So nice to be able to stop using Windows on my iMac

I was a longtime Quicken user, pretty much from their first version. When I switched to Windows couple of years ago, I kept using Quicken for Windows on my iMac because nothing else seemed as good for our home finances with investments. When iBank 5 came out I gave it a serious trial, running it parallel to Quicken for a couple of months until I was satisfied it would do the job for us. I was pleasantly surprised. The import from Quicken went quite smoothly, with only a few edits that did not take more than a couple of hours. I can download transactions outside iBank from our Canadian bank’s website and then upload them to iBank quite easily. Reconciliation is a snap. I like the Forecasting report. Reports work fine for me, in spite of the complaints of some reviewers comparing to Quicken. Especially nice that I can drag reports into Excel for Mac. Investments work fine for me. I am not a day trader, but I do like to monitor our portfolio carefully. Finally cut the cord to Quicken and Windows and managing our books is now much more peaceful.

I ended up buying the iPad and iPhone apps. I don’t use them to maintain our iBank file outside the iMac, but I like the way they easily sync via wifi so I have the latest iMac version with me when I am out and about. I access our bank’s website when I am away from the iMac.

I don’t give 5 stars easily. There are always small things that could be improved in most apps I use. So four stars means I am quite happy.

UPDATE: I can’t get categories to insert automatically into transactions when I use file import. After much review on forums and the manual, I ended up contacting tech support. They simply told me to try downloading from within iBank’s browser, which I do not want to do. Just means I have to type in the categories manually when I update the accounts. (See UPDATE below: FIXED.)

UPDATE June 2014: Six months in and very pleased with iBank on my iMac. Very easy to manually download and import statements for multiple accounts from my bank’s website in a single action, just need to identify which statement goes where in the import process (whereas Quicken was automatic). Only takes a few seconds. Reconciliation is quite easy, once I got the hang of it. At year-end I exported our accounts to QIF for my accountant, who uses Quicken. Gave up on the iPhone and iPad apps: could not get them to sync consistently and do not need them anyway.

UPDATE: October 2015: Back up to 4 stars. I submitted a tech support request about the problems and they are all gone after some helpful back and forth and what seems to be a change on their end to better handle automatic insertion of categories on manual import from my Canadian bank. The bank inserts characters in all transitions that identify type of transaction, and now iBank’s import rules can handle them. Yay! (and thanks). I have been using their cloud sync since heir public beta and it has been rock solid. Also, running very efficiently under El Capitan. What would get me to 5 stars? Some refinements to reports, and better cheque-writing utility, and I can no longer drag reports into Excel. I only give 5 stars to apps for perfection, so by 4 I mean works great for me.

ChugginAlong about Banktivity 5 (formerly iBank 5), v5.6.1