Trying out Financial Softwares

So I’ve been using Quicken 2005 since, oh, about 2005? It came pre-installed on The Girl’s original iMac that we bought, and I had been using something similar at that time that was confined to my Palm Pilot (yes, I had one of those).

Anyway, Quicken for the Mac has always been sort of the redheaded stepchild in Intuit’s collection, and by this time you can imagine that it hasn’t dated all that well. We do keep good financial tabs on ourselves, but anything that can make the process more seamless & easier can only help us to keep finer control over the budget, you know with trying to find a more up-to-date program, preferrably one that makes good use of the Mac’s built-in tools. And recently, I thought I had found it in iBank from igg Software.

“Thought” being the key operative, there. It’s definitely more of “the look” I wanted in a product, but there’s too many usability shortcomings as compared to even Quicken 2005 for me to ignore. The budgeting tool is pretty, but also pretty useless, giving me just a bar graph for each category. In Quicken, I don’t get a graph, just the totals, but I can click down on that to see the list of what makes up those totals; something iBank cannot do. Yes, the graphs are pretty in iBank, but the same usability flaws remain: I cannot click all the way to the transaction! In Quicken, I can click on a graph to get a list of the transactions (to its credit, iBank DOES show a listing of the transactions in its graphs, unlike its budget tool), and then I can go even futher and click on the transactions themselves to see the actual occurrence in the account where it took place. So say I see that my spending has shown that perhaps I mislabeled a transaction (“what the hell did I spend $100 on in ‘Tax Annuities?’”), I can click all the way down to the transaction and see the memo, and discover I meant to put the category as “Taxable income” and fix it on the spot, as well as have all the graphs & reports I was looking at to get there auto update immediately. In iBank, it looks good, and yeah, I can even show the transactions that make up that part of the graph, but I cannot click all the way to the actual transaction like I can in Quicken. Which means if I were to notice an anomaly, I’d have to find it, then leave the graph, then try and find that transaction, and then fix it. See how much easier it is in Quicken, even if it’s not as pretty? Click, click, click, done. iBank? Click, “what the f*ck?”, click, “how the hell?”, back up back up back up, click, “OK where are you you little bugger,” click, “ah, there you are,” click, click click click click (it takes more clicks for each transaction too) and we’re done.

I really really want to like iBank. Hell, I do like iBank, but I cannot seem to find it easy enough to drill down from report to transaction. I’m always backing up out of the damn graphs to get where I need to be. Not in Quicken, though.

Quicken’s like that homely girl your mom always tried to set you up with when you were a teenager; yeah she sure it ugly, but damn can she cook, you know?

Anyway, yeah, chew on that whilst I continue to play around some.

Some may ask why I would bother writing such a diatribe. I mean, it seems mean, no? Well yes and no. I really want to like iBank, but I’m not going to buy it because it looks pretty; it needs to outperform my current tool in pretty much every fashion. Any shortcomings, and I’m not going to pull the trigger. Period. Which means, they won’t get my money. So in essence, I’m actually being pretty nice. If someone who cared were to stumble upon this rant, they would have a window into the minds of potential customers who aren’t really interested in becoming actual customers; they learn what’s important and what could make us pull that trigger and deliver funds to their coffers. It may seem mean, but in actuality, “yes men” rarely do much to further any particular product.

I’m trying to help them fix the things that need fixing. Things they may not have even known needed fixing. I’m ultimately being helpful. Yes it’s in a rant pointing out the flaws. But it can be helpful nonetheless.

Sometimes, you need to see through your own Marketing, and just tackle what’s really at the core.