Comments on: iBank 3

By: Kevin L. Best

Kevin L. Best — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:53:58 +0000

I want to thank you for your review. I have used Quicken for thirteen years. I hate Quicken. I have the same amount of opened and closed accounts. I had troubles downloading my bank accounts Jan-July. Intuit said I had a problem with my data. Their server was not working.
I started my journey with Quicken on the Macintosh. I finally got Intuit to admit to me the Mac Quicken is not a re-write. Intuit took the PC program and modified the program. Half of the Mac Quicken does not work. Intuit told me I would have to go to the PC version if I wanted to use the full version. I purchased the full Quicken PC Inventory program. I and Intuit cannot get the program to work. I hope the i-Bank will handle stocks better then PC Quicken. Quicken likes to round off decimals displacing the stock amounts. By the way, Quicken does not support QIF files any longer. I think they stopped supporting this several years ago? Quicken will not see a QiF file. I am not sure what I will do with my spare time now that I do not have to call India. I should tell you about the time I was on the telephone for a unsolved problem for six hours. I think I hate Parallels as much as I hate Quicken. I have very good success with WM-ware Fusion.

By: Simdude

Simdude — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:28:38 +0000

I tried this application and could not even get it to import my qif data. After reading many reviews it seems iBank 2 was very promising, but the developer seems to have decided to try out a lot of new Apple technologies in this instead of deciding what would make the application better and more robust. I really wanted to like this application, but as the review says, unless you’re starting from scratch, this probably isn’t for you. I stick with Moneydance for now. Even though it’s java based, it is probably the best example of how well a java app can be written. It has a few minor quirks, but in the seven years I’ve been using it, it has never crashed or corrupted my data.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:35:37 +0000

I’ve convinced myself that I have to slug through the pain to try to use this application. I can’t give up yet. But, as a quiken user, this is very hard to do. It is so different from quicken. And it has some real nuisances. For example, you need to key in a full date. Try to change Oct 22 to Oct 2 and you cannot do it. You need to type 02 over the 22. Silly stuff like that which just makes it hard to use.

OK, I’ll slug through it. You’ve convinced me.

You wrote “One of the nicest ‘ooh ahh’ traits of iBank is its quite stunning graphs and charts.” I disagree (so far, with my limited knowledge). I can’t see this at all. Can anything other than pie charts be created? Can I get a stacked bar chart, by month? I could not find it. Perhaps it is there, but it is NOT easy to find. No, this feature is not easy to use at all, except for four or five canned pie charts. Quicken reporting seems far superior. But.. I will slug along to try to prove myself wrong. Why? Because I was a mac program! Quicken is about to lose my business forever if I can make this work.

Thanks for your review.

By: M Bookspan

M Bookspan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:12:39 +0000

I think you’ve overlooked some of the other problems with this application, including:

* Direct Connect (OFX download) support is sketchy at best.
* It has calculation issues with loans (mortgages) and transactions – this is a fundamental problem and impacts the accuracy of the data.
* It doesn’t handle billpay, although it can handle scheduled payments (although it is a little clunky).
* It doesn’t handle split transactions well and can cause additional miscalculations, especially with mortgage payments.
* The support for this product has been hit and miss. Go read the IGG Software forums.

By: S J McLean

S J McLean — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:32:19 +0000

I use Quicken Home and Business 2001 on my PC because I need to invoice clients – will iBank3 do that?