The Un-Quicken Checklist

I was annoyed that I still used Quicken. (Intuit has a poor track record for Mac support, a bad reputation for customer support in general that just bit my husband using QuickBooks for his small business, and charges a lot for annual program updates that don't add a lot.) So I made a list of all the financial programs I could find that didn't look like abandonware that would run on my Mac that cost less than $50. Because, let's get real, Quicken was working for me so there's no point to spending more than a Quicken upgrade.

I keep checking for an update from Musings from Mars on Alternative Personal Finance Apps for Mac OS X but none so far. I also don't care about some of his requirements, so we might go different directions. In fact, other than data entry, mainly what I do with Quicken is reconcile what I've entered against my monthly statements.

As it turns out, there are at least four approaches to reconciliation (not counting "don't do it" as an approach since I'm not willing to use that approach). You can have the Quicken-style two-level (cleared and reconciled) reconcile process, a single-level (reconciled only) process with a running total, cleared and reconciled checkboxes but no reconcile screens or process, or just a reconciled checkbox (hopefully with a running total!).

1. 2-stage process: MoneyWell, Moneydance, iBank, Jumsoft Money
2. 1-stage process: Cashbox, Economix, CheckBook, Accounts
3. C/R: SpendThrift, Buddi, Registry
4. R: iCompta, mini$, iFinance, Personal Finance, Fortora Fresh Finance, Budget, iCash, Cha-Ching

Balancing application price (extra points for free) with how well I liked it in testing, I came up with this short list that support enough reconcile for me:

1. Cashbox
2. SpendThrift
3. Buddi
4. Economix
5. Moneydance
6. iBank

Then I made a list of the features I use in Quicken:

• runs on my OS X 10.4 Mac, prefer Aqua and Cocoa to Java, prefer to avoid X11
• prefer document-based (I like knowing which file to backup)
• different accounts in one file
• most important: a "reconcile" process that makes it easy to check against my statement (like Quicken)
• important: proper double entry to transfer between accounts (doesn't require *me* entering the transaction twice)
• QIF import (to get me out of Quicken-land; tested with a QIF file downloaded from my credit union) would help
• export (no Intuit-style data format lock-in!)
• prefer bill scheduling, but I could use iCal instead
• applications that over $50 or that haven't been updated since 2005 (3 years) not considered; last update in 2006 only considered if it's popular or free

Putting those short-listed applications through their paces:

1. Cashbox 0.50 ($0) reconcile process just shows final balance, not starting balance (maybe I really want a two-level reconcile like Quicken?), weak I/O
2. Spendthrift 3.0 1031c ($0) the bad news: reconcile is just a checkbox, and you don't get a reconciled total. Other than that, it's a nice Aqua, Spotlight integration (mentioned not tested), QIF import works very well, multiple accounts, and bill schedule.
3. Buddi 3.0.0.5 ($0) good news: check boxes for cleared and for reconcile; bad news: utterly no reconcile process (although you can look at cleared and reconciled totals, so if you're never off, it's ok), Java not Aqua
4. Economix 2.6.1 ($0) reconcile is a checkbox (but it will total just the checked items so you can check with bank ... but no process with start and end balance to catch errors per-month)
5. Moneydance 2007R5 ($30) (4 stars in 31 reviews) Hey this works!!! It didn't let me set the starting balance in testing, but it did have it as a box to fill in, so I'm hopeful ... also has two-stage (cleared and reconciled) that I prefer; also Java not Aqua but reasonable fake
6. iBank 2.3.11 ($50) (4 stars in 62 reviews) has the right sort of reconcile and bill scheduling, and I like having Automator actions, but it's the top end of my price range (although to a local company that has gotten good support reviews).

The not-entering-twice for transfer between accounts turned out to be a real kicker; it kicked out SpendThrift, MoneyDance (ideal reconcile, QIF import works), and iBank. The QIF import was the next challenge; Economix couldn't do it, and Cashbox required "massaging" the QIF before import (changing the line endings and I can't remember if I had to change the date format). Cashbox also lacked export, although its plist format wasn't opaque.

So the really short list to take on Quicken is Buddi (but it's Java) and Cashbox (no export, no scheduling).

I really wanted to pick an Aqua application; I was trying to avoid Java. But I couldn't miss that Buddi met my actual needs with double entry, import, and export. That's the heartless thing about a feature checklist, especially when I make the checklist before I start evaluating: it doesn't always pick the prettiest one. So here's to Buddi! Let's see how I like now that I'm going to start using it ...