Mac Personal Finance Software

[wco81]

Reality probably is that the market for personal finance software just isn't big enough to sustain more than a couple of developers and they probably need $100 or more from each user per year.


I can afford it but Bankivity 6 still works, even with all its faults (won't update some funds prices so I have to put it in manually) so I'll probably keep using it.

Otherwise the alternative is a Google Sheets document which I use for my investment and total assets tracking.


I'm guessing if IGG doesn't get enough subscribers, that is some percentage of the Bankivitiy 7 and earlier user base doesn't pony up as subscribers, they may try to break the transactions updating backend, as well as kill the equity and funds pricing data.

 

[irfoton]

Reality probably is that the market for personal finance software just isn't big enough to sustain more than a couple of developers and they probably need $100 or more from each user per year.


I can afford it but Bankivity 6 still works, even with all its faults (won't update some funds prices so I have to put it in manually) so I'll probably keep using it.

Otherwise the alternative is a Google Sheets document which I use for my investment and total assets tracking.


I'm guessing if IGG doesn't get enough subscribers, that is some percentage of the Bankivitiy 7 and earlier user base doesn't pony up as subscribers, they may try to break the transactions updating backend, as well as kill the equity and funds pricing data.

any one using this:
https://scimonocesoftware.com

up to v2 now - i hadn't checked on them since when they were still v<1.0

 

[Kestrel]

That name is a blast from the past. That was my daily driver for years before I switched to Banktivity. I don't recall what made me go away from it. My holy grail is something that combines the investments and overall net worth tracking of Banktivity with the easy zero-based budgeting of YNAB. At a glance, it doesn't look like SEE does that.

 

[kenada]

MoneyWell is apparently still getting updates. It’s exchanged hands a few times, but the new owner seems to want to do things right. However, there’s still no sync, but they’re working on it.

 

[ThadS]

Interesting, my Quicken updated this morning, and it's now a Universal app for M1 based Macs. That was fast! I don't own one yet, so I don't know how fast it runs, but I'm feeling good about their development support after years of nothing-much under the previous ownership.

 

[KhaineBOT]

MoneyWell is apparently still getting updates. It’s exchanged hands a few times, but the new owner seems to want to do things right. However, there’s still no sync, but they’re working on it.

I don't know about you guys, but I've been burned too many times by MoneyWell with promises to fix broken features, and restore previous features (i.e. reporting).

 

[kenada]

MoneyWell is apparently still getting updates. It’s exchanged hands a few times, but the new owner seems to want to do things right. However, there’s still no sync, but they’re working on it.

I don't know about you guys, but I've been burned too many times by MoneyWell with promises to fix broken features, and restore previous features (i.e. reporting).

Yeah, I wouldn’t even consider giving it another try until it got sync back. The new devs seem more responsive, but it’s still seems like it hasn’t advanced any since the first transfer of ownership.

 

[NucleatedRed]

Interesting, my Quicken updated this morning, and it's now a Universal app for M1 based Macs. That was fast! I don't own one yet, so I don't know how fast it runs, but I'm feeling good about their development support after years of nothing-much under the previous ownership.

I've stuck with Quicken over the years, mainly because I have so much historical data, my attempts at importing these data into other programs (I've tried most of the options discussed here) have yielded poor outcomes, and I haven't had the courage to simply start over with an empty ledger. Quicken still has a few (for me) shortcomings, but it is getting better, and I remain hopeful for its future.

So, I ask the group: any love for the recent versions of Quicken for Mac in here?

 

[mike4523]

Interesting, my Quicken updated this morning, and it's now a Universal app for M1 based Macs. That was fast! I don't own one yet, so I don't know how fast it runs, but I'm feeling good about their development support after years of nothing-much under the previous ownership.

I've stuck with Quicken over the years, mainly because I have so much historical data, my attempts at importing these data into other programs (I've tried most of the options discussed here) have yielded poor outcomes, and I haven't had the courage to simply start over with an empty ledger. Quicken still has a few (for me) shortcomings, but it is getting better, and I remain hopeful for its future.

So, I ask the group: any love for the recent versions of Quicken for Mac in here?

Just switched to Quicken for Mac (v6) from Banktivity v7. I was not interested in their subscription plan (yes, QfM is a subscription also, but it was about half the cost).

Imported 10+ years of Banktivity data into Quicken with a few issues involving duplication of some split transactions/transfers. Once I figured out the issues, it was easy to delete the extra transactions. Now everything balances exactly.

Still getting used to Quicken, but glad I made the switch.

 

[fil]

Interesting, my Quicken updated this morning, and it's now a Universal app for M1 based Macs. That was fast! I don't own one yet, so I don't know how fast it runs, but I'm feeling good about their development support after years of nothing-much under the previous ownership.

I've stuck with Quicken over the years, mainly because I have so much historical data, my attempts at importing these data into other programs (I've tried most of the options discussed here) have yielded poor outcomes, and I haven't had the courage to simply start over with an empty ledger. Quicken still has a few (for me) shortcomings, but it is getting better, and I remain hopeful for its future.

So, I ask the group: any love for the recent versions of Quicken for Mac in here?

My story is similar. I have Quicken data going back to the early 1990s, and have tried to transition away from Quicken over the years but have never been able to find a truly better solution.

While "love" is way too strong a word, I think the situation with respect to Mac Quicken is better than it's been in a long time. They are regularly updating it and adding useful features (including M1 support already apparently - though I don't have any M1 hardware to test that). It's significantly less buggy than it used to be, and generally works. The subscription price is not totally unreasonable (I have "deluxe").

 

[wco81]

I think I'm going to have to succumb.

Either Quicken or Bankivity subscription.

Has Bankivity 8 performance improved?

Looks like you have to get Silver to get stock prices so that's $70 a year.

Quicken Deluxe also does stock prices for $51.99 normally.

There are some no name personal finance applications in the Mac App Store but they all seem to have In-App purchases so they may have subscriptions as well. But none of them say anything about investment portfolios. Seems mostly oriented towards budgeting.

 

[FrankDCat]

I gave in and upgraded the old Quicken I had (bought, with no annual subscription cost) to the latest (annual sub cost), so I can upgrade the Mac OS to the modern versions. One of few programs I had to lose or upgrade to make the OS transition. Resented it at first, since I don't need more than very basic budgeting and transaction records, but now it's in the rear-view and not worth fretting about.

And it does regularly update, so it seems they are committed, at least for now, to having a viable product.

 

[wco81]

Good to hear but I don't know that frequent updates are necessarily a good thing as regressions are introduced. Newer versions of software often have performance regressions.

Honestly, they offer different features by subscription tiers, I don't need new features. Personal finance software is pretty mature by now.

Just give me access to institutions, either automatic login or let me import files to date accounts.

 

[FrankDCat]

Normally I would agree with you about frequent updates. But Quicken for years had grossly inadequate updates, and people speculated (mostly correctly) that it would be a dead-end product for Mac, so having a pulse (even if a little high) is better than pulseless.

 

[sdh]

I’m happy (mostly) with Banktivity 8. I was a long-time Quicken for Windows user, and after my switch to Mac about 15 years ago I still ran Quicken in either a VM, or most recently, Crossover for Mac. I switched to Banktivity in version 7 once the feature delta narrowed.

I was a Quicken for Mac beta tester and found it horribly lacking. Dumb design decisions like not mirroring expense categories between Windows & Mac meant that my conversion didn’t go smoothly. I probably could have stuck with it but eventually gave up and went back to my Quicken for Windows.

Banktivity still has some issues. It’s pricy, and unfortunately that probably won’t change as it is reliant on a host of third-party frameworks that are probably not cheap to maintain. So there definitely is a Mac tax there. The software quality has improved, initially I saw many lockups but those have been fixed, and the mobile sync works fairly reliably. Features that are missing like paycheck tracking have workarounds, and it imported years of Quicken files without issue. Every now and then I will have an issue syncing with a bank (lately investment banks like Fidelity and T. Rowe Price have become an issue) but it seems like there is a war on third-party app access lately from the bank side. This to me is the biggest question mark going forward, a major bank could decide that because of security issues they will not authorize syncing and severely limit the usefulness of the software. While not a failing of Banktivity per se, as a small player in the market, they may be caught in the middle without sufficient horsepower to solve the issue.

 

[wco81]

Has anyone gone the other way, imported Bankivity 6 or 7 files into Quicken?

 

[kenada]

I fell off the wagon for a while, but I’m back to using hledger. I briefly considered Banktivity, but it’s too expensive, and the problems I had with it before don’t look like they have been fixed or improved.

 

[timezon3]

I have over a decade of data in my current gnucash file (which was started on a linux box) and I can't forsee myself using anything else any time soon. It has some drawbacks - gtk on mac is kind of wonky sometimes, and import can probably be made to work, but I just don't bother. I don't mind, really, as it means I review everything as I put it in. But it's also extremely flexible in terms of accounting and reporting.

 

[wco81]

Can those text and open source programs import transactions?

Can they update stock prices?

 

[kenada]

Can those text and open source programs import transactions?

Can they update stock prices?

hledger has a pretty flexible CSV import syntax. There’s also ledger-autosync for importing OFX data. It supposedly supports OFX connections, but I just use it offline. For stock prices, I use hledger-stockquotes.

I make heavy use of ingest rules to automatically assign categories and tags, which my budget uses to move money and track spending. I import every few weeks and check for any manual overrides needed (typically for Amazon purchases), but usually it goes pretty quickly.

For example, all medical expenses on my credit card get an hsa: yes tag unless they’re for something I’ve manually identified as not eligible. My budget uses this to track what we still need to reimburse from our HSA. When those reimbursements are processed, they automatically reduce the value of the asset I use for tracking that.

The biggest hurdle is probably set up. It took some work and scripting to get everything working. The data my 401k provides is crap, so I have to use Python to parse the correct values out of the identifiers (because otherwise nothing would reconcile).

However, now that everything is set up, I can download the files from my accounts and ingest them immediately. I review the new transactions to make sure everything imported correctly. If it’s not, I tweak my ingest config and repeat until everything looks good. I then commit my changes to gut and push the repo to Keybase.

 

[timezon3]

Can those text and open source programs import transactions?

Can they update stock prices?

I haven't tried it, but gnucash supports connecting to bank accounts via OFX Direct Connect. As with everything that's reverse engineered from proprietary protocols, setup looks somewhat complicated. I'm not sure what the UI looks like when you download; presumably there's still stuff to do manually, like assign transactions to the correct expense account.

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings

It used to be really easy to set up gnucash for online stock quotes (check the box to get online quotes, and set the source to yahoo), but yahoo blocked it some time ago, and now it's more complicated.

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Online_Quotes

gnucash is great if you understand double entry accounting and want to actually see it that way. Quicken / quickbooks is double entry accounting, but they do their best to hide it from the user, which I find more irritating than just making it visible.

 

[wco81]

Has anyone converted from Bankivity to Quicken?

Says Quicken can import a QIF file.

Will that import not just transactions but your accounts and logins and downloads?

 

[FrankDCat]

Does anyone use Quicken to track 401k account? If yes, is it worthwhile to set it up to automatically download transactions from the financial institution (e.g. Fidelity)?

I generally like to input my transactions manually, but this is harder to do when 401k accounts don't regularly send you statements with transactions listed, unlike non-401k personal investment accounts which do.

 

[NucleatedRed]

Does anyone use Quicken to track 401k account? If yes, is it worthwhile to set it up to automatically download transactions from the financial institution (e.g. Fidelity)?

I generally like to input my transactions manually, but this is harder to do when 401k accounts don't regularly send you statements with transactions listed, unlike non-401k personal investment accounts which do.

This is what I do. I connect to TIAA and Northwestern (NMIS) to download transactions, and it works well. I have to tweak a few things now and then (e.g., it may classify a transaction incorrectly, like dividend instead of long-term capital gain). So, it still requires some oversight, but I prefer it this way.

 

[Kestrel]

Has anyone converted from Bankivity to Quicken?

Says Quicken can import a QIF file.

Will that import not just transactions but your accounts and logins and downloads?

I did it the other way around so take this with a grain of salt. I don't believe that file includes any of the credentials, just the transaction data.

 

[Kestrel]

Does anyone use Quicken to track 401k account? If yes, is it worthwhile to set it up to automatically download transactions from the financial institution (e.g. Fidelity)?

I generally like to input my transactions manually, but this is harder to do when 401k accounts don't regularly send you statements with transactions listed, unlike non-401k personal investment accounts which do.

This is what I do. I connect to TIAA and Northwestern (NMIS) to download transactions, and it works well. I have to tweak a few things now and then (e.g., it may classify a transaction incorrectly, like dividend instead of long-term capital gain). So, it still requires some oversight, but I prefer it this way.

Same. Fidelity definitely passes it over strangely such that I have to do a lot of manual adjustments. Specifically, it does not import my company match, so I just created a manual deposit that I duplicate every two weeks. It also sometimes will record a dividend but not indicate the security, so I will not actually see the # of shares increment properly and it will understate my balance, so I have to go in and manually tell it which fund the dividends were for.

In total, it's annoying enough that I'm second-guessing whether I really need the ledger aspect of it with the detailed recording of all transactions. I might be better served (and my wallet slightly fatter) if I just manually logged into each account each month and updated all my accounts' ending balances in a spreadsheet.

 

[wco81]

Has anyone converted from Bankivity to Quicken?

Says Quicken can import a QIF file.

Will that import not just transactions but your accounts and logins and downloads?

I did it the other way around so take this with a grain of salt. I don't believe that file includes any of the credentials, just the transaction data.

Well I converted a couple of weeks ago.

Not really that impressed with the results.

I can work around it but for investment tracking purposes, it's not the best.

Probably being penny-wise, pound-foolish but I chose 1-year of Quicken because of the low annual subscription of $31 and change for the Quicken Deluxe vs. $55 or so for the tier of Bankiviity which includes stock price updates.

 

[FrankDCat]

Sounds like if I am going to have to log into my 401k account to verify/correct transactions anyway maybe I should just avoid the aggravation and keep the 401k out of the Quicken. Probably keep me from agitating and doing a bunch of market mistiming.

 

[NucleatedRed]

To me, the main benefit of including the 401(k)--and all your accounts--is in tracking net worth over time. I tinker and adjust my investment ledgers (after downloading) so I can get a comprehensive integration of "everything" in one package. You have to decide if that is worth the effort for you.

I don't like the limited net worth over time graph in QMac, but that's another gripe.

 

[Kestrel]

That's my main use case as well, and I'm just starting to question whether it's worth $70/year for that when it's one spreadsheet with a column for each account and a row for each month, that I could update in ten minutes per month. Mathematically, yes, my time is worth more than that, but it feels dirty to pay for something that doesn't work the way it should and for which I only use one of its many features.

 

[curih]

I also auto-download retirement accounts from Fidelity to Quicken for both myself and my wife. Works fine and generally everything loads correctly. The main issue I have is one account is actually a 401k and a Roth 401k and Fidelity won't break them out separately, so they show up as one account in Quicken. They're both tax advantaged, so it's not a big deal and doesn't screw up capital gains reports or anything. In the past I've seen a couple issues when a ticker symbol changed and the way the exchange from the old fund to new one was reported caused something to show up twice. But that was extremely rare.

The one that's annoying me is almost no one supports downloading transactions from a 529. So they're missing from the overall view in Quicken.

 

[NucleatedRed]

The one that's annoying me is almost no one supports downloading transactions from a 529. So they're missing from the overall view in Quicken.

Oh, yes. That's another annoyance of note. I have nearly ten years of transactions I have entered manually in my 529 account ledgers in Quicken.

 

[Kestrel]

The one that's annoying me is almost no one supports downloading transactions from a 529. So they're missing from the overall view in Quicken.

Oh, yes. That's another annoyance of note. I have nearly ten years of transactions I have entered manually in my 529 account ledgers in Quicken.

Argh, I thought it was just me and my state's plan. Like, it's a Vanguard fund, why doesn't it have a ticker symbol that Banktivity can recognize? And even more strange, it actually did work, eventually. Both I and my in-laws have 529s for the kids, and on a whim, I tried setting up importing the ones that I own, and it worked. I went back and manually changed the "symbol" on the in-laws account to match the ones in my account (they're the same securities) and now theirs will at least automatically pick up price changes, though I still have to manually enter the transactions.

 

[Jade]

I use Banktivity daily on an iPad, but occasionally have to go to the Mac version for something like reports. When I do, I also check Banktivity's developer blog, and was pleasantly surprised today.

Winter 2022 Update

Last year marked our first full year since we moved to subscription in late 2020. In 2022 we released 20 updates to Banktivity which included over 160 new features and bug fixes. You can see all of the details of our releases.

This is why I've chosen Banktivity over Quicken. While Quicken developers are engaged now, for years it was abandonware. That doesn't mean it will happen again, but Banktivity has been continuously developed since its inception.

Roadmap for 2022 includes but is not limited to:

• Reports for iOS—Yay!
• Document pruning—Yay again!
• UI scaling on Mac

If you don't need or want the best experience across Apple devices, I guess Quicken would do for Mac only, though I'd run the Windows version in a VM. However, Banktivity is the best all-around finance software for the Apple ecosystem, IMO.

 

[KDogg]

I recently started messing around with the MacOS version of Quicken. I have used the Windows version in a virtual machine for more than a decade I think holding over from my primarily Windows using years long ago, but it seems that Apple Silicon is going to force me to give that up. The disparity between Windows Quicken and MacOS Quicken is .... so big. I guess I need to read into this whole thread to try and find out what's worth using. Heavy sigh.

 

[Hap]

I recently started messing around with the MacOS version of Quicken. I have used the Windows version in a virtual machine for more than a decade I think holding over from my primarily Windows using years long ago, but it seems that Apple Silicon is going to force me to give that up. The disparity between Windows Quicken and MacOS Quicken is .... so big. I guess I need to read into this whole thread to try and find out what's worth using. Heavy sigh.

Not Quicken.

I use Banktivity and a roll your own database. Eventually, I will probably move fully over to my database as I had reconcile functionality (I don't have sophisticated investment needs - that's all handled outside my financial apps). I hate Banktivity's subcription model, functionality is fine. I just need that download/reconcile functionality until I get it incorporated into my own database (through csv downloads). Basically depends on my laziness in getting it implemented. I'm heads down into some cool functionality with an inventory database that I find more fun....

 

[Exordium01]

Is there a way to get Banktivity to use merchant tags to categorize transactions automatically or do they expect you to manually categorize each transaction? I mostly use Copilot currently, but the lack of Mac/iPad apps is frustrating and they don’t really do investment tracking.

 

[Kestrel]

Is there a way to get Banktivity to use merchant tags to categorize transactions automatically or do they expect you to manually categorize each transaction? I mostly use Copilot currently, but the lack of Mac/iPad apps is frustrating and they don’t really do investment tracking.

Try going to Settings > Payees, Schedules, and Rules. I haven't checked this recently but I remember in the past there were certain investment transactions that it couldn't automatically categorize, but your run of the mill credit card charges should all be able to be defined.

 

[marklaroy]

Has anyone had any personal experience opening a QDF file from Quicken for Windows in Quicken for Mac? Did it convert all the data successfully?

 

[wco81]

Coming up on the end of my first year with Quicken.

I got it last year because for the first year, it cost under $32. Meanwhile, Bankivity wanted something like $70-80 and it didn't download all my accounts.

So got a notification that my account would renew on the anniversary at a rate of $60 for Quicken Deluxe.

Looked around for coupons and found that people were able to buy the CD version at a discounted rate and use the code to renew their account.

So Costco was selling it for $40, ordered the CD and got it in two days. Just entered the code from the CD in the application (Help menu, Enter activation code).

Now my auto renewal won't be until early 2024.

Combined, the $71-72 I spent for two years of Quicken Deluxe is still less than 1 year of Bankivity.