World of Apple

For the past few years I’ve been toying around with various banking software. Generally, I find myself playing around with one program for a month, then slacking off and just sticking with staring at my online bank statements. However, as my life has recently shifted from college life (where I didn’t have enough money to keep track of anyways) to actually finding a job in the “real world,” I’ve revisited the banking software options. Quicken is just more than I want to bother with, so I kept my search refined to some smaller, Mac developers. In the end, I narrowed my findings to 3 different programs; Cha-Ching, iBank, & Moneywell.

In this special 3-in-1 review, I will look at the pros and cons of each (while focusing on the unique factors between them, as all 3 programs have similar, basic functions that you’d expect from a piece of banking software) and decide a winner. Note that in the end, my choice will reflect the software that I feel meets my needs best and I’d encourage you to try all 3 to see what works best for you. Hopefully my review will help guide you in your decision. As with my past reviews, the developers of these three programs have generously offered to give away 1 license to a lucky reader. That means we will have 3 total winners this time. Since this is a special review, I’m asking for some special comments. I’d like you, the reader, to try out these programs and come back to comment stating which of these 3 programs is your favorite, why it is your favorite, and at least one thing you’d like to see improved. 3 lucky readers will receive a license for the program they stated as their favorite! So without further ado, my review!

Cha-Ching:
Of the 3 programs, Cha-Ching has the cleanest interface. It’s easy to clutter the window of banking software with options and features. While these features are desired, and often necessary, the interface can easily become quite cluttered. With Cha-Ching, that’s not the case. They have managed to maintain a solid feature set while at the same time providing a very clean and smooth interface. The result is a window that’s informative and easy to look at. It’s also very Mac-like in its theming. The main, and only, window looks very much like iTunes and getting around the program is quite clear and intuitive. However, Cha-Ching lacks a good way to visually represent your finances. Personally, I like to see a chart laying out exactly where my money is going. With Cha-Ching, I could not find a very good way to do that.

Cha-Ching also offers a unique way to view your online banking information with a built in browser of sorts. It’s not a browser you’d use to replace Safari by any means, but it’s a great way to quickly and easily access your online bank account to verify or download your latest transactions. With the integration of smart folders, a scheduler, budgets, and accounts, Cha-Ching allows you to take your banking information and organize how you prefer. It even allows you to attach pictures or files to your transactions. Here’s a quick example of how this could work for you: You snap a photo of the new iMac you just bought (lucky you!) and scan the receipt for your purchase. You attach a PDF version of your receipt to the transaction and drop the photo in. Now, when you are looking through your transactions, you can see photos of exactly what you bought, as well as check the receipt. Cha-Ching also supports tagging, which makes finding past transactions even easier. If you stay current and diligent putting your financial information in, Cha-Ching makes it extremely easy to keep track of your financial history.

iBank:
What drew me to iBank initially was the unique viewing options it offered. The main, and again only, window has a very Mac-like interface. What’s unique about iBank is that it offers 3 ways to view your entries – a small and standard ledger view, a larger ledger view with pictures, and a coverflow view with pictures. The small standard ledger view is as you’d expect. It’s straightforward, shows the needed information, and is very professional. The larger ledger view supports pictures, much like Cha-Ching. However, iBank has a built in set of clipart so when you say that you just bought groceries you can easily select a grocery bag to represent this. It allows for a more uniform way to manage the photos, whereas with Cha-Ching, I’d find myself having to repeatedly search Google if I wanted to add clipart.

iBank also allows for managing portfolios – a great tool for investors, adding charts – which provides a great way to view a breakdown of your spending habits, budgets, smart import rules (in conjunction with the capacity to download your transactions) – great for making future imports easy, and more. Overall, iBank is a fairly powerful tool for managing finances and it allows you to tweak just how you want to view your finances. On the downside, however, all these options also make iBank feel more cluttered than the other 2 programs.

MoneyWell:
MoneyWell takes an interesting approach to managing finances – buckets. Well, let me explain. Perhaps you’ve heard of the classic “envelope budget.” MoneyWell follows this concept, but instead applies a more aquatic feel. Your income is divided into various buckets, depending on how many sources of income you have. Then, each of these buckets gets “poured” into your various expense buckets (again, all determined by your specific setup). Once setup is complete, you can see at a glance what you have left to allocate and how much you have left to spend in each bucket. As you buy groceries, for example, your “food” bucket depletes in value and you can see exactly what’s left. Out of the three programs, I found this approach to give the quickest and easiest at-a-glance summary of where I was at in the month.

All that said, it’s easier said than done. MoneyWell has a bit more of a learning curve to it and I found that it took me longer to set up everything as I wanted it in MoneyWell than it did in the other 2 programs. Still, once set up I found MoneyWell to be the easiest way to view my finances. What it lacks in power (i.e. no portfolio accounts, customizable charts, or alternate views) and in design (not as cluttered as iBank, but still more cluttered than Cha-Ching) it makes up for in its straightforward nature, that is once it’s set up.

The Breakdown:
So what does this all mean? I skipped all that stuff up above, just give me the pros and cons of each! When it comes down to it, which one is best? After playing around with the programs for a few weeks and without further ado…

Cha-Ching:
Pros: Clean interface, feels very “Mac-like,” easy to learn and use, it has many features, but contains them all well within its one window.
Cons: Clipart is more of a chore than it should be, lacks any real charts for viewing a breakdown of spending, no way to manage investments/stocks.
The Verdict: Out of the three programs, I’d have to say Cha-Ching is my favorite and the one I’d use. It’s clean, straightforward, and doesn’t have more features than I need. It’s easy to learn, easy to use, and feels very much like a native Mac app. In the end, I’d like to see some more features for breaking down my spending (i.e. Please give me charts!), but with 2.0 on the horizon I’m sure we’ll see some improvements!
Cha-Ching is available from MidnightApps for $40. If you buy Cha-Ching today, you’re eligable for a free upgrade to Cha-Ching 2.0 – coming soon.

iBank:
Pros: Powerful, a variety of views, professional account management (stocks/investments), built in clipart library, easy import functions.
Cons: Cluttered interface, alternate views are cool but can be impractical, feels too much like Quicken (which may be a good thing for you, but was more of a con for me)
The Verdict: I’d have to rank iBank as my least likely choice of the three. It’s a great program, it’s just not for me. I’d still encourage you to try it as I really believe that for many out there, this can be the perfect banking solution.
iBank is available from IGG Software for $59.99 (uprades to iBank 3 from previous versions are $29.99)

MoneyWell:
Pros: Unique approach to money management, fairly straightforward once set up, fairly clean interface
Cons: Much more of a learning curve, lacks strong charts, set up takes a while and can be confusing to some.
The Verdict: Personally, I like MoneyWell. I even wanted it to be my first choice. I just couldn’t justify ranking it above Cha-Ching, however. The level of work it took me to get MoneyWell up and running was just too much more than Cha-Ching. Still, it’s a close 2nd for me and I’ll be keeping my eye on its development.
MoneyWell is available from No Thirst Software for a special price of $39.99, but only for a limited time. The price will then be set at $49.99

So in the end, Cha-Ching works best for me, and it just happens to be the least expensive as well. But we’re all different in how we manage our finances and I’d encourage you to visit each website, to play around with all 3 of these great programs, and see what works best for you. Do that now and comment back here about your favorite and you’ll be entered to win a copy of that respective license! Winners will be announced on June 27th. Happy banking!