Finance tracking/budget tracking apps?

At the moment for simple logging (and sync between my iPhone and MacBook) is ok.
Can you explain further your strong dissatisfaction ? I’m curious now!

Just done a final backup and deleted MoneyWiz from my devices.

There’s things I like and dislike about both MoneyWiz and Money Pro, but the lack of updated WatchOS app’s a bit of a deal breaker for me with MoneyWiz. With MoneyPro I can do my shopping and record the transaction from my Watch without having to take my phone out. I can with MoneyWiz as well, but the Watch app’s so slow you’re not doing it in under two minutes. And I’ve also found a bug which the developer refuses to acknowledge where after entering a transaction on the Watch, it will break synchronisation on the iPhone. The fix to resolve this is to uninstall and reinstall the app. Aside from the obvious annoyance, there’s also 3 other problems with this:

  1. Having to recustomize the app (this isn’t a huge problem, there’s a number of settings which are saved and synced back from the MoneyWiz file).
  2. If you don’t realise sync’s broken for a few days, you then have to reenter those transactions on another device.
  3. Because of the way syncing works, they use their own backend for syncing the main database, but receipts are synced using DropBox, it’s really cumbersome to get all your receipts synchronised, especially over a slow internet connection (you have to set both your device settings and MoneyWiz so they never lock while it downloads them all).

Money Pro’s not without its faults though:

  1. MoneyWiz will let me drag and drop a PDF receipt and it will automatically convert to a jpeg. It also optmizes jpegs automatically for reducing file sizes. With MoneyPro there’s an extra step of converting to jpeg
  2. Money Pro treats Payees as an optional, secondary consideration. I’m used to treating them as important as a category, this mindset might change in time though. When I do enter a transaction on my Watch, I have to go and enter the payee on one of my other devices later on.
  3. And finally, this is a really seemingly small thing that is actually a real problem. With MoneyWiz, you can set how long before it should ask for a security code or TouchID. I set it to 1 minute, if I’m reconciling on my iPhone, this allows me to switch between MoneyWiz and the ANZ banking app without having to authenticate each time, it’s really useful since ANZ recently updated their app with the same feature. Money Pro locks the database out instantly.

Banktivity (formerly iBank) looks good as well, but it’s $90 for the Mac app alone. I’m not paying that for it.

1 Like

I still think for the average person, Chronicle is all thats needed. If you want to budget, you need to be looking at where your money will be going, not where its already gone. I have two bank accounts. At the beginning of the year I look at last year’s regular expenses, work out how much I need to transfer to a secondary account to cover those each fortnight and thats the annual budget taken care of. Whatever is left in the main account is mine to do with whatever I want. If you want to save for a particular thing, you have a third account into which you deposit a particular sum each fortnight/month/whatever.

Seriously, it just doesn’t have to be that complicated, and it removes the need to record every darned transaction.

I looked at it. That iconography was an instant turnoff.

Hm… I was more concerned with functionality, myself. i dont know why he’s changed the icons, they were smaller and you could choose your own (from a list). I dont see a way to do that now.

I recently found Spendee, after frantically searching for a personal expense tracker due to the limitations of my previous app.

I have different requirements: I literally only want to put in my daily expenses/incomes, so I can see where my money goes and how much I spend/earn on any given day. I don’t have a set, recurring budget, since my income varies greatly depending on the shifts I work.

I use Pocket Smith which I find pretty good. There’s an annual subscription but for me it’s worth it. https://www.pocketsmith.com

I like Money Pro, but I’m not loving Money Pro. But it has made me realise how much I’ve grown to dislike MoneyWiz.

There’s a new version of Money by Jumsoft due out any day now (finally). So I might give that a try.

I still find that Chronicle is the best app to keep tabs on where your money is going. I fail to see any use in plugging in every little expense you have, unless you are on a company expense account or have similar needs to that, in terms of work, if you are a freelancer or have your own business. For the rest of us ordinary people, it just isnt necessary If you know where and when your bills are coming, you should know whats left, and you should be able to save as well.

I do a budget review in January each year, work out how much I need to put into the working account for bills every fortnight, and then whatever is left in the other account (the main one, where my pension gets deposited) is mine to do with as I wish. At the end of the fortnight, whatever is left in the account gets moved to the other. There’s never much, a pension isnt much to live on. But it works, and if I spent $2 on a pack of gum, who cares… really.

1 Like

That works for you. That workflow won’t really work for me. My personal and work life’s far too sporadic for that.

Well, good luck finding the perfect app…

Back to the drawing board, I like Money Pro better than MoneyWiz, but I still don’t love it. I might stick with it, I might not.

Jumsoft have promised a new version of Money in the coming weeks so there’s that (but they’ve been promising that for years).

Given up on MoneyPro. Reconciliation and scheduled transactions are too hard to manage. Hoping the new version of Jumsoft Money (due out 29th) ticks the boxes.