Among ways you ’d enjoy spending your free time doing , finding the unadulterated fiscal management software has credibly never been among them . Intuit ’s Quicken ( ) has long dominated the Macintosh financial software market , but iBank 2.1.4 , a financial direction programme by IGG Software , may prove to be a solid contender . Simple , refined , and with a definitely Mac - similar interface , iBank leave the rudiments of a personal budgeting tool , as well as some of the modern features for which Quicken is renowned .
After installation , a apparatus assistant helps make both business and personal accounts . Once these are in place , you could easily sum up transaction in dozens of class such as income , equipment expense , and social security . you could also make investment portfolios , as well as give chase stocks and beget chart and prognosis .
iBank act well with similar products via its importation and export functions . Within minutes of induction , I had pulled down several years of history records from my bank ’s Web site in QIF ( Quicken Interchange Format ) Indian file data format and had imported that data file into iBank . Minutes later , thousands of my transactions were in spot in elaborated checking and economy accounts , ready to go . In addition to basic financial accounting , you’re able to create accounts for your investment that let in stock datum — such as original leverage price , numbers of shares , and inventory symbolization — and have iBank get across your addition and losses via Yahoo ’s financial web . Users will need to properly categorize their transactions to keep thing in monastic order , a habit that have a few minute to learn but makes all the difference in the long run .
Other telling feature film let in the ability to countersign - protect file , forecasting feature that are prosperous to apply than Quicken ’s , the ability to easily split a individual transaction and divide store between to two locations , and elegant Internet ancestry quotation mark feature . When I had question , I received quick replies via e - mail from customer support . An active online user bulletin instrument panel and robust help file cabinet also helped make the moderate learning curved shape of a new financial program easy to bear .
The syllabus ’s iCal and .Mac consolidation assistant iBank , but keep for iCal feel a small thin . iBank saves its datum in your user Documents brochure , and this data can be back up up via a .Mac account . Setting up iCal integration , however , required extra dance step for me . The program ’s built - in service engine go bad to settle iCal as a search criteria , and a trip to IGG Software ’s online forums was necessary for me to calculate out how to implement iCal integration , which performed well after setup .
Macworld’s buying advice
iBank 2.1.4 does n’t completely take down the Quicken 800 - pound Gorilla gorilla , but it bring home the bacon a comprehensive set of financial tool with an elegant Mac smell and feel . For the beginning or medium finance direction software system user , iBank is deserving a expression .
[ Chris Barylick is a engineering journalist whose work has appeared inMacAddict , the UPI news wire , and theWashington Post . He is proprietor of Mac Menders , a Washington , D.C.-based technical consulting firm . ]
