Thanks to personal finance applications, managing and tracking budgets, expenses, cash flows, and potential savings is easier than ever and far less time-consuming. We’ve covered quite a few finance apps for the Mac in the past few months, which shows a growing interest in this category.
We did a round-up of 7 finance software for the Mac two years ago, so I thought it would be interesting to refresh things and take a look at today’s choices for personal finance software. If you’re wondering what’s new, popular, and consistent in the money management category, check out the apps below!
Most finance apps are higher in price range than productivity apps or games. Visit the developer’s website and see if they have free trial that you can download before making the purchase at the Mac App Store.
New Additions
Let’s begin with a couple of additions since our last finance app roundup.
iBank
iBank is a powerful contender in the finance category. At version 4, it received a complete UI redesign while offering various features to assist you when managing your finances. Easy imports of past financial data, budgeting, detailed reports, and tracking investments are some of the things to expect in iBank.
While it’s much more expensive than others, it’s proven to be consistent in terms of performance and reliability.
Price: $59.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
Developer: IGG Software
Koku
Koku is a money management app that aims to help you track your money and monitor your spending. Besides its beautiful design, it offers features that give you full control of your financial accounts. Some of the notable features include direct linkage to hundreds of banks, importing and exporting data in various formats, smart tagging, and eye-catching yet detailed visual reports.
Price: $29.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Developer: Fading Red
Cashcalculator
While most personal finance apps focus on listing down past and present credit/debit transactions, Cashcalculator takes on a different route by focusing on tracking your cash flow and helping you make smarter financial decisions for the future based on your data. Just enter your income and expenses, and Cashcalculator can take care of the rest.
Price: $29.99; a free version is available but limited to two scenarios and a 3-month time span
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later
Developer: Apparent Software
Checkbook
Checkbook is a finance app that aims to help you manage your finances with just the right balance of features. It’s easy to enter and categorize debits or deposits and to make changes to each transaction, since everything is in a single-window, no-nonsense interface. It has a scheduling feature to remind you when it’s time to pay your dues, account summaries, and an advance search filter to make it easy for you to locate entries.
Price: $14.99 ($24.99 for Checkbook Pro)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Splasm Software, Inc.
Savings
Savings aims to manage your personal finances without putting you on a learning curve. It sports a simple user interface and features that you know you will use such as budget tracking, scheduling transactions, importing and exporting data, trends, and breakdowns.
If you’re new to managing and tracking your personal finances and are looking for a finance app that can walk you through the process, Savings is a great choice.
Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Yi Lin Productions
Simplibudget
Simple personal finance management is a growing trend nowadays. Here’s Simplibudget, an app that simplifies the process of managing your budgets by tracking your income, expenses, and savings. You can categorize your budgets and see how you’re doing through interactive charts. While the design isn’t as robust as the more expensive options, Simplibudget gets the job done. What’s more, it syncs your accounts on the iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
Price: $1.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later, 64-bit
Developer: Stephen Arrowsmith
Money Plus
Money Plus is another finance app that approaches the problem of organizing your finances through simplified methods. It’s easy to enter transactions and repeat transactions, plus you get to see your progress through five different windows: Overview, Daily, Categories, Budgets, and Graphs. You can read the detailed review here.
Price: $9.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later, 64-bit
Developer: Alex Rastorgouev
iCompta
iCompta was mentioned as a suggestion in the last round-up, but I believe it deserves its own spot as a contender in the finance app category. Its got a good set of features that help you manage your personal accounts and an affordable price. It also offers full synchronization between the Mac and iOS versions, enabling you to enter transactions wherever you go.
Price: $18.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: LyricApps
iFinance
iFinance promises an easy and effective way to manage your personal finances. You can either start from scratch or import existing data into the app to pick up where you left off. It’s easy to split transactions into different categories, track your progress through charts and interactive reports, and its affordable despite its many features.
Price: $29.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Synium Software GmbH
Moneywiz
Moneywiz is a beautiful personal finance app for iOS that’s about to climb on board the Mac wagon. I use Moneywiz for the iPad to manage my financial accounts, so I’m pretty excited that a Mac version is coming soon. You can read full scoop the launch of Moneywiz for the Mac for details about the features, pricing, and launch date.
Price: $24.99, exclusively on the Mac App Store
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later
Developer: Silverwiz
Looking Back
Now that we’ve covered the newer additions, let’s take a look at what has changed or improved for the older batch of finance apps for the Mac.
MoneyWell
Moneywell, the popular envelope-style budgeting app, is now one of the most recommended finance apps in the industry. It’s got a shiny new icon, a slick interface design, faster synching, and is fully operational on OS X Lion. There’s a wide range of new features as well, such as event-based budgeting, interactive reports, smart filtering, and many more. Read how Moneywell works in this in-depth review.
Price: $49.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit
Developer: No Thirst Software
Money
Money 4 by Jumsoft has improved with new features and a redesigned user interface to make it easy for you to track and manage your personal finances. You can now schedule transactions using Smart Scheduler, track investments, create and plan budgets, and track different accounts all in one window. This is the personal finance app I use on the Mac, and the one I’ve stuck with the longest.
Price: $38.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit
Developer: Jumsoft
Squirrel
Squirrel has also grown in popularity and had a a recent review published on Mac.Appstorm. The app tackles personal finance management through a straightforward interface design and easy-to-use features, such as budget tracking, scheduling transactions, and creating progress reports.
Price: $24.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later, 64-bit
Developer: Axel Péju
Moneydance
Moneydance 2011 continues to be a great finance application for the Mac. The app offers online banking wherein you can download transactions automatically as well as send online payments to recognized financial institutions. Other features, such as calendars, reminders, and account graphing are also available on Moneydance. A significant change since we last looked at the app is a $10 price increase from its old price of $39.99.
Price: $49.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Developer: The Infinite Kind Limited
iCash SE
Lastly, we have iCash or iCash SE, a finance app with a whole range of features to track and manage your financial accounts. As it is feature-rich and multi-purpose, iCash can also be used for small businesses, associations, and the self-employed. The recent update (pushed out last April 24, 2012) offers various fixes and new features, so you might want to check it out.
Price: $49.99
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
Developer: Max Programming, S.L.
How Do You Manage Your Money?
We’ve seen a couple of great Mac apps for personal finance management. Some have improved over the years while others have take on different strategies and approaches to managing money.
This goes to show that there is a thriving need for great finance software for the Mac. Hopefully, we’ll see plenty more that can help us manage our finances effectively.