if you’re downloading them as opposed to reconciling manually. Now, if any transactions need to be unreconciled, you simply drag the transaction from the reconciled portion of the statement to the unreconciled portion. By not having to click on the transactions that should be reconciled between those dates, it saved a lot of time and prevented errors.

I do wish there was an easier way to reconcile your historical transactions that came before you started using iBank. I had to create a “Historical statement” that went from the date of my first transaction (my beginning balance had a date of 12/31/1969) to the day before my first iBank transaction. It took a few minutes for iBank to churn through the transactions, but it was worth it to me since the unreconciled transactions only showed those transactions that really weren’t reconciled.

Final thoughts

As you can see, iBank has a lot to it. I didn’t even touch on its Forecasting tool since I didn’t try it out. I’ve enjoyed using iBank as I’ve been trying it out for this review. That’s why the only con I listed was price. When I went to IGG’s website to download the review copy, I remembered why I’d passed it by before. For my needs, $60 was a bit steep. If you use all of iBank’s features, then I feel it’s a very fair price. Hopefully, at some point, IGG will consider an iBank Lite that didn’t have the investment, forecasting, and online download features that could sell for $30-$35.

While there are a few rough edges, iBank is the best program I’ve found so far for doing personal financial management on my Mac. I realize there are people who run Parallels or VMWare Fusion simply so they can run the Windows version of Quicken or Microsoft Money, but that’s not something I’m willing to do. I bought a Mac because I like running Mac software. There’s the rare exception where I have no choice but to run Windows on my Mac. However, thanks to developers like IGG, personal finance software isn’t one of those exceptions for me.

Posted under Reviews