Personal Finance Software Reviews

Buxfer is another web 2.o finance application to join the likes of Mint, Wesabe, Quicken Online, and more.  Truth be told, however, Buxfer has actually been around for quite a while.  It seems to just now be getting more attention and probably for good reason.

While not a ’shiny’ as Mint, with some good functionality and even some new features, Buxfer has some real potential.  Does it have what it takes to give Mint the boot?  Read on to find out.

*Note: Since this review was written the founders of Buxfer has stopped supporting it and have both started working at Facebook. It looks like the service is still available to use, but some are saying that the site isn’t as stable as it once was. I imagine it will only be a matter of time till it’s shut down completely.

A Brief Buxfer History

One thing that I like about Buxfer is that it was created by (and appears to still be run by) a pretty small team.  One of the co-founders, Ashwin Bharambe created Buxfer (apparently a mix between the words ‘bucks’ and ‘transfer’) to better track the large amount of “IOU’s” floating around while he was in college at Carnegie Mellon.

Shortly thereafter he teamed up with Shashank Pandit and they launched the Buxfer website in December, 2006.  Since then they’ve received some funding from Y Combinator as well as a few angel investors.

Getting Started with Buxfer

After clicking the “Sign Up for Free” button on the main Buxfer site, you simply enter your email address and desired password.  You will need to verify your email within 24 hours, but they allow you to continue without verifying right then (thankfully since a day later I still have received the verification email from them).

You’re then presented a screen to choose a membership plan.  There three options:

Basic: Free

Plus: $1.79 / month

Pro: $2.79 / month

As you can see in the chart (click to enlarge), you get quite a bit of functionality with the free version.  The upgraded versions basically allow you more accounts, budgets, financial projections, etc.  You also get ‘Priority customer support.”  Only time will tell if this ‘Priority’ support will be needed.

*Update:  See ‘The Need to Upgrade’ near the end of this review.

I chose the basic membership.

Setup Your Accounts

After logging in you’re asked if you want to have your transactions automatically sychronized or manually enter them.  You’ll see in the screenshot that to the side of ‘Manual Entry’ they show that you have the option of  the IOU tracking.  I’m not sure yet if that means that you must choose to manually enter your transactions in order to have that functionality or not.  I surely hope not.

I personally believe that manually entering in your transactions helps with money management, but being that I thought most people would choose to have their transactions synchronized automatically, I too chose that option.

You simply find your bank, enter your online login info, and you’re off.  After picking which account you want used, it downloads the transactions.

Set Budgets

Buxfer then takes you back to the account setup screen and has you enter in some budget limits on your spending.  As you can see in the screenshot, Buxfer aparently categorized some of my transactions wrong because I certainly spent more than $43.24 on food last month. This is, however, to be expected until you go in and re-categorize the transactions.  The way some of those transactions appear, you can’t expect these software programs to be perfect.

Schedule Bills

I put in a scheduled bill for rent for next month.  I’m not sure if it makes this a recurring bill or not.  Apparently by entering a bill, I will get an email reminder about it.

When I hit submit, I got this error message.  Fyi, you can only put dates in the following format: 25 Jun 2009.  Not very user friendly in my opinion.  Also when I hit close, it exited out of the account setup rather than putting me back where I could fix the date.

A small bug for sure, but something that hopefully will be fixed in the future.    (For those that made the same mistake, you can get back into the account setup by clicking ‘More’ then “Account Setup’ on the main Buxfer screen.

Setup Mobile

Buxfer offers a number of different mobile solutions to help you keep up on your finances on the go.  You can use your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device that has internet or have it communicate via text messages or via mobile email.  In order to work it via texts, you have to set it up with Twitter.  Being that I don’t have a phone with internet capabilities, nor a Twitter account (I know, I need to get with the times), I skipped this setup section.

I will say, however, that I like that Buxfers offers this many ways to communicate with Buxfer through mobile means.

Apps & Widgets

Buxfer also offers apps and widgets for Facebook, iGoogle, and Netvibes.  Nice.  Can I also put in a quick plug for a future Mac widget? 

Buxfer’s Interface

The Buxfer interface has a very clean, functional look.  Dare I say it reminds me of Gmail a bit (a good thing)?

At the top-left you have your accounts, tags, contacts, and groups.  Here you can add or change settings to these items.

The upper-middle portion of the interface offers different tabs for Summary, Add Transactions, Budgets, Reports, and More.  I’ll go through each one individually to give you an idea of what kind of functionality Buxfer has to offer.

Buxfer’s Accounts

I started with the Accounts screens (what you may consider the Transactions screen) because I needed to first re-categorize (or tag) the transactions that had been downloaded in order to better take advantage of the rest of the features.

The transactions section is pretty straight forward with standard Description, Amount, Balance, Tags, Account, and Date data points.  You can also sort the list by amount or date.  I also like that you can set the number of transactions that show up on the page to 10, 25, or 50.

I noticed that by default it downloaded around 230 transactions (going back about 3 months) from my bank by default.  First of all I wish I could have told it how many transactions or how far back in time to download.  This wouldn’t be that big of deal, however, if I could easily delete the end transactions that I don’t want to have to go through and categorize.    Unfortunately, the only way for me to get to the end of the list (that I can see) is to click the button repeatedly until I get to the end.  A “Go to Page X” option would be nice.

Once I whittled down my transactions list to a manageable 120 transactions, now was the task of re-tagging the transactions to make them actually mean something.

Adding (Custom) Tags

I went to the Tag area (top left, click on the tag icon) to add some custom tags (what you could also call a category) in order to make my budget mine.  Click on the symbol to open the Add Tags window.  Click the again to add a tag.  You can add a sub tag or a parent tag from here.  Relatively straight forward.

Editing Transactions

I went to town re-tagging the transactions.  To be frank I found the process a little more time consuming that I’d like.  It’s not that it’s super slow or that it’s difficult to do.  In fact, all you have to do is click on the “(no tags)” letters, a box pops up and you enter the tag.

As you type, it autofills with the tags you have set up for suggestions.  Very simple.  But it’s just not quite as responsive as I’d like (there’s a half a second delay between clicks).  This may not be a big deal for many of you, I just noticed it more since I was trying to re-tag a boatload of transactions.

I’ll say this much, it was enough for me to delete all of May’s transactions (rather than tag them) and only do June’s just because it took too long.

I do like, however, that you can set a tagging rule so that future similar transactions always are tagged as they’re downloaded.

Renaming Transactions

I also like that you can rename transactions and set rules so that similar transactions in the future will be renamed according to the rules.  See the screenshots for this process.

*Some transactions show up with the date as part of it.  I’m not sure how hard and fast the renaming feature will require the description to be.

General Editing

You can also edit the transaction in a number of different way by click on the description.  Other options include Mark as Transfer, Mark as Refund, Copy, Repeat, Split/Itemize, Attach a Note or File, and Delete.  You can also save/export in a number of file formats by clicking the button at the top right.

Buxfer’s Sychronizing

I feel that I wouldn’t be doing it justice if I didn’t cover, at least for a second, the method that Buxfer uses to synchronize your transactions.

As you can see, near the Synchronize button, it states, “Authentication information is stored offline on your computer.”  From what I’ve read, Buxfer uses the Google Gear’s technology to store your account authentication information on your own computer.  This way, it is more secure and you don’t have to “trust” Buxfer to hold and secure your account information.

There are some who don’t have any problem with services like Mint that hold your account info on their servers.  There are some that do.  For those that get a little nervous of the idea, Buxfer may be a better match for you.

Buxfer also offers two other options.  You can choose to have them sync transactions at night, in which case they will store your account info on their servers.  Or you can use a Firefox plug (Firebux) to do the syncing.

Buxfer’s Summary Tab

Buxfer’s main hub and the area where you’ll land when you first open the site is the Summary tab.  The Summary basically consists of an area showing a budget graph, another area showing your upcoming bills, and one showing an expense pie chart.  Below this top section is a listing of your latest transactions.

You can click the title of each section to be taken to its respective tab.

In the Budget area you can click on each Tag to be taken to that tag’s budget area that shows a spending graph and a list of those transactions.

In the Upcoming Bills area you can click on the title to see a calendar detailing all upcoming bills and to add Reminders.  Or you can click on the bill to edit it’s settings.

In the Monthly Expenses area you can click on the graph to be taken to the Reports area (more on that later).

Buxfer’s Add Transactions

If you choose to manually add transactions, Buxfer allows you to do so in the Add Transaction tab.  This opens a single transaction screen where you can add the details of one transaction at a time.

By click the button you get a screen allowing you add multiple transactions at once.  You can tab through the fields adding virtually all the info without touching your mouse.  This proves to be much faster if you have more than one transaction to add.

In addition, you have the ability to import transactions via a bank export files.  It appears that the following formats are accepted:  .qif, .qfx, .ofx, and .csv.

Buxfer’s Budget

The section that I view as one of the most important sections of any personal finance software is the budgeting area.  I place such importance on the budget because that’s usually the area that has the greatest effect on the spending and saving habits of the users.

So how does Buxfer’s budget stand up to the competition?  Well it depends on who you want to call the competition.  If you compare it to some of the highly effective envelope budgeting systems on the market, Buxfer doesn’t look so hot.  But if you compare it to other similar services (with similar budgeting functionality) like Mint, Quicken Online, iBank, and others, Buxfer is just as good, if not a little better.

Here’s a screenshot of the main budgeting page:

To the left you have the often-seen bar graph that ‘fills up’ as you spend throughout the month.  There is a line that indicated the date so you can see how well you’re doing at that given point in time.  To the right of the graph you have the current balance of the budget in each category (how much you have left to spend), your set limit, a rollover amount, and how much you’ve spent.

To the far right you can delete a budget for a category or pause it.  When I tried to pause one, however, it looks like it simply deleted it. Maybe they’re still working on that one.

The Rollover Budget Option

The reason that I like Buxfer’s budget better than some others is because Buxfer has the Rollover feature.

It looks as though they’re trying to take a page from the envelope budgeting methodology and include a feature that “rolls over” your budget balances from the previous month.

For example, if I have a monthly budget for Entertainment of $30 and I only spend $15 in May on Entertainment, then the following month I will have $45 to spend.  Likewise, if I have a $30 budget for Personal Care, but I spent $50 in May, then in June I only have $10 that I can spend (because a negative $20 was rolled over from last month).  See the screenshots for how this would look in Buxfer.

This feature has an envelope taste to it, and I like it.  It makes you more responsible for your spending, helps you to plan better, and allows you to build up amounts in anticipation of a large, future expense.  (Although it doesn’t do it near as well as YNAB does, I like that they are trying to implement the same ideas).

Unfortunately, however, Buxfer doesn’t facilitate nor encourage creating a zero-based budget (where you budget for every single dollar you earn).  This is a much more effective way to plan your spending and savings.

Dig Deeper

By clicking on each of the individual Tags in your budget you can dig deeper.  It opens up a Tags tab which shows you all of the transactions as well as a graph showing your expenses for that particular Tag.

Buxfer’s Reports

The Reports section of Buxfer consists of three different reports: An Income pie chart, an Expense pie char, and a Balance line graph.  By clicking on each section, you are shown only that graph and the transactions that pertain to the graph below.

As expected, you can click on sections (Tags) of the two pie charts (income and expenses) to drill down and see what expenses and transactions make up that section of the pie.  Pretty standard.

The Balance graph shows what your balance (the amount of money you have) has been on any given day.  Some may find it interesting to watch their balance go up and down with paychecks and expenses, but I didn’t see much use of it.

Track IOU’s with Friends

Buxfer has a pretty neat feature that some (especially that college aged) may find quite handy.  You can track what is owed to you, and what you owe others, through the Buxfer system.  It appears as though you need to invite friends in order to get them in the system to begin tracking the IOUs.

You can also receive a $1 credit towards membership upgrades for every friend that you refer.

Being that I don’t currently have any friends in the system, I’m unable to test this feature right now.  If anyone wants to become my friend, please let me know.

The Need to Upgrade

While I was setting up my budget in Buxfer I came across this error message:

I was on my 5th or 6th Tag on my budget when I got the prompt to upgrade.  I initially thought that I would be able to get away with quite a bit without having to upgrade, but this made me second guess.

I can certainly see Buxfer’s need to monetize their system.  And there will definitely be those who think that it’s worth the $1.79 or $2.79 per month.

I would have originally suggested that you just use the free version, but I believe that in order to have any kind of effective budget, you will need to budget WAY more than only 5 categories (ideally all of your spending would budgeted).  As such, I say if you’re going to seriously use Buxfer, you need to upgrade.

Is it worth the money?  Read the conclusion:

Buxfer Overall Conclusion

As a free tool, Buxfer is great.  It has nice functionality that goes a bit beyond other free solutions.  I like it’s budgeting function better than similarly designed systems, but it still pales in comparison to true envelope budgeting systems available.

I also like that Buxfer allows you to store your bank account information offline (on your computer) which seems a bit more secure than options like Mint.

If you’re going to use Buxfer as your main budgeting engine, than I highly suggest that you pay for the upgrades in order to actually make a budget that will have any kind of effect on your spending.  Looking from the standpoint that you’re paying for it (although it’s certianly not a lot), I don’t know that it’s worth it.   You can find much better solutions (that use true envelope and zero-based budgeting) on the market for a little more than a one year’s subscription to Buxfer’s upgraded options.  There are however, many that will likely find Buxfer a refreshing alternative to other free personal finance software solutions.

Brought to us by IGG Software, iBank is a shiny personal finance application built for the Mac that claims to be “the Quicken Killer.” While I’m not sure if iBank poses the certain death of Quicken just yet, the idea is intriguing.

Does iBank have what it takes to send Quicken whimpering back to Intuit?  Or is it just another Mac-based financial app that looks pretty but that doesn’t quite get the job done? And how does iBank match up to other budgeting solutions available?  In this review, I hope to find out.

This review is for iBank version 3.4.2. There is a newer version (4.2.5) now available. I’ll have a revised review of the newest version up as soon as possible.

iBank’s New Features

When you first visit the website you’re introduced to some of the new features (or at least the ones that iBank is most proud of).  Here’s a screenshot (click to enlarge):

As you can see, there’s quite the list.  If you click on ‘Full Feature List’ at the middle of the page, you can access a complete list of all the features that iBank has to offer.

Some look like eye candy, but others look as though there has been some good thought put into designing the app.  I’m excited to put many of them to the test.

Downloading & Installing iBank

Downloading and installing iBank was a piece of cake.  All you do is download the file and drag the application into your applications folder.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Once you start iBank, it allows you to purchase it if you haven’t already done so.  I opted to ‘Use Demo.’  It says that you are allowed 75 transactions in the system before you have to purchase it although the website mentions a 30-day trial period.  I’m assuming it’s whichever comes first.

Setting Up iBank

Once inside of iBank I was presented with a nice ‘iBank Setup Assistant’ screen.  It showed me new features for iBank 3, gave me an option to create a ‘New Document, and provided some support features.  What I really liked is that they had a ‘Quick Start Guide’ (unlike the similar Cha-Ching application I recently reviewed).  Clicking the link downloaded an 18 page pdf file.

I found the quick start guide to be simple and easy to follow – just what a newbie will need.  I was a bit hesitant at first about reading 18 pages, but found that it uses large text and plenty of large pictures.  It’s an easy read and I highly suggest you check it out if this is your first time booting iBank up.  It will make the process a lot quicker.

I then chose, ‘New Document’ and saved a new iBank document to my desktop (you will likely want it somewhere more permanent if you intend on continuosly using it.  Double clicking the new document icon opens the iBank application.

Main iBank Window

As you can see, the main iBank window is clean and will feel very familiar to those used to using a Mac.  At the top you’ll see your options for adding bank accounts, charts, budgets, and more.  You’ll also see other tools such as Budget Monitor, Calculator and a couple others that I’ll go over later.

The left panel houses your bank accounts that you put into iBank as well as ways to “manage” your finances.

The middle section is the transaction window where you can see your transaction in either list, coverflow, or thumbnail view.

The bottom left houses a graphical representation of your expenses and the bottom right is where you enter your bank transactions manually.

Adding an Account

The Quick Start Guide does a good job of walking you through the basics of getting started.  After reading it, I basically followed the same steps, so what you read here is simply my experience with the process they laid out for me.

After clicking on the Account icon at the top left, you’re presented with a basic screen to input your account details such as name, beginning balance, account type, etc.  One feature here is the Min. Balance that allows you to put a minimum balance for the account.  If your balance goes below that point, you will get warned.

Since I will be inputting and importing transactions for purposes of the review, for my beginning balance I put what my bank balance was about 20 or transactions ago (if you don’t want to import all the transactions since your account’s inception, you may want to do the same).

Direct Downloading of Transactions

It then allowed me to choose to enable transaction downloading from my bank.

There are different schools of thought on this subject.  I personally believe that the act of manually inputting your transactions each weak or so reinforces your spending awareness and helps in the budgeting process.

I do, however, recognize the convenience of having transactions automatically downloaded.  I chose to allow it.

After inputting my username, password, account number and routing number, it wouldn’t connect to my bank.  This may be due to the fact that my bank is using some other username than the one I use to login online, or it may just not be working with my bank.

At any rate, I’ll update the post if/when I can get it to work.

Adding Transactions in iBank

Adding transactions in the list, thumbnail, or coverlfow view is pretty much the same.  It’s generally pretty simple and easy.  It’s not as fast as other applications that I’ve seen simply because you have click the + symbol for every new transaction.

This might not seem like a big deal, but when you’re inputting a bunch of transactions, it gets old (I only did about 10 transactions and I was sick of having to move to my mouse).

It’s a big improvement, however, on Cha-Ching’s transaction editor because you can actually tab through to each input field.  This allows you to input all the information you need to using only the keyboard.

I also like that the category auto fills as you type, but I noticed that you have begin typing the exact category in order to work.  For example, when I started typing “Meals” for the “Dining:Meals” category, it didn’t find it.

*Note:  Almost every time I tried to scroll through the categories while editing the transaction, it froze for about 8-10 seconds.  A small bug, that iBank will likely get fixed before too long.

Creating Custom Categories

I was pleased to see that you can create your own custom categories in iBank.  Your budget is something that’s personal to you, and as such, you need software that will allow you to create your own categories for spending.

Creating a category in iBank is fairly simple.  Just click on the Categories folder below the area where the Accounts are listed.  This opens a list of all the categories.  Click the + icon and add your own.  You can also choose it’s custom color to help you in your charts, etc. if you wish.

*An interesting feature that I found by accident:  When you input your category – if you put anything after a colon (:) it becomes a child category to the main category that you’re creating.

For example, I typed in “Fun Money: Hers” and it created a main category “Fun Money” and a child category “Hers.”  I like it.

Splitting Transactions

Another essential piece to any personal finance software is the ability to split transactions.  Doing so it iBank is fairly easy, although not quite as streamlined as other solutions I’ve seen.

A Thought about Coverflow and Thumbnail Views

It’s only my personal opinion, but I don’t see how the coverflow feature adds any value whatsoever to the financial application.  Sure, it’s pretty and fancy.  But what does it do to help me manage my finances better?  Nothing.

It is nice that iBank has some good looking icons already in the software for certain categories (and you can add your own using your iSight camera if you wish), which is an improvement upon Cha-Ching.  But the fact still stands that it’s a waste of time to worry about such things.

The only worthwhile application that I could see with this feature is to take a picture of your receipt and attach it to the transaction if you’re the kind that keeps track of receipts.  Oh, and the thumbnail view isn’t as bad, but still seems like it takes up too much space.  Just some thoughts.

iBank’s Charts

What is often called the reporting or analysis section of other personal finance software, iBank calls Charts.  And probably rightly so since it’s basically a number of charts that you can custom create.

You add a chart by clicking the Chart icon at the top left of the iBank appliation.

It asks you to create a name for your new chart and select the time frame and type of chart that you’d like.  Options are:

• Balance Sheet
• Capital Gains
• Custom
• Quick Summary
• ROI (Return on Investement)

I created a Quick Summary and was then given this chart (click to enlarge):

My first impression was: cluttered.  The graph itself was fine, but it was all the information in the panels around it that made me a little claustrophobic.

On this particular graph you can view the transactions for each category by double clicking it’s piece of the pie.  The middle section allows you to list which categories you’d like in your graph.

They also have an option to get a printout report of the chart you’ve selected.  By clicking Generate Report at the bottom it spits out a pretty official looking report.

In addition, you have the option of viewing your chart in the following ways: By Category, Through Time, Cateogry & Date, and Transactions.

I’ll let you be the judge on the charts section.  Overall, I wasn’t super impressed, but that’s just my personal opinion.

On a positive note, however, if you put in some time and created some good custom reports that you felt helped you better manage your money, iBank’s charts may be helpful.

iBank’s Budget

Now for what I feel is the most important section of any personal financial application – the budget.

I say this because this is where I feel most of the activities are that actually can have a great impact on the way that one manages their finances.  I’ve seen this done beautifully (the envelope method used by Mvelopes and YNAB) and I’ve seen it done very poorly (Mint comes to mind).

How does iBank’s budget stand up to the competition?  Let’s take a look.

Again, to add a budget you simply click on the Add Budget icon at the top left.  After naming your budget you are presented with the screen to enter in your budgeted amounts for each category.  There is a top section for Income and bottom section for Expenses. Simple enough.

To add a budget for a category, click the + symbol in the bottom of the respective windows.  You then change the category for the new expense (the default is Vacation: Lodging – not sure why) by clicking the category and selecting the one you want from the drop down menu.

You can make the expense be budgeted weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, or annually.  Double-click, or tab, to enter the amount.

A Note About Budgeting in this Manner

I wanted to quickly point out something about the method that iBank uses to help you budget.  In iBank’s budget (and most other financial applications for that matter) when you set up your budget you can choose only the categories that you want to budget for.  This is nice, customizable, and convenient right?  Well, yes and no. It’s convenient, but not very effective.

One of the main goals of a budget is to catch the money that’s falling through the cracks from untracked, forgotten, ignored, or unplanned-for expenses.  So when you aren’t tracking all of your spending in all of your categories, you can see how this problem is likely to continue.

That’s why I am such a proponent of the envelope budgeting methodology – because it forces you to be accountable for every dollar that you spend in every category.

So if you do choose to use iBank, may I suggest that you create a budgeted amount for each category that you spend out of.  This will take some extra discipline since it’s not encouraged much in iBank, but the result will be better money management.

iBank’s Budget Monitor

After having set up your budget, you’re now ready to use the Budget Monitor to keep up on your budget.

To open it up, simply click the Budget Monitor icon at the top.  You’re presented with a screen that shows you a bar graph for each category showing your spending (for whatever time frame you choose in the top right).

For some reason my Budget Monitor was quite small and cramped together (see picture).  You can (and probably will need to) resize the window and the columns to make it a bit more legible and eye-friendly.  It’s nice that you’re able to do so.

To be frank, I was actually somewhat dissapointed in the budgeting feature of iBank.

This commonly seen bar graph is fine (and I  like that iBank also includes the amount spent and budgeted figures to the right of the graph.  It illustrates how much you’ve spent in relation to your budgeted amount.

But if that’s all that it does, I don’t see how this truly reinforces the fact that if I spend too much in the entertainment category (which I did in the pictures above), I now have less money to spend in other categories.

Also the graph doesn’t do much to show me how much I’ve overspent.  The graph shows up the same (full and red) whether I’ve overspent by $1 or by 5 times the amount I budgeted for (see the image above).

I also don’t quite understand why each category needs to have an Income column.  I don’t think it’s very likely that I will have many incoming transactions for the Groceries category.

To iBank’s credit, they’re not using the envelope method of budgeting and so it’s not designed to enforce those kinds of rules.  It’s not so much the design that I fault, but rather it’s the lack of true budgeting power that you find with more effective budgeting systems/methodologies.

A Few Other iBank Features

There are a few other features that I’d like to highlight, but won’t go into too much detail on.

Forecast – There’s a Forcast feature that allows you to forecast your future financials based on scheduled transactions, average of previous balances, or both.

Being that I didn’t have much data in the system I wasn’t able to fully test the feature, but I suspect that it will work just fine for those looking for such a thing.

Smart Import Rules - As you might expect, this allows you to set rules as to how your imported bank data appears in the transaction registry.  This is a great and very worthwhile feature.

Scheduled Transactions – iBank does allow you to schedule regular transactions without much difficulty.

Get Quotes - I was unable to test it, but it appears that you can get up to date quotes on holdings in your investment portfolio.

Tax Handling – iBank does allow you to input certain data pertaining to taxes for each transaction.  You can then export this info come tax time to help with your tax accounting.

iPhone Sync – If you have a MobileMe account, you can view and edit your transactions on your iPhone.

iBank’s Dashboard Widget

And of course, any Mac application wouldn’t be complete without it’s own dashboard widget right?

I downloaded the iBank widget from apple.com to try it out.  Here’s what it looks like:

Essentially all that the widget does is allow you to enter a transaction without having the iBank application up and running. It also gives you a balance and plays a fun little “Cha Ching” noise as you enter the transaction.

I can certainly see how one would appreciate such a widget if they were using iBank on a regular basis.  It worked just fine for me – when I logged back into iBank, there were my two new transactions in the register.

iBank’s Price

To purchase iBank, it will cost you $59.99.  If you find that you like the iBank system, that’s a very decent price.  What really matters is that it helps you to better manage your money.  If so, it will pay for itself many times over.

I do think, however, that there are more effective solutions in the market for $60 (or even cheaper) that will have a greater impact on your budgeting.

Free Trial – As mentioned, they offer a 30-day free trial.  So you might as well give it a spin to see if it’s something that you’ll like.

iBank Overall Conclusion

IGG Software has done a good job in the development of iBank 3.  I found almost no bugs and it did everything that I expected it to do.  It’s very Mac friendly and is much better than it’s competitor, Cha-Ching.  It has a very clean interface and you can tell the developers have thought quite a bit about the actual usability of the app.

Will iBank revolutionize your finances? If you’re not currently tracking your spending, than it will certainly help.

There are, however, other personal finance software applications out there that will do a better job of helping you to create solid spending plans and help you stick with a more comprehensive budget.  Taking a more proactive approach with your budget will do wonders for your financial situation.

Try iBank 3

Cha Ching 2 (by Midnight Apps) is a personal financial application for all of those Mac OS users out there (myself included).  According to the marketing, it’s designed to be easy to use, good looking, and to work seamlessly as you would expect a Mac app to do.

At first glance Cha Ching (Cha-Ching) looks like it trys to simplify your finances and will likely provide basic functionality in terms of managing your money.  How does it stand up to the competition?  Let’s dive in and find out!

Update: Cha-Ching was acquired by Intuit (the same company who acquired Mint.com) in August, 2011 and as such is no longer being updated or supported. I’m told it still works if you have, or can find, a copy, but my recommendation would be to look elsewhere. There are plenty of other great Mac alternatives. As for the creators of Cha-Ching, it sounds like they’re now (or at least were) working at Intuit. See TechChruch’s page for the details about the Cha-Ching acquisition.

My Experience with Cha Ching

During this review I’ll be going over the Cha Ching 2 Beta version.  I’ll essentially walk you through my experience with Cha Ching, looking at ease of use, solid design, good functionality, and features. But what I really judge the application by is how effective it is at helping me manage my finances better (does it encourage good money management practices?).

Installing Cha Ching

Installing Cha Ching 2 was a snap.  After clicking the download link on the Midnight Apps homepage, I saved the zip file to my desktop.  A quick unzip, double click on the cute little piggy bank, and I was on my way to budgeting bliss (well that has yet to be seen, but at least I was in the application).  I was presented with the main screen of the Cha-Ching app.  So far so good.

(Click images to enlarge) The look of the Cha Ching application should be very familiar for Mac users.  It follows the same design principles as many other Mac apps, particularly that of iTunes.  I like it.

First Impressions

One feature that wasn’t present but that would have been nice is to have tool tips set up so that when you hover over items, it gives a description of what it is.  There were a number of buttons that I simply didn’t know what they did at first.  After clicking around you get the hang of it, but should I have to go through the extra time?

While I can usually make my way around applications such as this one without too much difficulty, there will certainly be some people using the software that may be in need of a little guidance.  It would be nice to have a brief walkthrough or at least some general guidance as to what to do to get started on adding accounts, importing transactions, getting started on your budget, etc.

*Update: Part way through the review I shut down Cha-Ching and restarted it.  At that time a screen popped up that asked if I wanted to 1. Start using Cha-Ching, 2. Start with Example Database, or 3. Visit Community.

I was glad to see the option of testing it out with an example already set up, only to find that it isn’t clickable.  So aparently they are working on it, but it isn’t implemented yet.  This will be a nice feature once it’s ready.

No User Manual?

After I had starting playing around with app for a bit I began to want some kind of guide to give some basic steps to get started.  Admittedly, I’m probably just a little impatient and want to get rocking quicker.  While I wish they would have given me something at the startup of the app, I thought that for sure I could at least find some kind of guide or user manual online from Midnight Apps or elsewhere. To my surprise, I wasn’t able to find anything.  I did, however, find a number of people that were looking for the same thing as evidenced by their posts on the Midnight Apps community.

I don’t know if they’re working on such a thing, but I sure hope so. So as far as ease of use goes, so far that category is lacking.  Now, it’s possible that once you get the hang of it, it’s a snap.  But if I have to get the hang of it, is it really that easy to use?

Adding Accounts to Cha Ching

You add accounts to Cha Ching by clicking the “New Account” button at the top left of the app (you can also add one by clicking the “+” symbol at the bottom left). I put in the required info to add my account (checking) and clicked Continue.  At first I thought that nothing happened (other than having an Accounts item show up) because I didn’t see my checking account anywhere.  It turns out that you have click the little arrow next to Accounts to drop down your account list (silly me).

A Small Bug

I found what I can only assume was a small bug when my initial balance for my accounts didn’t show up after I added them.  When I added a transaction or two, it only took the account into the negative (obviously). I quit the app and restarted it, hoping it would help.  When it started again, my accounts were no longer there.  I added my account a second time and again, it didn’t show up.

I quit and restarted again and tadaa! Magically my account showed up with a starting balance. Needless to say this experience only 5 minutes into the process certainly doesn’t instill much confidence.

Different Views in Cha Ching

Cha Ching allows you to view your transactions in 4 different ways.

The first, and default view is a hybrid between the List view and the Coverflow view.  Here you can the image of the transaction, the payee, tags, date, amount, and whether or not it has been reconciled (has hit your bank account yet).

The second view is a list view (this makes the most sense to me).

The third is a Coverflow view (much like the iTunes Coverflow).  This makes no sense to me, but more on that later.

The last view is a window that connects to your banks website to view the transactions (more on this next).

Adding Transactions to Cha Ching

First of all, Cha Ching has an interesting feature (not sure what it’s called, but I’ll call it…Quick Look) that allows you to visit your banks website within the application to make inputting transaction a bit easier.  You can access it by clicking compass looking icon at the top right.

Whether or not this makes it faster or not, I’m not sure but it’s there for those who may like it.

Adding transactions individually is a fairly simple process.  You just click on the “New” button in the lower left section of the app.  A window on the right appears that allows you to input the transaction details.  Here you can also add tags and notes to the transaction (this will help when searching for transactions later).

While it certainly wasn’t difficult to add transactions, it wasn’t exactly fast either.  If I choose to manually enter 20 transactions rather than import them, I would doing a ton of clicking around to do so.  I was wanting to be able use my keyboard to start a new transaction often and would have loved to have been able to tab through all the information and type it in.  (They do allow some tabbing but it skips over some input sections (i.e. the categories) so you still have use the mouse a great deal).

This may not be a deal breaker for some, but for others it may get a little frustrating (it certainly was for me).

Importing Bank Transactions

Cha Ching supports three kinds of import files, OFX, QFX, and QIF to import your bank transactions.  Most banks should support these file formats.

You import transactions by clicking on File, then the import option of your choice.  After selecting the file to import (you obviously have to download that from your bank) you are presented with a screen that allows to choose which account it is for and select which transactions you would like to import.

As with almost any personal finance software in which you import the data from your bank, you will often have to change the payee to something more understandable (like “Chevron” rather than “1200 S 400 E…”).

While importing your transactions will definitely save you a good deal of time, it still doesn’t solve the fact that much of the data that you’ll want to enter will have to entered using the Edit panel (which requires more time to click around).

In the transaction window you can edit the Payee, Tags, and Notes.  That’s it.  If you want to (and you will need to) input the amount, category, type of transaction, or date, you have to use the Edit panel.  If you ask me, it’s rather tedious, but that’s just my opinion.

Can’t Add Custom Categories

One thing that I found unfortunate was that you can’t add your own custom categories.

While Cha Ching offers a pretty good list to get you going, everyone is different and will have different categories that they like to use (for example, I like to have a Fast Food category and a Restaurant category to keep the two seperate in my budget).  I see this as a major flaw.

I also didn’t like how the categories were listed in the menu.  They were alphabetical order.  This is fine in theory, but would be much more effective if they were grouped in spending areas.  For example, Food would have Groceries, Fast Food, and Restaurant, under it.

Also, because I was fairly unfamiliar with the terms they use for the categories it took me quite a while to find the ones I was looking for (they use Dining, I was looking for Restaurant).  Click image to see full list of categories.

*Update:  As I went on to the budgeting section, I realized that they use Tags, rather than Categories to run their budget.  This somewhat alleviates the need to have custom categories because you create whatever tags you want.  I thought it was a little weird to create your budget from Tags and not Categories, but to each his own I guess.

Other than for filtering and search purposes, I’m not entirely sure why you need both Tags and Categories, but maybe I’m missing something.

Splitting Transactions

Cha Ching allows you to split your transactions so your budget can be more accurate.  This is an essential feature in any personal finance application and I was glad to see that Cha Ching had it.

After clicking on a transaction to select it, click Split in the bottom left of the screen. You are taken to the Split panel.  After clicking Enable (a small annoyance) you then click the “+” sign (another small annoyance) and enter in the Title, Amount, and Tag of a portion of the transaction.  Click the + again and do same until you’ve fully split your transaction.

Coverflow and Adding Images to Transactions

If you choose to, you can add images to your transactions.  This would primarily be used if you wanted to look at your transactions in Coverflow view. The process is fairly easy.

First you have to have a picture (I took mine from the internet).  Double click a transaction.  Then click on the the icon that looks like a picture frame in the Edit panel on the right.  You then simply drag and drop the photo into the box.  It was easy and worked flawlessly.

It then also adds that photo in a library of sorts to be used for future transactions. You can then switch to Coverflow view and watch your transaction images fly across the screen beautifully.

My issue with this isn’t that it doesn’t work.  The only question that I have is, “How does this help me better manage my money?”  Sure, it’s fun and a great time waster.  But it does nothing to help me budget my finances more effectively.

Time would have been much better spent finding ways to simplify the transaction editing process or improving the budgeting section rather than creating such a fancy feature that doesn’t actually help anyone.

Quick Search in Cha Ching 2

One feature that I really like in Cha Ching (that’s native to many Mac applications) is the quick search in the top right corner.

Once you begin typing in the search box it automatically begins filtering the transactions to only show results that match what you’re typing.  You can search for tags, payees, amounts, and maybe a few other things.  I didn’t, however, allow me to search for a specific date.

This is nice, for example, if I want to see all my spending for the tag Food.  Just type in Food and it shows you all your transactions that match that tag.  I found this search feature to be fast, effective, and quite nice.

Filtering in Cha Ching 2

Cha Ching also has a filtering feature that allows you filter all your transactions by any number of criteria that you choose.

By clicking the Filter icon at the top right you are presented with a screen section that allows you to set your criteria.  For an example, I set the first identifier to “Tag”, the second to “Contains”, and then typed in “Groceries” in the last one.  After clicking Save As I can name this filter and then it’s saved on my left panel under “Collections”.

You can think of this as a type of saved spending report.  For example, next month when I want to see all the transactions that were tagged Groceries, I can just click on my “Collection” that I just created.

You can create as many filters (or collections) as you wish, each with as many criteria as you think is appropriate.

Cha Ching on the iPhone

For all of you who have an iPhone, you may want to try the Cha-Ching iPhone app.

Unfortunately, this review doesn’t cover it’s functionality because I don’t own an iPhone.  Midnight Apps does have a good number of screen shots and even a demo video that you may want to check out.

You can purchase the iPhone app for $2.99 at the Apple app store.

Cha Ching’s Budget

You can have multiple budget’s in Cha Ching, which is nice.

To add a budget, click the + sign at the lower left.  Then click on the Budget icon, enter in a name for your budget, and click continue. You’re brought to the budget screen where you have your “budgeted” income on the left and your budget for your expenses on the right.

Cha Ching uses Tags, rather than Categories to keep track of your spending.  Enter a tag (it autofills as you type – nice functionality). Enter a limit.  And enter the frequency.    You can see the quick sample budget that I set up in the images below.

After you click done, you are taken to the Budget Overview screen.  Here you can see how you’re doing with your budget for the month (or whatever time frame you set it to in the lower left of the screen). It basically just shows you a bar graph that fills up as you spend.

This is where I was fairly let down with Cha Ching.  I’ve seen this same budgeting approach with Mint, moneyStrands, and many others.  Essentially all you’re doing is setting a “limit.” If you go over, all it does is show you a full bar.  Not even a slap on the wrist.

I guess this is a little better than simply writing down your spending limit somewhere, but it’s not near as effective as other budgeting methodologies (especially the envelope method).  Cha Ching doesn’t do much to encourage a forward looking approach with your finances.  When budgeting with Cha Ching I feel more like I’m drawing a line in the sand, rather than creating a detailed plan for my spending and savings accumulation.

Cha Ching Price

They offer a 30 day free trial, after which you pay $40 if you want to keep using the software.  I like that they have the trial (mostly because I believe most people would be dissapointed if they paid the $40 upfront).

While $40 is a very good price for a finance software application, Cha-Ching (in it’s current version) still has some work to do before I would recommend it at that price.

Cha Ching Conclusion

Cha Ching is a pretty Mac friendly application.  It looks clean and friendly and will be very familiar to those Mac users out there.  They’ve integrated a few of the features (quick search) that many Mac users would instinctively look for in an application such as this. That’s nice.

I found the transaction entering process a bit more tedious than other solutions that I’ve worked with, which makes it not quite as “quick” and “easy” as I had hoped.  Throughout my experience with Cha Ching I found more bugs than I’d like to admit (one that caused me to have to force quit the app).  It is, however, in beta still so you must expect at least some troubles here and there – I’m just saying that they don’t have it right quite yet.

The main concern I have for Cha Ching is the weak budgeting section.  While it’s true that the act of simply monitoring your spending will have a positive effect on one’s spending habits, I feel that there are much more effective approaches at budgeting and creating spending plans (I’m a fan of the envelope budgeting method). The simple bar graph just doesn’t do it for me.

What is personal finance software supposed to do?  If the answer is to simply track your transactions and monitor your spending, then Cha Ching has done a fine job.  It will do it.  If the answer, however, is to make it as easy and quick as possible to manage your money, to create effective budgets, and to actively plan for your future expenses and savings accumulation, then Cha Ching may have fallen short.

There is certainly a few good features in Cha Ching, but the package as a whole is simply not up to par with the better financial management applications on the market today.