Money by Jumsoft review « The BEST Apple Hardware and Software Reviews

Written By Ben Gribbin November 19th, 2009

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Money 3 is a lightweight Money / Finance manager for the Mac and iPhone – today we’ll be taking a close look at Money and it’s myriad of features.

We have the OSX desktop version on review today, and so our thoughts will be based upon this version.

As usual with the Mac, install of basically any app is a quick and easy. Money is no different. Within 1 minute of purchasing, you can have the app installed and fully licensed.  If you’re a newcomer to the Mac this is something that takes a little getting used to.

Who’s it for?

I’d say anyone with money will suit Money. Whether you run a business and need a place to keep track of invoices, or you wish to keep tabs on your personal finances – the program has a section to suit each user. It also has a “Portfolio” section for those who make investments and hold shares – but admittedly this is an area I rarely delve into. I do however run a freelance business and happen to have some personal funds and so Money is going to be helping me understand how much money I have and where it’s all going.

Features & Configuration

Money has been very well thought out, with some handy features that will make finance tracking a breeze. One thing that immediately stands out to me is the interface and lack of configuration needed to get going. You can literally add what you need on the fly, or choose to only use certain portions of the app’s features to suit your circumstances.

Features:

Here are some of the main features

• New user interface
• Bank, Credit Card, Cash, Investments and Loan accounts
• Smart Accounts
• Multi-currency
• Spotlight plug-in
• CoreData-based
• Unlimited Undo/Redo
• Portfolio
• Budget
• Inventory
• Payees
• Banks
• Reports
• Bills
• Closed Accounts
• Categories
• Invoice
• Reports
• Shortcuts
• Help/Documentation
• Printing (a must!)
• Address Book integration
• Password protection
• 1-User license available as individual purchases.
• Import from:
  •QIF
  •OFX
  •QFX
  •CSV

Just looking at the features, I know that the app will pay for itself 10 times over as the UK accounting season is coming up (oh joy) and keeping your finances in order all year saves a lot of stress and time. If needed, the export feature will make sure your bookkeeper or accountant can access your records, even on Windows via Excel or Google Docs (.CSV file).

Enough of feature talk! You can see clearly the app has a lot of useful features, but how do they work in the real world? It’s testing time!

Test

Booting Money up for the first time is a painless experience. Terminology is easy to understand across continents thanks to using more international-based vocabulary. I think we should give the app a run-though by adding some of my (fake) accounts from the last month or two. This should give it enough data to demonstrate its power.

First-up, I sometimes need to make payments to contractors (and surprisingly receive them yipee!) I work with. So setting up a payee or two would be a good start. Jumsoft have handily provided a complete quick-user guide if you really get stuck, but this is unlikely. It’s one of those apps you can just pick up as you go along, everything is understandable.

The lower left area is known as the List-box, and allows for quick selection of Banks, Categories, Payees and Inventory.

Adding a new payee, elegant, and simple. I must commend the guys on their no nonsense approach to accounting. They could have added more and more features, but that would have resulted in an inferior app.

To enable bills, budgets and similar, we need to add an account. You have the option to add:

• A Bank Account
• A Cash Account (for petty cash or your piggy bank!)
• Credit Card Account
• Loans
• And an investment option

Also, as I do this, I believe the app has auto-detected the country and currency used, which is just one of those little touches that makes this app polished and complete.

Please don’t try a shopping spree on the Apple store with my details….

(click on the image for a bigger preview. Note the account appears in the left bar now). It is now possible to use the Bills function e.t.c to record outgoings.

Adding a new Bill. The default categories are pretty exhaustive. You can add bills for anything from washing your car to taxes, pet care and of course Custom labels. You can also add multiple categories, for example you might pay your Phone company for Internet and phone connections.Frequency allows you to set how often this bill occurs, and ranges from One time only  to annually or even daily. You can also select Payees entered previously, or enter a custom one, such as the name of your Phone provider. Custom labels entered auto-magically appear under the Payees list, which again shows the comprehensiveness of this app! Bills can be re-used, by hitting the ‘Pay’ button.

The transaction center has this beautiful iTunes like quick transaction browser. There’s also the more numerical approach under the account by account break down:

The Shares / Investments screen, with real time Share prices!

One of my favourite features of Money, the invoice designer. This is one feature that will make you convert to Money for sure! This works based upon dragging the variables on the right. to quickly create beautiful invoices. A brilliant idea! Automation of invoicing is a must for any business (as I have found out, using Microsoft Word gets messy and takes alot of time tweaking the design!)

The automated invoice maker calculates tax and discount to produce a running total. This will save me hours in furious calculator mashing! You can sort by invoices by those that have been paid, unpaid, overdue, as well as been able to save them as PDF’s which is very handy.

Finally, one of the most useful features is the itemised break down of receipts based upon a month or category.

Final Verdict

First off, I want to send out a huge congratulations to Jumsoft, simply for making one of the most easy to use accounting apps ever. Not only that, but I could go as far as saying the app makes accounting fun. Ok, well, let’s just stick with easy! Highly recommended, and for a credit crunch busting price of $39.

For more information regarding Money, and to download a free trial, you should visit: http://www.jumsoft.com/money/. Thank you to Jumsoft for providing us with a review edition of Money!