The Mac Money Apps That Quicken Should, Could Be, Pt. 1

Let’s talk money. Most of us don’t have enough of it. Most of us don’t know how much we don’t have or where it went.

Most of us have too much month left over at the end of our money. Many of us have had some financial management experience with Intuit’s Quicken. Sadly, many of us don’t have a good relationship with Quicken. Their on again, off again affair with Mac users is already legend.

We, the Mac user, still have a need to count and account for our money, so here’s a quick look at two popular Mac apps that surround Quicken’s feature set.

Count Money The Easy Way

There is no solace in the fact that Quicken abandoned Mac users back in 2007 and still haven’t brought back the features we know and love in the latest version.

So, my aim here is to sandwich Quicken Essentials (the latest) with an easy to use, practical money app, which would have made a nice Quicken Lite.

And, to offer an option beyond Quicken, which would have made a nice Quicken Ultra.

First, MoneyWell. It’s a rather simple and straightforward Mac money app that uses the envelope cash flow management system.

Envelope? Yeah, it’s a time-honored way to manage money. Take what you have, allocate it for specific expenses by stuffing it into an envelope.

MoneyWell uses digital envelopes, Spending Buckets, if you will, so you can see exactly where your money is going before it’s gone. Many of the basic financial management functions are there, of course.

Scheduled transactions, transaction and tax reports, spending plan, direct connect to your bank, split and memorized transactions, and so on. There’s a continual running balance so you can always match what’s on your checking account register.

Features, Simplified, Simply Easy

MoneyWell is a one window Mac app, so it’s merely a click to see your net worth, cash flow report (printable), and all transactions are completely editable (good way to back up and fix things). Yes, there’s Quicken-like eye candy– plenty of charts and graphs so you have a visual picture of your money.

As money management apps go, MoneyWell is Quicken Lite. That’s a good thing. Even better than Quicken, though, is the Dropbox sync capability (good for managing money on multiple Macs), and the iPhone version.

iPhone? It’s like keeping a record of your money transactions in your pocket, fully synced to your Mac.

Coin caveats? MoneyWell will import OFX, QFX and QIF files, so there’s some hope if you’re still running an antiquated version of Quicken that won’t make the journey to Mac OS X Lion. There’s just no button to click that easily imports all your old Quicken data, so, depending on you’ve used Quicken in the past, you and your money data may be out in the cold. New Quicken and many substitutes don’t import all the data from those years of financial management on a Mac.

One look at the Quicken web site tells you how much Intuit loves Mac users. The word Mac appears not at all. Fear not. There are other options. If MoneyWell makes for an attractive solution as a Quicken Lite, what of Quicken Ultra? A look at what Quicken would be if it grew up and became a responsible adult is here, in Part 2. Or, check the Top 10 Best Mac Money Apps To Replace Quicken now.