April 29th, 2009
Almighty Financial Software Search!
If you know me, you know that I hate math. I hate anything having to deal with numbers! So financial management software is not a happy fun priority on my list, but as a small business owner I can’t live without something! Well unfortunately I haven’t found a solution that I like yet. I have tried alot of different things out there and nothing quite fits the bill. Maybe I have to high of a goal for my software!
A perfect picture of financial management software for me would need to include the following:
- Intuitive and looks like a Mac app (I won’t hold my breath on this one)
- Seamless integration with OS X and my other tools (iCal, Address Book, Spotlight, Mail)
- Invoicing (specifically to estimate, invoice portions of the estimate, and have custom designed invoices)
- Billing (track accounts receivable and accounts payable)
- Bank Reconciliation and Register (preferably something my account can take and work with)
- Reasonably priced
I know, I know Brains and Beauty in a financial app…in your dreams! But I have scoured the internet and tried quite a few different things that do one or two of the jobs but not everything. Here are my quick reviews of the best, at least what I think, are out there.
- Billings 3: Great invoicing, slick templates and easy to customize; sucks on invoicing before work is complete so deposits are a pain
- iBank: Simple register, iPhone and MobileMe integration is awesome!; won’t export to my accountant, not easy to see snapshot of my business
- MYOB: powerful, full featured; pricey, complicated (feels like my accountant would have a hard time using it)
- Quickbooks: Full featured, solid invoicing and banking integration; Intuit doesn’t think Mac (see screenshot of Safari, and they don’t support anything except IE for online), the software still feels like a port, they make the comment when you ask them for support, “if you want that run the PC version in Parallels or VMWare.”
- LessAccounting.com: completely in the cloud, awesome banking, great invoicing; sucks for invoice customization, pricey when you look at the cost for more than a year.
So anybody have a good idea of what to do? What do you use? What works and what doesn’t!
UPDATE: I caved in and got Quickbooks for Mac 2009. After searching and searching it became my only all-in-one solution. Intuit is taking strives to reach out to Mac users. I am also beta testing their online version.
(image courtesy of: Michael Witthaus: localrhythms.wordpress.com)
