a review by Tom Piper
I’ve just retired from 26 years of regular employment, and tracking/controlling my finances has become more important than ever. A new way of managing my money has recently come to my attention, and I want to share this knowledge with you.
From IGG Software, a newly-updated application called iBank 4 delivers a quality standard for intuitive, full-featured personal finance software. With this tool, I can now monitor my account balances at a glance, track my investments, maintain budgets, and manage my credit cards, savings, checking and loans — all in an easy, powerful, familiar Mac interface.
iBank's setup assistant got me up and running in no time. Although I stopped using it years ago, I could have imported data from Quicken for Mac or PC (as well as Microsoft Money, and other financial programs with minimal effort). I started with a clean slate which only took a few minutes. iBank provides me tools for keeping tabs on all of my financial accounts including checking and savings, cash and credit cards, investment and retirement accounts, even mortgages and loans. iBank even includes an integrated browser that I can use to import data straight from my bank's website, as well as clean up the new transactions and remove duplicates automatically, then manually record and edit transactions, as needed.
I can set up category hierarchies, assign categories to all of my transactions, and split transactions for more detailed category tracking. What’s nice is that iBank learns how I categorize the transactions I download and assigns categories automatically during update of my accounts. Beautiful and detailed reports can be created on about my account balances, spending categories, investments, net worth and more with the click of a button. If I click on any element of a report, it can drill down and view more detailed information, then print exactly what I see onscreen.
What’s cool is, with iBank Mobile for my iPhone and iPad, I keep my account balances and transaction history synchronized between my Mac and mobile devices with the click of a button. I can even transfer data over a local wireless network, remotely via MobileMe. If I need it, iBank's powerful investment management features will let me record the shares I buy and sell, track the prices of my securities over time, and analyze the performance of my portfolio with reports tailored specifically for investors.
Since I prefer to keep tabs on what the banks do with my money, iBank provides convenient statement reconciliation features. Each month when a statement arrives from the bank, I also can create a virtual statement in iBank, check off the transactions that match up, and make any adjustments necessary to keep my accounts properly balanced. iBank includes a host of other features to help you keep control over where my money goes. I even use scheduled transactions to track recurring expenses, and post them to my iCal calendar. Although I don’t use this feature yet, I could attach receipts, statements, pictures, or any other files to my transactions for better record-keeping.
If you are like me in wanting to effectively manage your money, protect your investments, and budget responsibly, you should consider buying iBank 4 for $59.99 from http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/ ($4.99 for iBank Mobile at iTunes). This investment can improve your financial accountability and control.
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