There are plenty of budgeting apps available to Mac users, and it can be difficult to find the right app for you. We spent six months testing and using the top contenders for features and usability, and we think iBank is the app which will best serve people’s budgeting and finance management needs.
When I was younger, my approach to budgeting was placing cash in different envelopes until I’d saved enough for whatever I wanted. As I grew older, my budget and my responsibilities grew, too. I needed a better system to track my income, savings, cash flow, and investments. One day I sat down and created a budget that covered everything from expenses and investments to my recurring monthly bills.
Over the past six months we’ve been examining and using each of the best and most popular Mac budgeting apps in search to find the one that best enables you to wrangle your financial life into a more manageable system.
There are thousands of budgeting and finance apps available in both the Mac App Store and on developer websites. We used top app reviews and rankings on the Mac App Store, as well as buzz and word-of-mouth reviews to settle on a list of budgeting apps which we believe best represent the gamut of budgeting apps available today. Our goal was to find the very best budgeting app for the Mac (with iOS versions and online versions included when applicable).
Budgeting is personal. Everyone has their own system. What works for me may not work for you. Despite this, our systems all contain the same basic elements — elements which we track monthly in order to better understand our financial picture.
While our systems may be different, there are certain features we all require of a budgeting app:
the ability to add transactions quickly and seamlessly
the ability to sync with bank and credit card statements
the ability to review accounts and financial status at a glance
These are all standard features in any budgeting app, the difference is in how they’re implemented.
The Candidates
iBank 5
You Need a Budget 4
iFinance
Mint
Moneydance
MoneyWell
Quicken Essentials for Mac
Quicken 2015 for the Mac
Mvelopes
Ready for Zero (debt specialization)
Intuit’s Quicken and Mint products need no introduction. The others: iBank 5, iFinance, Moneydance, MoneyWell, and You Need a Budget 4 are also well-known Mac apps. The last two apps, Mvelopes and Ready for Zero, are online-only speciality apps, the latter of which focuses exclusively on paying down debt.
The testing and review process
Since these apps are all very different, yet contain most of the same features, we sought to understand what made the apps stand out from each other — what did they do well or struggle with? What was the experience using them like? Which app or apps did we immediately seek out when we needed to check our finances? These are all questions we sought to answer during our testing phase.
We spent hours working with different apps over the course of six months in order to test apps and determine which one we felt was the best choice for the most users. We tested these apps in various ways — some with our personal financial data, others with sample data — and worked with each of them until we determined which we felt worked best for the majority of users.
During our tests, we manually added individual transactions, imported and exported bulk transactions from banks and credit card companies, reviewed our scheduled payments, and used the apps for our common, month-to-month budgeting needs. We compared basic features and more complex ones. How long did an app take to import a month’s worth of transactions? How easily could we edit multiple transactions? How many different ways could we display our expenditures? What was the process of using the app like?
Since all budgeting apps have the same basic features — such as transaction lists, categorization, and reports on income and expenses — we also looked beyond the feature set to usability as one of the best ways to test an app’s worthiness. For instance: How easy was is to navigate through an app? How quickly could we create a new account from scratch? What errors did we encounter in testing? Which apps had quirky features and how did they affect those apps? These are all questions of usability and, although they don’t come to mind as often as feature related questions, they are nonetheless important. If an app is frustrating and difficult to use, you’ll use it less often, which is a bit beside the point for those wanting a clear understanding of their income and expenses and those who want to manage their money wisely.
In the end, we’re recommending two budgeting apps. Our reasoning is simple: in testing it became apparent that different apps excel at different things. Our top pick, iBank, does everything well for all users. Our runner up, You Need a Budget (YNAB), specializes in teaching users how to develop and maintain a proper budget, which is especially valuable to users who are managing their finances for the first time.
Here, then, is our review of iBank and YNAB, along with overviews of each of the other apps we tested.
These apps are our choices. You may find that a different app works best for you. The important thing is to test drive the apps to learn what you like and don’t like about them. Nearly all of these apps come with free trials, so there’s really no reason not to wade into the waters and test the various apps.
The Best Personal Finance App: iBank
iBank 5 is our favorite budgeting and personal finance app for OS X. It does everything well: it’s easy to use, has plenty of features for managing and tracking your finances, has a long history of consistent updates, and has iPhone and iPad companion apps. And, most importantly, iBank makes managing your finances easy and relatively hassle-free.
Let’s take a look at iBank 5 and explain why we give it top marks.
Whether you need to track a bank account, a credit card, or an investment portfolio, everything has its place. All of the familiar features are here: importing transactions, reconciling accounts, budgeting for future expenditures, editing multiple transactions en masse, etc.
Set up and view your budgets quickly and easily.
The Register screen shows all of your recent transactions.
iBank supports importing and syncing using three methods: direct download (OFX, which may require a monthly fee from your financial institution), web download (through an in-app browser window), and IGG Software’s own “Direct Access” which includes unlimited syncing between accounts and devices for a $40 annual fee.
If you prefer to sync monthly statements manually you can do that, too. Although, with the number of syncing options, you’ll save a good bit of time and hassle by selecting one of the options above.
The software includes a feature to automatically download transactions directly from your bank’s website, although a few of us were never able to get this feature to work in testing. I thought it may be the fault of my small, local bank, but one of our testers has an account with a larger national bank and also had trouble getting the app to automatically sync with his bank accounts. I did, however, add past transactions using the import tool quickly and easily. Once you’ve synced your accounts you can easily add or edit transactions, reconcile accounts, adjust recurring monthly payments accordingly, and the like.
Keep track of your recurring and scheduled payments and transactions.
Once you have all of your accounts in sync, you’ll want to review the data from time to time. While iBank offers default month and year in review reports, the app really shines when you dig deeper and generate a report using one of 11 templates. These templates generate reports on everything from debt/liability, to investments, forecasting, etc. When you generate a report, you also have the option of limiting the report to one account or expanding it across your entire portfolio.
iBank includes intuitive, simple templates for reports.
The investments report is one of the many templates available.
The further you dig into iBank, the more you notice all of the little details that show just how much time IGG Software spent on this application. iBank includes everything from currency exchange rates to a check printing setup. You may not need these features, but it’s nice to know that they are there.
The iBank 5 Mac app offers robust features in an easy to use package that takes the guesswork out of your finances. The same can be said for its $5 companion iPhone app and $20 iPad app as well. The iBank iOS apps sync with their Mac counterpart using either Bonjour WiFi or WebDAV Server. A sync between my MacBook Air and my iPad Air took seconds over Bonjour WiFi. (The apps have a standalone mode, too, in case you want to use iBank iOS version without syncing changes over to your Mac version.)
You’ll find nearly everything in the iOS apps that you’d find in the Mac app with several exceptions, most notably reports, due to the differences in the ways that Mac and iOS apps store data.
In testing, I found the iOS apps to work well for checking accounts and transactions. I was able to add transactions manually, too, although I prefer the cleaner look of the Mac “add transaction” area than the iOS “add transaction” screen which is somewhat cluttered by comparison. This is nitpicking, though — the differences are so minor that the experience of switching between apps is more or less the same. The feeling of switching off between Mac and iOS apps is so easy that it is a testament to how well both pieces of software work, both in tandem and on their own.
iBank makes budgeting easier. It offers top notch features, a plethora of customizable options to tailor the app to your needs, and iOS apps that complement the core Mac app. iBank is the total package and a worthy investment to anyone seeking to improve their budgeting, and that’s why it is our first choice among a group of other strong contenders.
Our Second Choice: You Need a Budget 4
Our second choice, You Need a Budget (YNAB), is an excellent option for anyone who is new to budgeting, wants to better understand how to plan and organize their finances, or who simply needs some coaching on getting their budget wrangled.
As its name implies, You Need a Budget 4 helps users create a budget (or get an existing budget in order) by walking them through the various steps of budgeting: planning recurring bills, allocating funds accordingly, and planning so that this month’s income goes towards next month’s expenditures and so on.
YNAB’s spending report broken down into categories.
That isn’t to say that YNAB is only for beginners because it isn’t. Its features work well for all users but especially for beginning budgeters. YNAB educates its users on budgeting and encourages them to put that knowledge into action. This method of turning education into action is what helped YNAB stand out to us during testing and is the primary reason why it is our second choice today.
The process of setting up your bank, credit card, and other accounts takes only a few minutes, and there’s a setup wizard guiding you every step of the way. While you set up your accounts, you’ll notice one important thing about YNAB: it does not offer real-time transaction syncing. In short, this means that you’ll likely want to download your latest transactions at least once a week to ensure that you’re up to date. The omission of real time transaction syncing and importing is a surprising one, but it’s something the team behind YNAB has intentionally left out because a big part of the philosophy behind YNAB is that you are mindful and attentive to every single transaction.
The import process for YNAB is incredibly easy.
The premise behind YNAB is simple: you allocate this month’s funds to next month’s payments with an eye toward the long road ahead every step of the way. As an example, I have an insurance bill due in July. It’s a hefty annual bill and I know I’m going to have to save monthly over 12 months. Instead of simply scrounging around to pay the first month’s bill in July, I can allocate money now by placing it in the car insurance folder — this will allow me to set those funds aside and “give them a job to do,” as the YNAB developers state throughout the app’s documentation.
This is the main budget overview screen.
Every aspect of YNAB’s design is geared toward helping users allocate transactions quickly, either en masse via the categories feature or individually via the transaction review feature. Users can also flag an individual transaction and tell the app to flag all future transactions from this payee with the same category, etc. The recurring/scheduling payments feature isn’t new, but, as with the rest of the app, its implementation in YNAB is simple and easy to use.
Advanced transaction edits, like splitting payments, are painless in YNAB.
You Need a Budget features a plethora of educational resources to explain the budgeting process and solid features to put those resources into action. It is a unique combination that really works. While some users may find YNAB to be overly simplified, it remains a great choice for anyone seeking to strengthen their understanding of the ins and outs of budgeting, especially if they’re desperate to try something new after years of struggling and failing to maintain a proper budget.
Budgeting 101
Despite the thousands of books and blogs dedicated to the task, when you get down to it, budgeting is quite personal — it’s just you and your money. If you’re fortunate, you’ve already developed a tried and true system which works for you. You plan for the future, the rainy days, and you save, save, save. Yet many of us struggle to find a system that works for us. Budgeting can be one of the most stressful aspects of financial planning, especially if you already feel overwhelmed as the bills pile up.
We first wanted to set some budgeting basics, some ground rules by which we could determine what an app should and shouldn’t do. We asked Andrew Carroll, CFO of NCH Wealth Advisors and a CPA in California, to help us define budgeting and what he believes a budgeting app should do.
The Sweet Setup: Do you recommend that people use a budgeting app to manage their finances?
Andrew Carroll: Absolutely. Budgeting is all about data. The better your data, the better your decisions. Spending time collecting and processing data, however, does not add much value. Let the computers do that work.
TSS: What advice would you give someone budgeting for the first time?
AC: Double your expected expenses. You spend a lot more money than you think you do.
From another perspective: Don’t worry about getting the numbers perfect, especially right out the gate. The fact that you did ANYTHING is good. This is just like exercise. You cannot expect to be a hard body CrossFit hero because you spent all day Saturday working out. Being a master at something requires that you build a habit of doing it all the time. There is no shortcut to 10,000 hours. So spend a little time, each week, and build the habit. Before you know it, you will have an awesome grip on how the money in your world works.
TSS: What, if any, differences exist between budgeting and financial planning?
AC: HUGE difference. Budgeting is about your income and expenses, or inflows and outflows. It is all about managing your personal income statement.
Financial planning, primarily, is about managing your balance sheet. How do we deal with our existing assets and liabilities to maximize our net worth. Budgeting becomes an input for financial planning since “profit” (or money earned over what you spent) becomes savings, which should be directed into one of your assets or to one of your liabilities as per the financial plan.
TSS: What is the most misunderstood aspect of budgeting?
AC: That the point of budgeting is to get all the numbers accounted for. It’s not.
My favorite mantra at my office, which, ask my staff, I repeat ad naseum, is “It’s not about the numbers.” Which is an odd thing to say in an office full of number crunchers, right? But it gets right to the heart of the issue. If you think the purpose of budgeting is to make sure that all the numbers get in their proper box, you missed the point. The point of budgeting is to understand, generally, how your money is being spent and where it’s going. You probably only need 90 – 95% accuracy in your budgeting to get a good idea of where the money went.
The point of budgeting is to get information — information that you can act on and make good choices with.
TSS: How have free apps like Mint influenced public perception when it comes to budgeting?
AC: I would answer this two ways, the optimist and the “realist”:
Optimist: People now realize that, and this is not exclusive to budgeting per se, any activity that used to be cumbersome because of the data manipulation involved, is no longer so. Budgeting apps, and our internet connected world, has allowed people to do more because they remove those data manipulation burdens.
Realist: As a general rule, people are pretty dumb when it comes to money. They tend to make emotional decisions and let their behaviors be guided by psychological factors, not data-driven factors. That was true 100 years ago when we had no computers and will continue to be true 100 years from now when we fill in our budgeting apps by blinking our eyes. People will always be people.
TSS: What features do you believe are most important to a budgeting app?
AC: Importing. The second most import would be importing. and third? The ability to import cleanly and easily.
If you can’t give the app the username and password for all your bank and credit card accounts and have it go scoop the data for you, don’t bother with it. All you have done is make budgeting a data entry job for yourself and you will fail at it because no one likes doing data entry.
TSS: How do budgeting / accounting apps help people when it’s time to do taxes?
AC: If your return is a normal W-2 only return, not much. But that is because we don’t need much data from you.
If you have a business, a little bit of work each week means taxes are a breeze…just ask @inkdmn. He does a little work here and there and at year end we did his corporate and personal tax return in 40 minutes flat. Left us time for lunch and beers. Which would you rather have? Lunch and beers, or a two-hour tax appointment?
TSS: What, if any, budgeting apps do you use on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac?
AC: I don’t have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But I run my personal finances on the new QuickBooks online. The new version is pretty slick and I enjoy using it a lot! Personally, I would not like or recommend a phone-based budgeting app. It makes the budgeting process a passive, when-I-get-around-to-it thing that fills in time. Going back to my answer about the misconceptions of budgeting, I think that you should do it purposefully. Sit down at your computer for 20 minutes a week and update your stuff. Be present while you are doing it, be thinking about it, be seeing what is happening and thinking about it. I will say that there is no reason it should not be web-based. You can be purposeful a lot of places.
TSS: What resources would you recommend to people looking to improve their budgeting habits?
AC: The single best resource is your time and attention. 20 minutes a week from you will make a bigger impact than any other app, program, service, or professional.
With that being said, I recommend whatever app, service, or idea helps you spend that 20 minutes and build that habit.
As Carroll says, budgeting is too often a “when-I-get-around-to-it thing,” something that is left at the end of a to do list rather than something done with a purpose. This concept of convenience, of saving time in the long run by doing a little bit of work each week, is one which we used to test each of the apps in our field. In the end, budgeting is personal. Your system may work well for you but not for me. That’s okay. The trick is to strike the right balance between features, usability, and convenience until you find the right app for your needs.
Brief reviews of the other budgeting apps
Although iBank and YNAB are our top choices, we reviewed many different apps during our testing period. These apps ranged from the familiar (Quicken, Mint) to the less familiar and highly specialized (Mvelopes, Ready for Zero). Each of these apps may be just the app you need for budgeting. Each app had its own set of strengths and weaknesses, but below you’ll find an overview of our overall impression of each of these apps.
Mint
Intuit’s Mint.com brand is perhaps the most ubiquitous financial planning tool since Quicken, which, of course, Intuit also owns. Mint offers budgeting in an easy to read, visually striking series of charts and graphs. All you have to do is sync your bank accounts, and therein lies our biggest frustration with Mint. In testing, it worked well when it synced properly, but we noticed occasional hiccups. Despite those, it’s a fine choice for anyone seeking a clearer picture of their finances on the go.
iFinance
iFinance, from Germany developers Synium Software, is now in its third iteration. The app feels like a third version, too, with a strong feature set with attention paid to even the smallest details. Take, for example, the app’s front-and-center placement of each transaction’s effect on your daily balance — iFinance lists each transaction’s effect on your balance above the transaction. While the same information is available in any budgeting app, iFinance shows how important placement can be since the information is now top of mind.
iFinance users can also enjoy the benefits of iFinance Mobile, a $1.99 companion iOS app. The app worked well in testing, but I found myself using the Mac version more often because I found it easier to enter transactions in the Mac app than in the iOS app.
While iFinance offers a strong feature set, it does fall short in one key area: support for online banking. The app only supports online banking for users with accounts at German banks that utilize that nation’s Financial Transaction Services (FinTS) protocol. The lack of full online banking support is disappointing, but, to be fair, iFinance is far from the only budgeting app without it.
iFinance is a strong option for budgeting on the Mac. It is highly customizable and takes a slightly different approach to displaying data at times which results in an interesting and worthy option for any user.
MoneyWell
MoneyWell by No Thirst Software is the name of both a robust OS X budgeting application and an iPad application, the latter of which functions both as a fully-featured standalone app and as a companion app to its OS X counterpart. (Note that the developer also makes MoneyWell Express, an iPhone specific transactions-on-the-go app which we are not reviewing here.) No matter if you choose the OS X or the iPad version, MoneyWell is a fine choice for anyone looking to tighten their budget.
MoneyWell’s application icon is a bucket, a theme which can be found throughout the application. MoneyWell asks users to classify their transactions based on which bucket it falls under and, while simple, it does make tracking everything easier. MoneyWell pays special attention to paying down debt (developer No Thirst Software even has a separate $5 Debt Quencher OS X app) and encourages users to use “proactive budgeting” to give every dollar a purpose in your budget.
Mvelopes:
Finicity’s Mvelopes is a web-based service that aids users in budgeting and paying down debt. A companion iOS app (and Android and even Google Glass apps) make managing your budget on the go even easier. Like the next app in our list, Ready for Zero, Mvelopes is a free service that covers the basics, but also features two additional premium paid tiers for users who require even more features.
The free tier of Mvelopes limits users to four accounts and 25 “spending envelopes,” which are a virtual version of the old tried-and-true method we’ve all used. These limitations are actually quite generous and most users will likely be able to handle the basics within the free tier. The two paid tiers, Premium and Money4Life Coaching respectively, support unlimited accounts and spending evelopes in addition to a bevy of downloadable resources and, in the case of the latter option, a 1-on-1 coaching program.
Mvelopes’s free tier is more than enough for most users, though. In testing, I found both the website and the iOS app to be fast and easy to use while offering me plenty of information at my fingertips. Mvelopes is free to try and, though it lacks the full complement of options available in Mac apps like iBank and You Need a Budget, it does more than enough to help users track their day to day spending.
Ready for Zero
Ready for Zero is a free service that assists users in paying down debt through a free iOS app (and website). The app tracks your debt on various credit cards. Ready for Zero tracks your bills, too, and acknowledges each time you reach a debt paydown milestone — 50% of your balance paid off, for example.
Ready for Zero offers a basic free plan and a monthly paid “Plus” version that includes additional features for automating and managing payments and a monthly Vantage 3 credit score from Experian.
Ready for Zero was born out of the Y Combinator startup program, although Co-Founders Rod Ebrahimi and Ignacio Thayer admit that they initially entered the program with a completely different idea altogether.
Despite not being a full-fledged budgeting app, Ready for Zero is a fine choice for anyone looking to track their credit card debt, especially since its iOS app (and email notifications) offer quick reminders on bill due dates, paydown milestones, and the like. Ready for Zero does one thing and it does it well.
Quicken
Quicken needs no introduction. It is one of the most popular finance and budgeting apps today, used by millions of people both personally and professional on a daily basis. Odds are you’ve used Quicken before in either a personal or professional capacity.
Quicken remains one of the most popular budgeting and financial apps worldwide for good reason. Yet in testing the other, smaller apps, we came away impressed with the many ways independent Mac developers gave a similar Quicken experience and surpassed it in many ways. That’s not to say Quicken lacks anything in particular, but rather is meant as a complement to the Mac developers whose applications we profiled here.
Earlier this month, Intuit released Quicken 2015 for the Mac. This latest edition of the popular financial software includes expanded portfolio support, a free companion iOS app that can be used to “snap and store” receipts while on the go for later upload, and an all new interface. In an announcement on its website, Intuit includes a list of other features which did not make the shipped version of Quicken 2015, encouraging users to vote for features they’d like to see added in the future.
Dan Moren at Macworld covers more of the details about this new version of Quicken:
Highlights of the new version are a simplified interface designed ground-up for the Mac and new features related to keeping track of investment portfolios. The latter allows for users to create Schedule D tax reports for capital gains, making things easy when April 15 rolls around.
Alas, the long-awaited update has mostly upset users and left them frustrated with Intuit’s treatment of the Mac version of the app as a second-class citizen.
Further Reading
Notable Finance Blogs:
CNN Money
I Will Teach You to be Rich
The Motley Fool
Our Freaking Budget
Budgets are Sexy
For help getting out of debt and getting off the ground with budgeting and investing, we also highly recommend Total Money Makeover, The Intelligent Investor, If You Can, and Money for Something.
Conclusion
Budgeting isn’t easy. It takes work. Thankfully, we live in an age where apps make that work easier for us. Budgeting is made easier thanks to the impressive array of Mac apps we’ve profiled here.
The true measure of the value of a budgeting application may be in its usability — the amount of time it saves you and how easily it integrates into your workflow. Every app manages transactions, payments, reports, and summaries, yet each app does so in a slightly different way, just as we approach budgeting in slightly different ways.
So whether you use iBank or You Need a Budget, Mint or MoneyWell, remember that having the right app is only half of the equation. The other half is up to you.
If you choose iBank 5, then check out the companion iOS apps for tracking your finances when away from the the computer.
iBank for iPhone: $4.99
iBank for iPad: $19.99