quicken to moneydance part 2
In Part 1 of this series, I gave my first impression of Moneydance. Part 2 is a more detailed look at various features of my new personal finance software of choice.
It’s important to note that all of the below I have done without reading any user guide or help website. I’m evaluating the software based on how intuitive it is. So far I’ve been relatively impressed. The features will be familiar to anyone who has experience with Quicken, and many of the features are simpler and better designed in my opinion.
Online access: So far I’ve been able to connect over OFX to Wachovia and Citi Credit Cards. I haven’t had the same luck with my Chase account.However, again this is still a big improvement over Quicken 2004 for Mac. To import my transactions, I would have to log in to the bank website and download the transactions file, then open it using Quicken.
User Interface: Moneydance is much more streamlined than Quicken. So far, using it has also been more intuitive. For example, the split transaction feature (which I use to track taxes paid on my paychecks) makes more sense to me. I would often get tripped up trying to enter a split in Quicken because Quicken would try to do auto-calculations on the fly (actually I’m not sure that is the best description, but something about splits in Quicken always confused me. No such confusion in Moneydance thus far).
Reporting: Moneydance does not have as much to offer as Quicken in reporting capabilities. I miss the Quicken magnifying glass that allowed me to drill down from a report into the register where the transaction exists. Some Moneydance reports have a feature like these, while others do not. That being said, I like adjusting column widths in Moneydance better than in Quicken.
Multi-platform: This is my favorite part of Moneydance. I can keep my account file on my thumb drive and interchangeably use it between my Mac and PC laptops. Quicken 2004, on the other hand, has two completely separate programs for Mac and Windows, with no easy interoperability that I know of. Also, the Mac version does not have the same features as the Windows version, which I found to be confusing and misleading.
Investments: I have struggled to figure out investment accounts in Moneydance. I imported my 401k and Roth IRA accounts with no problem, but I cannot figure out how to enter shares, purchase price, ticker and other fund information. To be fair, I did not do this in Quicken 2004, and I’m not sure if the Mac version even supported investment tracking. For now I am just tracking the principal for my investments in Moneydance. I will keep working on how to get the investments to update based on the current stock prices.
