iBank 3: The Coolest Money-Managing Application to Come Out in a Long Time

Welcome everyone to the second installment of what I now call, Coolest Dang Mac App Of The Month. I must apologize for the lack of updates, I am a college student and my friend that writes articles here is as well. We are two busy students, new to the world of blogging and are just getting our feet in the door.

The month of love is upon us, which means (if you are a guy) you are spending money on flowers, you are spending money on dinner, you are spending money on a movie, on snacks, on gas, on your dry cleaned suit, on her dress, on her gifts.... you get my point. Sorry ladies; you know you are spoiled, and if your man doesn't spoil you, tell him to get a better job. I spoiled my lady on my college budget, so shame on you.

Back to my focus for this post... Where did all that money go? Here is where I want to send some love to a great application that I have just started using, and that many have already been using. It is called iBank made by a software company called IGG Software.

I first started using IGG's software when I took up the endeavor of starting a small media company that only serves two small rural towns. The software is called iBiz, check it out by going here. I'll have an article on iBiz some other time. I went ahead and downloaded a trial of iBank because I had just started doing my measly taxes and on a forum about TurboTax, and someone mentioned how they kept track of their finances and balanced their accounts with iBank. I had little difficulty getting into iBank and setting up my accounts. The application looks just like a Mac application should, I picked what type of account (Checking, Savings, Portfolio, etc..) and started chugging away. The best thing in iBank is the automatic import. It can import all of my transactions from my Wachovia accounts so I never had to enter them in manually like two other of my accounts. I set up my checking and savings and linked them to my Wachovia account and BAM, in came all my transactions and suddenly my accounts were balanced. One thing I haven't caught onto yet is using webapps to access information. I love having everything central and in one place, on my computer! for example Apple's mail.app I use quite a bit and it organizes my mail just as I would want it to, it's great. iBank does the exact same thing just for my bank accounts! I don't have to go searching on each website and account page to figure out where my money is. iBank also accepts the formats OFX, QFX, QIF, and CSV, so if your bank isn't automatically imported, you can import these from whatever account you'd prefer.

My second most used feature would be the graph in the left sidebar that iBank gives you. I would never have the desire nor time to sit down and calculate this out for myself, but HALLELUJAH! iBank does it for you. Now I know in an instance what I am spending on clothes, dining, entertainment, savings, etc... Anything you can categorize can be tracked in a pie chart. I mean anything, you can create your own category if the included ones don't suffice, and also you can add sub-categories to that as well if you want to break down your charts even farther. For instance I spent 16.1% of my money in clothing this last month, how do I know iBank calculated it for me. What a great feature to keep me informed where my money is going.

I am new to the world of accounting, and keeping track of my money, but thanks to iBank I am more aware of my money and to this website get rich slowly I am learning everything I can on how to make your money work for you. In the long run I know that iBank won't topple quicken or whatever it is people use to keep track of their financial information, but don't ignore iBank go to their web site and try it out for yourself and tell me what you think...