Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

iBank 5+ was unnecessarily renamed Banktivity on 26 January 2016. Nevertheless, it continues as a highly refined, full-featured personal finance package for the Mac OS that has gone through 23 updates since its initial release. It is the most capable and reliable personal finance software for the Mac OS, with a feature set comparable to Quicken for Windows (but far ahead of Quicken for Mac), and comparable also to software releases for Mac OS by Moneydance, SEE Finance, GnuCash and MyMoney (which all also are far superior to Quicken for Mac). Neither ongoing attacks on iBank/Banktivity by unsubstantiated, silly, misinformed, lazy, and fake negative reviews, nor Intuit's releases of Quicken for Mac 2015 and 2016 justify changing this assessment. Quicken for Mac 2016 is the third effective downgrade of the Quicken for Mac line since August 2006. Despite farcical bulk boosting by reviewers who never adequately explain their high ratings—some of whom look like fakes—Quicken for Mac 2016 remains the *least capable product* in the entire current field of personal finance software. My following review shows, in detail, why Banktivity is the best software in its class and why negative reviews of it should be read skeptically. The current Banktivity 5.6.9 is an evolution, not a revolutionary change, from its mature and polished predecessor, iBank 4. Therefore, many earlier iBank reviews rated most helpful by Amazon customers, including my "Powerful, flexible personal finance software for the Mac: a new leader in this field for Mac users (updated), (November 21, 2012 www.amazon.com/review/R2IRQV02AQOFG9/ ) remain relevant assessments of the broad range of iBank features. Other top-rated detailed and informative reviews remaining relevant include S. L. Patterson's "A 'Quicken for Windows' Competitor for Mac, (December 15, 2010 www.amazon.com/review/RW78KSJI15NW8/ ); Carrie W.'s "Worthy successor to Quicken 2007 for Mac" (November 29, 2010 www.amazon.com/review/R24NH28E9A2I3Z/ ); and Carrie's "iBank4 is a good substitute for anyone looking for a Quicken alternative on Mac," (July 15, 2013 www.amazon.com/review/R99YRZEC7RZOI/ ). Personal finance software requires functionality, reliability and versatility to be a financial life support system. It needs many features, ease of daily use, and rock-solid reliability for its many important and sometimes complex tasks of financial record-keeping, retrieval and analysis, budgeting and tax planning and reporting. The excellence of Banktivity in providing this necessary functionality, reliability and versatility is not a matter merely of taste or opinion: it is a tally of what Banktivity can do and competing products cannot; the features and support it has and that competitors lack. So no trustworthy or helpful review of this class of software reasonably can be short or expressed in subjective terms. The top features of Banktivity 5+ which make it a superior product are: * A logically organized, intuitive interface, starting with an informative home screen. This shows in one glance drill-down lists of user accounts, websites, reports, and budgets; controls to manage bill payments, categories, securities, transaction templates, scheduled transactions, import rules and synch settings; current balances; current net worth summary; upcoming scheduled transactions; and a register window that defaults to the last account, report or other source list item opened. * Support for file exchange with other financial software, including ability to import QIF, OFX, QFX and CSV files, or via IGG's Direct Access subscriber service; and to export its data in QIF or TXF format. * Vast range of online account data download and new bill pay options are standard features at no extra charge. People who want even more can subscribe to IGG Software's Direct Access service for additional charges (which those of us who don't want or need such services do not have to pay for). * Multiple currencies. Cash or bank accounts are easily set up in foreign currencies, with online downloadable exchange rates which all update automatically on startup (default), or with a single mouse click on a menu command or button. Accounts like credit cards that you might use for foreign currency transactions while travelling, or online shopping, easily can record both the home currency and foreign currency amounts—automatically calculating the effective exchange rate of each transaction based on the difference. (Quicken for Mac users pleaded for at least a decade with Intuit to replicate similar multiple-currency features from its Windows products, but have been ignored to the present day. Moneydance, SEE Finance and MyMoney—all three, proprietary software—and the freeware open source GnuCash, are alternative Mac OS personal finance applications with this basic feature which Quicken for Mac lacks.) * Reconciliation of bank and credit card accounts with statements is fast and easy. If the start and finish amounts in statements match those on corresponding dates in recorded account data, one click on the dropdown menu options, Automatically reconcile>Cleared transactions (when the "Cleared" function has been correctly used between account statements), or Automatically reconcile>All transactions, and you're done. * Drag-and-drop works easily and intuitively for some uses, including changing the order of transactions on the same date (not even the excellent Moneydance has this handy feature, which highlights the extent of iBank integration and compliance with the Mac OS). Tables in iBank reports can be dragged and dropped into Microsoft Excel, where they instantly appear with the same column and row divisions, but with all the extra formatting, analysis and graphing power of Excel. * Payee, note and memo fields hold much more text than Quicken for Mac 2007—so much more I can't even determine whether there is a limit. (I have tested this by pasting 900 characters of text into each field of a test transaction without iBank complaining.) This makes it easy to record full payee names and addresses, and detailed transaction descriptions and notes. * Foreign language characters - from accented European characters to Cyrillic and Chinese characters—can be entered in payee, note and memo fields, because (unlike Quicken for Mac 2007) Banktivity is fully compatible with the excellent built-in foreign language support of the Mac OS. * Invoices, receipts, correspondence, digital photos or other documentation (one file per transaction but multi-page as necessary) can be attached in PDF or other formats to individual transactions. * The built-in calculator, with simulated paper tape, under the Tools menu—from which results can be more conveniently copied and pasted as Banktivity transaction figures than from a desktop utility calculator. * Tallies and simple mathematical formulas can be entered to calculate a result in deposit and withdrawal amount fields. * Reports including tax reports, investment portfolio statements, and balance sheets, can be generated on a range of standard templates, or with customized dates, included account and category content. * Clicking on any single-line category total in a report—for example, "credit card", "utilities", "misc expenses"—will instantly open a detailed full list of transactions for that category. This can be edited on the fly, if necessary, and will instantly update the related report. * Most reports, except Category Reports and Investment Summary Reports, include pie and bar charts which are interactive by graph segment for drill-down reporting. For example, click on any month bar in the bar graph of an annual Income & Expense Report, and a report in the same format will instantly appear, including graphs, just for that month. * Scheduled transactions include an option to automatically create an event and reminder in iCal. If the transaction is later edited, for instance, with a different amount, this updates the iCal event too. * Banktivity for Mac companion applications for iOS, Banktivity for iPad, Banktivity for iPhone, and Banktivity Investor, can be synchronized with the Mac-based main application to extend its record-keeping, information retrieval and investment tracking capabilities to portable devices. * The makers of Banktivity, IGG Software Inc., maintain the highest standards of product and customer support. This is self-evident in the issue of 23 maintenance updates of iBank/Banktivity with numerous bug fixes and improvements, free to registered users, since the first release in mid-November 2013. (This totally blows away Intuit's non-performance with Quicken for Mac. IGG Software maintenance of Banktivity is superior not only to several other worthy financial software products for Mac, but to *all* software for Mac. In contrast, my reviews of the three dismal Quickens for Mac of recent years may be read at http://www.amazon.com/review/R18R6HHP6PYNQ/ , http://www.amazon.com/review/R3RBWLK74B6EPJ/ , and http://www.amazon.com/review/RB8PUB93R2QVO/ .) The iBank 5/Banktivity developer blog notes have referred to a lot of changes under the hood, which I am unable to assess, except that the software certainly is very stable and well integrated with the latest macOS Sierra 10.12, as it was with all previous Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan Mac OS versions. I experimented with IGG Software's beta program over several weeks in November 2013. Immediately the full release was available on 21 November 2013, I switched my entire 65MB current working file (now 169MB), then containing 15 years of continuous financial data (now more than 17 years), from iBank 4 to iBank 5 without any problem. I note some users' reports of difficulties with importing QIF files from Windows to iBank 5. IGG Software has posted helpful detailed advice on preparing and importing Quicken Windows QIFs, under the topic, "Importing Your Quicken Data Into iBank 5", in the tutorials area of IGG's website. iBank 5+ introduced numerous improvements over iBank 4. The new feature of most value to my requirements was the new capacity to categorize investment income. This fixed one of the previous shortcomings of iBank reports: up to version 4, dividends and other such investment income did not appear in iBank's standard Income & Expenses report because they could not be given income categories. Investment income previously appeared only in the separate Investment Summary report. Investors in British Pound Sterling got a new feature in iBank 5+ which some users had raised as an issue in iBank 4. Inconsistencies in price feeds of UK stock quotes in pounds or pence now could be resolved via a simple new feature in Manage>Securities. Users check or uncheck a box labelled, 'This security is traded in pence', which now appears when setting up securities traded in GBP£. iBank 5 introduced new budgeting features that I do not regularly use, but that are obviously important in personal finance software. Other changes were relatively minor (e.g. cosmetic changes like greyed-out, resizable register icons, and move of the reconciliation button to the end of the transaction line). Such evolutionary rather than revolutionary improvement is to be expected with a well-developed application that already was best in its class in its previous version. It is a pity that iBank/Banktivity 5 has not included improvements to the range of standard reports, and customizable content, graphing and format of reports. This is low hanging fruit for future updates and versions. IGG has a track record of responsiveness to wishes of some of the iBank/Banktivity customer base for enhanced online features like bill pay and an even larger choice of financial institution downloads. Maybe these are priorities for users who don't like any of the work involved in comprehensive financial record-keeping; maybe transaction downloads are a one-off time saver for entering data in a new set of accounts. To me, as a user of Mac-based personal finance record-keeping almost every day since 1984/85, and traditional accounting practises longer than that, those features are mere nice-to-haves, not top priority for maintenance of personal financial accounts. Manual entry is a means both for being ahead of and of keeping check on financial institutions: relying on downloaded transactions surrenders personal control and oversight. Manual entry and editing is essential—in all personal finance recordkeeping software—for information which downloads cannot possibly provide, such as transaction distributions, splits, and cash in hand transactions. iBank/Banktivity has handy features to greatly reduce keying for manual entries—transaction templates and scheduled transactions—which also were improved from the very beginning of iBank 5. I have used online banking continuously since it first became available in the 1980s, originally as a dial-up Teletext service before the Internet. I always have been attracted to new technologies, and new and better ways of doing things. But the only iBank download functions I use, like, mostly trust, and consider indispensable, are Yahoo! Finance security quotes (stock prices), and foreign exchange rate downloads. The former is input for Banktivity’s excellent investment tracking; the latter for its excellent multiple currency capabilities. Anyone who thinks that personal finance recordkeeping can be entirely automated, and that personal finance recordkeeping software can or should do all the work for you: I am sorry to disillusion you—it is impossible to generate or to maintain by downloads alone full financial accounting of everything that happens in all classes of income and expenditure, assets and liabilities, and equity. Neither Banktivity nor any other personal finance software for any computer OS can do this. Even personal finance software users who are not trained accountants need to use some conventions of traditional accounting, read the software manual, and do some work, to make financial records useful, intelligible to accountants and finance professionals, and accurate for tax preparation, net worth, investment tracking and analysis, budgeting, and other practical uses. All financial recordkeeping, in iBank/Banktivity or any other system, requires work. It is a lifestyle commitment. Do the work, and you will achieve the desired results. The silliest criticism of iBank/Banktivity blames the software for consequences of user errors: for user deviation from necessary accounting standards; for user failure to read clear explanations in the user manual and tutorials; for user errors in chart of accounts configuration, data entry, reconciliation, and even elementary arithmetic. As grandpa used to say, "a bad workman always blames his tools". As computer geeks used to say, wisely, about how any good database can be screwed up by incorrect care and feeding, "garbage in, garbage out". Some reviews unreasonably blame Banktivity for third party factors: for bank online security measures, system failures, breaches or non-compliance with common download protocols, or other system maintenance and setup issues, for which Banktivity is entirely blameless. Reality check: Banktivity uses connection protocols valid for tens of thousands of banks and financial institutions around the world. People who expect financial software to have instant new code for connectivity changes individual banks make for such reasons as better online security are not asking for reasonable product support—they are demanding magic. Please do not be surprised that I have defended iBank/Banktivity against unreasonable or false, misleading and deceptive statements: as a continuous user of personal finance software since 1984/85—the entire history span of personal finance software in the Mac OS—and with 18 years of continuous, accurate data now in one Banktivity file, I have a strong interest and stake in the current status and continuation of this software as the best product in its class. I prefer never again to have to migrate my financial accounts to other software, because it is disruptive—although migrating to iBank was the easiest such process I have experienced. I have no association of any kind with the makers of Banktivity, IGG Software, except as a satisfied, paying customer. The several accusations against me to the contrary in review comments are plainly irrational or dishonest. As everyone can see, I am not uncritical of this software: I have a commitment to factual criticism, which naturally annoys people to whom facts are inconvenient. More fully customizable content and format of reports, and multiple criteria search functions, stand out as Banktivity’s most neglected core functions. Specifically what is most obviously still missing from report customization options is control over fonts; spacing; column, row and cell dimensions; page breaks; headers and footers; different graph types and editing of graphs; and whether pie and bar charts are included or not in some of the standard report templates. However, tables from Banktivity can be simply dragged and dropped onto an MS Excel page, where they will instantly appear with all the almost infinite re-formatting and extra analytical power of Excel; and Banktivity reports printed to Adobe PDFs can have text content (in tables only—not graph legends or headers) edited with Adobe Acrobat's text touchup tool, and can also use Acrobat's text boxes, comment and markup, page editing and other tools. This emphasizes the benefits of IGG Software's careful compliance with Mac OS X standards, and integration with other similarly compliant software. Banktivity sorely needs a global search and replace. One of the perennial problems of databases (personal finance software like Banktivity is a specialized database) is the accumulation of user entry errors or inconsistencies, such as inconsistencies in payee descriptions. For this reason, global search and replace is generally considered a basic feature in all databases. Yet, despite its growing sophistication, polish and features, Banktivity still lacks this basic feature in its version 5.6.9. Recent developer blog posts in IGG's website hint at major improvements soon in search functions. As I predicted in my first version of this review, silly, ignorant, misinformed, lazy, and fake negative reviews of iBank/Banktivity have continued—often, suspiciously, from people who have posted little else on Amazon, from sock puppet accounts, and having no clearer purpose than to keep the newest review spaces in Amazon filled with attacks on this excellent product which is far too good for its competition. Serious people who are customers for serious software like iBank/Banktivity clearly have the intelligence and critical faculties to see through, and ignore, such rubbish. The bad reviews have made the averaged Amazon review star ratings of personal finance software totally unreliable—but they cannot hide the significant fact that the top-rated most helpful reviews of iBank/Banktivity are *positive* reviews of three stars and above, while over on every version of Quicken for Mac for years all the top-rated most helpful reviews have been *negative*. Banktivity and its companion apps are for Mac OS and iOS only. Anyone for whom it is important to have a similar range of features, including multiple currencies, with cross-platform ability to work back and forth without conversion between Mac OS and Windows, should look at Moneydance. While I have tried both products, and respect and commend Moneydance, I prefer Banktivity. SEE Finance and MyMoney have excellent up-to-date feature sets for personal finance but have not yet demonstrated the support or maintenance track record of either Banktivity or Moneydance. The more that user needs lean towards business, enterprise and multi-user organizational profiles, the more likely it is that users should look at more expensive and more complicated software designed for business and corporate accounting, such as Intuit's Quickbooks and MYOB products (which lack multiple currency support now essential for personal finance software). The Mac version of the freeware open source GnuCash—which I have not yet made time to assess—offers some business-related functions as well as an up-to-date full set of personal accounting features. Whether upgrading at $29.99, or paying the full $59.99 as a new customer, Banktivity is great value for money. The price tag covers not only what the software can do immediately, but also IGG Software's exceptionally high standard of follow-on support and development. Over the three-year life of iBank/Banktivity 5, that has included numerous free downloadable updates, some with significant enhancements as well as bug fixes. As at 20 July 2016, IGG Software has released maintenance updates 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3, 5.0.4, 5.1, 5.1.1, 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.5, 5.5.1, 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.4, 5.6, 5.6.1, 5.6.2, 5.6.3, 5.6.4, 5.6.5 (with Banktivity name change), 5.6.6, 5.6.7, 5.6.8, and 5.6.9, as free downloads to registered iBank/Banktivity 5 users since initial release of version 5 on 19 November 2013. That is 23 (*twenty-three*!) updates in less than three years, with no extra charge to customers who have already paid for initial purchase. The many timely fixes and improvements in these updates can be read in the Banktivity Version History page on IGG's website. iBank version 5.2 was released simultaneously on 16 October 2014 with Apple's release of the major system software update, Mac OS X Yosemite; version 5.6.2 coincided with the release of Mac OS X El Capitan—emphasizing the maker IGG Software's careful and timely attention to compliance with Mac OS standards. Banktivity version 5.6.9 is as stable and well-integrated with macOS Sierra (10.12) as every other OS X version in which I have used its predecessors. IGG Software is only a small company, but its exemplary track record with iBank/Banktivity proves that it is a leader in quality, in meticulous product development, maintenance and support, and value for money, compared to the entire Mac software industry, not just personal finance. As some other boutique companies with niche Mac products have proven—most notably Leister Productions Inc., with its genealogical database Reunion, which has been continually updated and maintained in top form through 11 major version upgrades since 1985—biggest is not always best. I rate Banktivity 5+ as four, not five stars, only because of continuing limitations in reports and search functions. Really, I am nitpicking in denying Banktivity 5+ a full five stars. The product name change from iBank to Banktivity was unnecessary—IGG Software's arguments for the change are unconvincing, not at all compelling. The name change threw away the established brand recognition of iBank and probably just confuses new customers, but be assured that it is the same excellent software in a further refinement.