Customer Reviews

Moneydance

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I was pushed into Quicken when I escaped from the PC world into Mac land. I had used Money and liked it -- it was fairly simple to use and did everything I wanted it to do. The only downside is that it was from Microsoft, which is not my favorite company.

Quicken was awful. It crashed all the time, support was extremely slow (as it is only through IM), and I just didn't like the interface. I looked into three options: Liquid Ledger, iBank and Moneydance. After reading all I could I bought iBank and spent three days setting up my accounts and trying to figure it out.

iBank was a huge improvement over Quicken, but there was no tech support, I had troubles printing my accounts (unless I reduced the columns so that I could fit it only a page, but then I couldn't read what was in those columns!) and it just wasn't intuitive enough for me.

I am probably in the intermediate range of computer users, and I feel certain that someone with more experience than myself would find iBank just fine.

Since it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do (or rather, since I couldn't make it do what I wanted it to do) I decided to buy Moneydance and see if it was better. I think it is an oustanding program -- very easy to set up and use. I was able to set up all my accounts in a morning, where in iBank I was still working on the fundamentals at that point in time. In addition, I have been able to easily configure it how I want it to look.

I still have more to learn about Moneydance. The documentation is a bit less than I'd like, but they are working on more lengthy explanations which hopefully will be out shortly. Even with their overly short instructions I have found no roadblocks. I would give it five stars if there were more and better instructions. Like I said, though, that appears to be arriving shortly.

Another benefit is their chat forums where you can leave questions or, as i have done, search for earlier questions about the same issues. It's a great resource and provides access to the company itself and the programmers seem to be the ones monitoring some of the forums.

I really like this product very much. I found it fairly simple to set up (as simple as I would hoped it would be, anyway) and easy to use. It is, to me, a great alternative to Quicken and I'd look into it as an alternative to iBank as well.

Moneydance, the newest kid on the block of the personal financial software world. Most people probably don't even know about it yet, but this product is the new way to manage your finances on your computer. Being an unsatisfied Quicken user I decided that it was time to look for something else. After some searching, and wading through a host of unsuitable programs, I came across Appgen Moneydance. The site said that I could download a beta version for free, so I tried it. I was able to import my accounts from Quicken into Moneydance without a problem, and learning the rest of the interface took me all of an hour. I found the interface to be crisp, clean, and very simple to navigate. Setting up an account was very simple, and as I began to use Moneydance, I discovered that it uses double entry accounting, thereby forcing the user to account for the deposits and withdrawals in both their originating and destination accounts. I really appreciated this feature, because it enabled me to track all of my income and expenditures.

The graphing and reporting capabilities of the software were better than I expected. Theses features allowed me to keep a really tight grip on all of my accounts, by showing me the activity in a detailed, broken down format.

The stock portfolio manager was just fine for me. I am not a heavy stock market player, and I found the tools provided to be more than adequate. The only tricky part I found was that I had to create a portfolio account before could enter securities, however, when I tried it, the same thing happened in Quicken.

The feature that struck me as being the most powerful is the ability of Moneydance to run on any platform. This allowed me to work on my account on my PC, and take my saved file over to a friend's Mac and work on it through Moneydance on a Mac. This is an overwhelmingly powerful feature, because I am not limited to the type of O/S that I want to use, I can always keep my program and data.

Overall, I was so satisfied with Moneydance I am going to use it to do all of my finances. I will never go back to Quicken or use any other finance manager. I would give Moneydance five stars and highly recommend it to anyone who asked me.

I've been using this program for about a year and a half now on my Linux machine, and have been quite pleased with it the entire time. I use it to keep track of my budget and checking accounts, and it's a real breeze to use. I can't comment on the portfolio tracking features as I haven't used them much yet.

The author of the program is quite approachable, and I've written to him on a couple of occasions when I've wanted features that the program didn't have yet or had problems with my beta copies. He's often very responsive, and has been known to incorporate customer suggestions into the product within a day or two. It's a great human touch that you won't find from Intuit or Microsoft.

The program is written in Java, meaning that it will run on just about any platform. This can be a real lifesaver, because it means if you ever want to use another operating system, not only can your data files move with you, but so can the application. No need to buy one copy for Windows, one for Mac, one for... I've run it on Linux/x86, Linux/PPC, and MacOS without a glitch.

On the downside to using Java, the program will seem slow to some. For the record, I used to run it on a Pentium 75 machine and I wasn't complaining much. The later versions show some noticable speed improvements over previous ones. It's still more than fast enough to keep up with my typing, but don't expect it to feel as responsive as other "native" applications.

In short, I'm a long-time satisfied customer of Moneydance. Anyone looking for a solid personal finance package need look no further.

First, let me warn Amazon readers to pay no attention to reviews written before 2005. MD has grown up now and is both fully supported and reliable. It supports online operation with many banks and credit card companies, including full interoperability between its Mac version and Bank of America, something that Quicken cannot boast. Sure, it's not as feature-rich as Quicken, but then its not as confusing and buggy either. The interface isn't as pretty either, but transaction entry is very fast and autofill of transactions actually works better. There's lots of flexibility to manage investment accounts and keep track of stock prices etc. And, it really is a cross-platform app, not different products with a common brand name (e.g. Quicken)

Most importantly, it's rock solid. It just never crashes. It backs up its data file extensively and in as many previous versions as you like as well, so if you lose data with this app, you probably lost your house to a fire too.

This software is excellent for anyone who wants straightforwared functionality and full control without all the annoying "features" that now plague Money and Quicken. I stopped using Quicken due to its abundant use of "tools" which actually take away control from the user in addition to having bugs--a bad combination. (For example, one day the account statement reconsile tool told me that my account was not balanced by $0.00 and would not allow me to proceed until I fixed this discrepancy. I think I can decide for myself, thank you.) I actually had less trouble importing QIF files into Moneydance than into Quicken. Don't take my word for it--download a free trial version and see for yourself.

This programs is easy to work with, is pretty easy to learn and is super reliable. As a recovering Quicken user, it did take some getting used to and a little bit of fiddling, but I moved right through the steps to a full recovery.

Quicken, with its forced upgrades, annoying banners, product orphaning, and buggy "features," had just become unbearable to me. Moneydance is definitely the way to go.

One thing I noticed right off is that the online banking reconcilliation features are much simpler to use. The program seems pretty smart about matching transactions from my bank with those in my journal, even when the names or amounts are somewhat different. I use a pretty small bank and I was concerned that the online banking wouldn't work, but it did. It is also nice that Moneydance doesn't take the online opportunity to "phone home," like Quicken does, so that it can download new ads for crummy, expensive services.

To sum up, this is good software. Download the free trial and see for yourself. You won't be disappointed

After years of using an end-of-life proprietary product from my bank, I finally had to breakdown and move from it due to it's lack of interoperability with XP Service Pack 2. I had delayed doing this for years because of the negative reviews I had seen for Quicken, especially all of the embedded adware. I didn't trust Intuit (or Microsoft either) that a hidden online access point wouldn't be putting my valuable personal financial data at risk in order to promote it's online banking features.

I searched Amazon, and found this product and the reviews, although they were a few years old. (...)

If all you want is a reliable banking application with online bank access and NO ADWARE, this software is absolutely for you. The online component is not included by default, so no worries about the software taking you to a proprietary online banking site like quicken's or microsoft's. However, they make it VERY easy to add-on online banking features and support both .qif and Quicken's new .qdf formats.

All of my data transferred over (my old software was able to export to .qif), although I did have to spend a little time re-organizing things. Whether that is a quirk of Moneydance, or the legacy software I was transfering from, I don't know.

The software has support for investment accounts, although I've never tracked mine using my banking software, so I haven't tried it.

Another big plus for the software is that it is Java based, and will install on any Java-enabled platform. No more being locked into Windows.

First the sad Quicken saga:

Even before Quicken Personal Finances 2007 for Mac ("Quicken 2007"), Intuit was milking the Mac cow for profits with virtually no upgrade in features over the previous several versions. It was powerful and handy -- a 5-star product but for its stability and obsolesence issues. It will no longer run under the next OS version, Mac OS 10.7 ("Lion"), to be released in mid-2011. It was the last full-featured version of Quicken for the Mac. It had most of the features of the Windows version -- call it Quicken "classic". Quicken 2007 became dangerously unstable in my experience. I had relied on successive versions of Quicken "classic" from 1992 to 2011. In the last several years, it would crash or hang, corrupting my data. I had to track securities cost data using old statements and spreadsheets.

Quicken Essentials for Mac was first released in 2010 -- all new code, slowly built from the ground up for the Intel processors Apple introduced in 2006 (Rosetta not required). Very limited feature set -- promising if you wait 1 to 3 more years. Intuit is very slowly releasing expanded versions (as free upgrades). As of late 2010, it's totally inadequate for securities owners (example: doesn't track cost basis by lots). Quicken Essentials lacks many other important features found in Moneydance, other Quickens and other financial software.


I switched to Moneydance last month and I'm very pleased:
* Stable and well-supported by its developers.
* Tracks securities just fine.
* Importing 2 decades of Quicken data worked well and quickly (follow their simple instructions exactly).
** Some inter-account transfers needed correction afterwards; this was straightforward.
** My corrupted Quicken securities data was automagically healed after importing.

The interface is a little different from Quicken Classic -- better in some ways, not as good in others.

As of late 2010, other Quicken competitors such as iBank 4 just didn't match Moneydance in my evaluation. iBank seems the most popular alternative but its developer has been heavily criticized for inadequate support.

I have been using Moneydance for over two years now. Moneydance 2007 just came out and my key was still good for a free upgrade - that's right, my version is current over two years after I purchased it for only $30. Next year I will probably have to shell out $15 for an upgrade and I will do it gladly. The entire time I have had Moneydance, it has worked without a hitch. I use it in Linux, but if in the future I decide to change to Windows, Mac, or some platform that hasn't been invented yet (as long as that platform gets java support) I can take my financial records with me. Amazon shows this product as discontinued by the manufacturer. This is not true. Give them a Google and you'll find them. I just downloaded the latest version today (Jan 29 2007). You can download a free trial that will take 100 transactions and let you play with all of the features before you buy. You owe it to yourselves to at least do that. I am not a representative of Reilly Technologies, nor am I compensated for this in any way (ie I'm not a shill). I am just a very happy customer.

Short personal history: I'm an old Microsoft Money fan (as in fanatic). Yeah, it had some issues but I knew how to live with them and it did absolutely everything I ever asked it to do. Usually with a certain amount of style. And then Microsoft, for reasons I STILL cannot comprehend, axed the product. Did they have to do it so thoroughly? Why upset a large and reasonably happy customer base by turning off something that gave them a steady (but admittedly declining) revenue stream?

I looked at Moneydance among other products but eventually decided on Quicken. BIG mistake!!! Read my review of Quicken 2011 for more details. Short version: I was back in the hunt for a financial software to help me manage my middling complex financial life.

In the meantime Moneydance issued their 2011 version which answered some of my issues. Furthermore, one of the few advantages of my frustrating experience with Quicken was that I'd learned all sorts of new ways to handle transactions (and that piece of &*%^ software, Quicken still wanted me to bend over further for them just to handle the basics) which stood me in good stead when converting to Moneydance.

It took a few weeks to get used to the user interface (which is much better and more sophisticated than it looks at first glance) but I'm happily falling in love with this product. It would be nice if somebody wrote a "Dummy's Guide to Moneydance" to explain how to get some of the more advanced features to work more easily but all the basics and a surprisingly large number of the advanced features are there, just waiting for you.

There's quite a few "best things" about this software, here's a list in no particular order:
1. Portability, it will run with equal ease on Microsoft, Mac, and Linux machines
2. No sunset provision, if the vendor closed shop tomorrow the software would still run
3. When you convert your file from Quicken to Moneydance you can fix all sorts of little nagging things about your accounts that didn't quite make sense and couldn't be fixed in Quicken
4. The user community is vibrant and the vendor responds to them with new features in each new version
5. The reports are basic but have some customization, memorization, and full drill-down capabilities
6. If you've got the time and the knowledge, you can write your own extensions to the application. If your extensions are good enough, Moneydance will make them available to their entire customer base
7. It is stable and runs surprisingly quickly on my old PC, better than both Microsoft Money and Quicken

I still miss a few things from Microsoft Money but this product is a worthy successor and may someday exceed it.