Mac users usually have the best software options in the computing world. For example, iTunes is the cutting edge online music solution, or VMWare Fusion and Parallels which both put their sister Linux & Windows solutions to shame, and if you're a biblical scholar you know the BibleWorks just doesn't have anything on Accordance. One are, though, where the Mac is sorely lacking is in financial software. There are a variety of options, but each leave something to be desired in terms of features, functionality, interface and bank integration. Quicken's own product for the Mac is nothing short of insulting, but that's exactly what I've been using for the last three years.
I moved to Quicken because the Windows product was nothing short of amazing. While I have the option of running Quicken for Windows in a VM, that's just not me. I use my VM's for development and testing and that's it! I'm not one of those guys who keeps Windows running 24/7 in Unity mode. In the last couple of months I've endured just about every headache imaginable in terms of integrating with PNC Bank and then data loss. Ask my wife how happy I am when I lose a week's worth of transactions in the QuickEntry widget. This is all to say nothing of the fact that Quicken is a Rosetta-based Mac app, which means it's slow. Just not satisfactory, and I've been looking for alternatives to no avail.
About a month ago I started looking at the various online options for online banking. You've probably seen the names... Mint, Quicken Online, Wesabe, Buxfer to list the most popular and powerful solutions. Of these I tried them all, but only two really caught my attention, Quicken Online and Buxfer. Obviously, Quicken is attractive because of the name and reputation of the company - their service, however, is a pay service costing a miniscule $2.99/month. In my opinion, a negligible cost if its a good product. Quicken's look a lot like their website, though in their online app they use the Ext js library. Buxfer is a little more crude, but also has a strange resemblance to Google. So I spent quite a bit of time looking at these products and here were my criteria in determining what to do:
- Import as much of my financial history as possible.
- Amazing mobile experience on my iPhone.
- Something Sara would be comfortable working with.
- Budgeting.
- Reporting & Analysis of expenditures and income.
- Ability to split transactions.
- Show transfers between accounts.
- Tagging the way tagging is supposed to be.
As a developer of web based applications I know what I'm looking for, I've got high standards and I don't want to see a less-than-amazing job in the interface and usability of their web interface. In the end, Buxfer's mobile interface (both for iPhone and for everything else) was dramatically superior to Quicken's. I was very impressed when I browser Buxfer's setup in my iPhone, it's sharp and it's functional with noticeably comparable functionality to the regular interface. Quicken has crap for importing, there's no ability to import data from Quicken - which I would have assumed would be top on their list. They also only import a sliver of transactions from banks when they connect, the last 90 days or so. Meanwhile, when Buxfer connected to Discover Card I got transactions as far back as 2006. Furthermore, Buxfer handles QIF and QFX files as well as a CSV formatted document. I wound up using the CSV feature to get two of my bank accounts in because I wanted to customize what was put in the transaction title. Still though, I got my data into Buxfer and I couldn't do that with Quicken!
Quicken's reporting looks sharp, but I for the life of me couldn't figure out why it kept telling me I had nearly 8k+ of debt for the accounts I setup. Plus, total expenditures were about 3x as much as they actually were. Best I can tell is there are some problems with Quickens pretty charts. Buxfer's were must more accurate showing me the numbers I expected for in/out flow, and after I paired up transfer between accounts (ie. Paid off Discover Card w/ Checking account - instead of double income/expense numbers it represents a legitimate account transfer) the numbers were right on the mark. The charts were nice in Buxfer and the budgeting feature was extremely easy and extremely powerful. I never like Quicken for the Mac's budgeting feature and mostly resorted to a spreadsheet, but with Buxfer I was able to create a budget with categories that spanned a month, or a quarter or whatever range I wanted and then show expenditures in the "current month" or "current quarter" for those items. It was an actual budget!
Both applications had decent tagging, I like the fact that Buxfer's can remember tags for similar transactions - this was so easy and straight forward to use that if Quicken even had it I didn't catch it right away. Buxfer also made its name via its powerful split functionality. I have nothing against Quickens, but as Buxfer was developed with college students splitting meal tickets in mind its no wonder that's intuitive and logical when it comes to splitting up portions of a transaction. The multi-note per transaction aspect is cool too.
In the end I couldn't imagine Sara using Quicken, it's complicating and she spends as little time on computers as possible. Buxfer is more with her work-flow and usability and for that matter mine too. The fact that it is FREE is an added bonus to the fact that's it well written software. If you're looking for banking options and may be moving between multiple computers, a mobile device and maybe have a wife whom you want to punch in her various expenditures as well, I highly recommend Buxfer. In my opinion it seems like a very secure and honest solution to the online banking dilemma. Their security policy protects you and they don't retain your data (unlike Quicken), and with the help of Google Gears it can even be as stream-lined as the competition. High-class web software that makes life easier.
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