Posts Tagged
money
The popularity of online bill paying simplifies our lives in many ways (not to mention the tree savings), but without a solid piece of mail arriving at the door, it can be tough to remember the due dates for the many bills we pay each month. While you could set up repeating reminders in iCal, and keep track of what you’ve paid on spread sheets, the developers of Chronicle promise an easier way to keep track of bills for the memory-and-math-challenged.
Unlike many other finance apps, which try to do everything from creating budgets to tracking transactions, Chronicle is dedicated solely to helping you pay the bills. Find out if this simplified approach can prevent bill-related anxiety in today’s review!
We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Jumsoft Money
Jumsoft, a developer of high-quality applications for Mac OS X, has completely overhauled its most popular product, the finance and budgeting application Money. It provides small businesses and home users with a simple and remarkably effective way to track their financial records and create budgets. Among other novelties, the new Money 4 features a fully redesigned user interface, allows direct downloads from financial institutions, and institutes smart importing rules and a document-based system that allows multiple users to work with a single copy of the application.
Money was first released in 2003 and has gained wide popularity among small businesses and home users of Mac since then. Fans of Money appreciate its combination of high usability and effective finance management.
Money 4 provides a flexible way of recording financial transactions in multiple types of accounts: cash, bank, credit card, loan, investment, and asset. With Money 4, users can create a budget plan and effortlessly monitor the actual outcome. The comprehensible Portfolio feature displays a well-rounded view of investments. Managing scheduled transactions and creating straightforward income/expense reports is also refreshingly simple with Money 4.
“Whether our clients wish to keep track of their personal expenditures or create monthly budgets for their business, Money is designed for them,” says Algirdas Unguvaitis, Jumsoft’s general manager. “We have put a great deal of time and effort into the fourth installment of the application, and we truly hope our clients will be satisfied with the final result.”
Money is available for purchase on Jumsoft’s Web site and on Apple’s Mac App Store.
In many ways it’s the holy grail of Mac apps. Apple has instilled an appreciation for the beautiful, the polished, and the carefully designed. And if there’s one part of our lives that screams out for an experience like that it’s money management.
I mean it makes sense, right? Computers are good with numbers, and people usually aren’t. Computers can be used to identify patterns and formulate projections, and people like to see patterns and projections. And on the Mac platform we should be able to get all of that lovely functionality wrapped up in an aesthetically pleasing package, right?
Well there’s a new contender that’s entered the fray: Koku. Making the rounds, Koku has attracted the attention of the Mac community. We’re all dying to know if someone new can build the type of financial monitoring app that we’ve all been looking for.
And so here we are. Let’s take a look at the areas that Koku excels in, and the spots where they need to do some work.
These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find any business, freelancer or consumer who doesn’t have a PayPal account, and for good reason – it’s quick, easy, and universally used. Considering its success, however, the PayPal website is still awkward to use –
If you leave it for more than a second, it would seem, it logs itself out, and you have to waste time logging back in again. Once you’re in, it’s not all that intuitive, and you have to navigate countless dropdown menus to do anything. In short, the PayPal site is a pain.
GaragePay can take away all of that pain. It’s a PayPal client for Mac, meaning you never have to use that pesky site ever again, and instead can handle all of your transactions from the comfort of a native app.
In my search for the ideal money management application, I keep coming back to iBank. I reviewed Jumsoft Money here on Mac.AppStorm a few months back, and mentioned a few other options I’ve tried. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect – there are important features that I can’t use, and others that I don’t make use of – but on the whole it’s been stable and easy to work with, and I’ve not yet found an alternative that beats it.
We reviewed the last version here a while back, but now IGG Software has released a major update, so it’s time to revisit iBank and let you know how it works and what you get for your money.
For a long time, I have been a very happy user of Microsoft Money. Since making the switch to a Mac, I’ve played the field, but still haven’t found a money management application that really meets my needs (or is fun enough to keep me coming back). There’s no going back – Microsoft announced last year that they would no longer be marketing Money, and they’re planning to stop support for it in January 2011.
The Mac programs I have tried include MoneyDance (very nice, and capable, but doesn’t really look like a Mac app), Cha-Ching (pretty, but simplistic and superficial), and iCompta (the quiet little guy at the back of the class, powerful and easy to use). The application I’ve used longest is iBank; having won several awards, it’s an excellent application. But I’m still not entirely satisfied.
I’ve known of Jumsoft’s Money for several years, and now and then given it a brief try, but never in much depth. Recently, I decided I really ought have a proper look at it – read on to see my conclusions.
Managing your personal finances is often somewhat of a pain, particularly if you’re suffering from a lack of funds to manage! Fortunately a variety of different applications are available for assisting with the process. Whether you’re trying to save a few extra dollars each month or have an enormous investment portfolio, there’s something for you.
These apps will assist with tracking your spending, paying bills on time, planning a simple budget, displaying detailed reports, and (in some cases) entering transactions on-the-go from your iPhone.
