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Moneydance Review: A Worthy Quicken Alternative

Read the latest review on iTMunch titled 'Moneydance Review: A Worthy Quicken Alternative'

Why Use Budgeting Tools?

Budgeting is not fun. Everyone wants an unlimited supply of funds so they never have to worry about the future. As a word, 'budget' has a negative connotation to it. It is easier to think of it as financial mapping or planning for your future. There are many benefits of planning your finances in advance, which everyone is well aware of. Some of the reasons why you need a budget are as follows:
 
The best personal finance software acts as a helpful assistant that will track all your finances such as your income, investments, expenses, savings, etc. for you. It is integrated with your bank account, making handling your finances an easy task.

What is Moneydance?

Moneydance is a user-friendly personal finance software with multiple tools to help you budget your money. The application comes with online banking features, bill payment options, bank account management, budgeting as well as investment tracking. It is a convenient and easy-to-use software. It effortlessly tracks your income and expenses. This way your checkbook is always balanced. It is an automated application created to assist you in your future planning. All you have to do to use the software is to download it and link it to your bank account. All the transactions get saved automatically and you can set up your profile for use.

Vendor Details for Moneydance

Who can use Moneydance?

The personal finance software can be used by everybody. It is most beneficial to the following:

Getting Started with Moneydance

It is easy to download Moneydance on a platform of your choice; the application is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Moneydance, unlike other personal finance software, does not ask for personal information for their trial period. A lot of people are not comfortable giving out their details online, so this is a preferred Quicken alternative. If you already have an existing Quicken membership and want to import your data, the process is not too difficult. Create a QIF file for export on Quicken and use the import function on Moneydance. The categories that you may have on Quicken get imported with your transaction data on Moneydance.

Moneydance Key Metrics and Applications

Connectivity and Synchronization

The synchronization options for various types of account makes Moneydance a very convenient option. You can sync your credit cards, savings and checking accounts, loans, and other financial institutions accounts. You can also sync investment and asset accounts to your Moneydance. The loan accounts synchronization option includes peer-to-peer lending accounts. This is something not many applications offer. All your balances and transactions are now consolidated, which means you do not miss a single entry. You can also track missing checks with Moneydance. All the information is done through private syncing.

Create and Manage Your Budget

The process of creating, editing and managing your budget is pretty straightforward. You can adjust your budget limit and Moneydance offers you color-coding to track your spending. Green means you have more funds in a particular category available. Yellow means you are either reaching the spending limit or have reached it. Red means you have exceeded the budget you had set for yourself. Moneydance does not give you alerts via text if you have exceeded the limit in a particular category though. To create a budget, all you have to do is go to the Budget tab and click on it. Then your spending categories are shown, including the ones that already have balances present. This helps you see how much you have already spent in a particular category. Moneydance also allows you to copy your budget from the previous month to the next. This makes creating a budget a lot easier, especially if you have similar spending habits every month. The application allows the user to carry forward the unspent amount from the previous month to the next month as well.

Create Accurate Reports and Graphs

Moneydance is one of the best personal financial software available to create reports. You have a lot of options as a user. You can create simple data reports like budget reports, cash flow reports, income vs. expense reports, and so on.
 
There are more complicated reports with graphs and charts to make the data more visual. These reports are easily customizable as well. There are options available to adjust the date range, how you want to save the report, and so on. If Moneydance does not have the option to create the report you need, you can create your own if you know programming.
 
Moneydance offers scripting support with Python. This allows you to create your report by writing your own script and analyze your data. This creates a custom report that will best suit your needs.

Track Your Investments

It is easy to keep track of your investment portfolio with Moneydance with the option to sync your brokerage account, transferring balance and trades. The overview of your portfolio shows the value, the change in percentage and cost basis. You can track your trades with the register. This includes stock prices, security, date, fees, and balance. The security details allow you to keep track of your stocks. With investment tracking, you can also create investment reports in Moneydance to help you analyze your investment performance and transactions.

Accessible On-the-Go

The Moneydance desktop application is accessible through various mobile platforms. It is available for download on iOS as well as Android. The mobile app can be synchronized with the desktop app so you can enter your transactions on-the-go and they will always stay updated. This reduces the time spent in adding your transactions to your desktop after making an expense or receiving an income when you are away from your computer. The mobile application also allows you to access your statements wherever you are. You can also make adjustments to your budget, check your transactions, and make changes when needed. The requirement is that you need to have Dropbox downloaded to synchronize your desktop application with the mobile one.

Schedule Reminders

You can schedule reminders to pay your bills with Moneydance. You can also automatically enter the transactions, which makes it convenient to record transactions that take place each month without having to manually enter them every single time. Moneydance also has free bill pay. This helps you keep track of your debts and the dates for payment. Upcoming bills are showcased when you open Moneydance on the homepage. The interface also gives you a handy list of bills to refer to in case you need to browse through the payments you need to make. Moneydance also gives you alerts to make sure you are never late for any payment or dues.

Avail Extensions

Moneydance has a public API, which means that you can use different extensions to further customize your experience.

Read the latest review on iTMunch titled 'Moneydance Review: A Worthy Quicken Alternative'

Features of Moneydance

Pricing Plans for Moneydance

Moneydance has international support. It works in multiple currencies. The first 100 transactions on Moneydance are free, but after that, it is a paid subscription. You have to pay $49.99 for the license to keep using the application. It is not subscription based, you can use Moneydance for however long you want to after paying the initial amount.  A lot of the times Moneydance offers on upgrades, like a 50% discount for example, if you are a current customer.

Pros and Cons of Moneydance

Pros

Cons

Top Customer Reviews for Moneydance

"Viable alternative to Quicken" Moneydance is...fast, well-designed, regularly updated, and well supported, and which seems to have a very satisfied user base—superlatives not often used in conjunction with Quicken, the major player in the Macintosh personal finance market. — Macworld review "A much more solid contender" Moneydance...is a much more solid contender. This program manages to replicate much of Quicken's functionality -- but in some cases a bit more elegantly...On a Windows PC with a moderately new processor it was strikingly fast. — Washington Post - Challenging the Finance Software Giants "The one I'll be sticking with" The online banking type of person will love Moneydance. It was the first one I reviewed, and it's the one I'll be sticking with... The functionality and usefulness of it is just awesome. — The Apple Blog

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