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Moneydance - Cross-Platform Personal Finance
sreilly self-promotes: "Moneydance 2003 has just been released for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. This program is a completely cross-platform replacement for Quicken or MS Money. This is the first time that online banking and online bill payment has been available in a made-for-Linux application. It also has features that aren't available in Quicken such as an extension mechanism that lets developers easily add and distribute new features to the program."
I'm currently looking into using GNUcash and so far its pretty impressive. I used to work for a company maintaining data in Quickbooks and eventually in MS Money. GNUCash is very capable against both of these programs for your average home user. Their webpage does list the goal of adding business features in the future.
:)
What I think GNUCash is missing most of all, however, is cross platform compatblity. I know it handles QIF files but the program itself has not been ported to Windows or MacOS yet. Many people these days have multiple OSes and I don't want have to reboot my machine in order to balance my checkbook (this arguement applies to both MS Money and Quicken as well).
GNUCash has alot of potential and I might just start using it with the hope that cross-compatablity comes later.
How about Mozilla? I've been doing all of my banking, and paying my credit card bills, over HTTP/SSL for ~2 years now. Which is exceptionally nice as my bank is a local credit union about 3000 miles away from my current place of residence.
If online banking with Linux is causing people problems, I would highly recommend finding a bank that supports doing this kind of thing over the web.
...but only on OS X. We bought it because of it's cross-platform capabilities, but never ended up taking advantage of them.
The features are pretty good, in that I don't often want to scream at it and torch the hardware it's running on, like I do most software I use. My wife does most of the finances (whew!), and she seems to like it. I can't compare it to Quicken or whatever, because I haven't used them, but we always import our Quicken-formatted bank statements into MoneyDance with no problems.
Sorry I can't provide a more helpful review, but I just wanted to drop a "Hey, I'm using it, and it's at least decent" note, since no one else appears to have actually used it.
lashdotted with 2 comments. Look, if you are promoting your own project, there is no excuse for a slashdotting. Be prepared next time you submit your PR piece.
Unfortunately, the FreeBSD box it is hosted on keeps rebooting.
Can I install the client on multiple machines without an additional license? Does it work with Bank of America seemlessly (ie, I don't have to futz about with dl'ing the transactions manually). Can I import Quicken 2003 data? How much does it cost? What libraries did you use for the cross platform work?
multiple machines, one license: yes
bank of america: yes
import q2003 data: yes
cost: 29.99
libraries: java - jsse, jce, etc
It has been ported to OSX, and is distributed as part of fink, IIRC.
s h
Yup; recent, but there: http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/gnuca
I thought I'd weigh in on this discussion since a lot of folks seem to be unfamiliar with the history of this application. MoneyDance dates to a time before when the only other options for Linux were a package written in TCL, and XAccount/GNUCash. At the time $20 bought a license for the application. Having wanted a finance application that worked well, I happily registered my copy and used it for years. The AppGen decided they needed a personal finance component and purchased MoneyDance from the author Sean Reilly. AppGen then had trouble after the dot com boom/bust, and MoneyDance was the first to suffer. People found out the hard way that they had purchased an unsupported product. For the longest time AppGen just sat on the code, letting it rot in secret while people wondered out loud when new fixes and changes would be released. I have since moved to GnuCash for my finances, but I applaud Sean for getting the code and releasing new versions of MoneyDance again. It really is a wonderful program to use, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for anyone who would like another option in personal finance management.
The world's most intuitive personal finance software just got better! Moneydance 2003, the groundbreaking new financial tool is now available for all platforms. Moneydance can be trusted to keep all of your financial information safe, organized, and at your fingertips. After just a few minutes with Moneydance's simple interface and powerful features, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
Protect your privacy - and your peace of mind With Moneydance, you will not be bombarded with advertisements on your desktop, nor have your personal information shared without your explicit consent. Unlike some other applications, Moneydance does not install third party software on your computer to monitor or restrict your activities.
Online banking and bill payment: no paper? no problem Pay your bills in seconds without writing a single check. With Moneydance you can automatically synchronize your records with transactions downloaded from your bank. Moneydance currently can perform online banking and bill payment with hundrededs of financial institutions. Moneydance also integrates nicely with the Paytrust online bill payment service.
Manage your budget Moneydance lets you easily create and manage multiple budgets and shows you where your accounts over or under budget. Simply specify how much you expect to earn or spend in each category for a given time interval (weekly, monthly, yearly). Moneydance can then show you a comparison of how your budget compares to your actual income and expenses for any time period.
Stay on schedule The ability to schedule recurring or future transactions in Moneydance makes it easy to plan for bills, loan payments, and paychecks. On the starting screen Moneydance shows all of your upcoming or overdue reminders, and you can view future and past reminders for any month. Special loan payment reminders automatically calculate principal and interest payments for mortgages and other loans. You can even print a monthly calendar that includes your scheduled items.
Visualize your wealth Another great reason to use Moneydance is that it lets you easily visualize your finances. With Moneydance's built-in graphs you can view your accounts from many angles. The Net Worth graph allows you to view the total value of all of your accounts over time. The Expenses graph provides a clear picture of where your money is going and when. Other graphs include Account Balance, Currency History, Income vs Expenses, and more. Moneydance can also remember commonly used graphs so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.
Get the details, quickly Moneydance provides a variety of reports detailing information about your accounts. Built-in reports include: Budget, Missing Checks, Net Worth, Account Balances, Cash Flow, Detailed Cash Flow, Transactions, Cost Basis, and VAT/GST. You can also tell Moneydance to remember commonly used reports so that they are accessible with a single click from the main screen.
International ease If you ever cross national borders you will appreciate Moneydance's built-in support for multiple currencies. Recording international transfers is a breeze - simply specify the amount and the currency, and Moneydance will automatically calculate the value in the context of the current account. You can download Up-to-date exchange rates from the Internet automatically with the OandA.com exchange rate updater extension.
Compatible, standards-based reliability Moneydance uses industry standard technologies such as OFX, QIF, SSL/TLS, Java, and XML to ensure compatibility with other software and services. In addition, with our open API and Extension Developer Kit you can be sure that third parties will always be able to integrate their services with Moneydance.
Understand your portfolio Today's investment portfolios are as complicated as ever. Moneydance can bring your investements into focus with support for tracking stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, and more. The investment account overview sho
My wife and I use this software--Money Matters. It budgets exactly as you describe. It has helped us truly manage our money.
Clearly you don't know the problems surrounding the qif format very well.
-I can't be used as the main save format of an app, because of the lack of a transaction ID field. Quicken sure as hell doesn't use it as it's file format, only an import-export format.
-There is no definitive spec on the file format available from intuit. All the docs available are listed here http://libofx.sourceforge.net/links.html and the most complete certainly isn't intuit's. Even the account type identifiers sometimes change depending on the language of your Quicken (examples for example, !Type:Bank becomes |Type:Banque in french Quicken 2000)