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I was a long time Quicken user, tracking checking accounts and credit cards. I would enter all of my purchases on my phone and would sync regularly with my desktop.

Two years ago, I switched to Mac and was disappointed to learn that there was no version of Quicken for iPhone that would sync with Quicken for Mac.

You can't even export because all of the check book programs export to QIF format, and Mac quicken only imports OFX, and there are no reasonable Mac-based converters.

I am not married to Quicken. Anything will do.

What are people using to track checking and credit card transactions between Mac and their iPhones?

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12 Answers 12

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MoneyWell

MoneyWell 2.2

MoneyWell is personal finance software that increases your wealth while reducing your debt. It does this by wrapping the tried and true envelope-budgeting system in a beautiful, modern interface.

They explain the features better than I do but it is actively supported by a great developer. The companion app for iOS is MoneyWell Express.

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GNUCash:

Is a personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.

You Need A Budget:

You can connect to your bank and download transactions, and display those transactions and your budget in a simple, easy-to-understand interface that helps you determine quickly how well you're doing sticking to your budget and saving for your financial goals. YNAB is noted by a number of its biggest fans for not obfuscating your finances and its own tools like other tools: it's not difficult to just jump in and start tracking your money. You can try the app for 7 days free, but after that it'll set you back $59.95.

Stash:

A free/open source, fast, simple personal finance app for Mac OS X.

iCompta:

An Application that lets you manage your personal accounts with ease. It also offers full synchronization between the Mac and iOS versions, enabling you to enter transactions wherever you go.

Money Plus:

A finance app that approaches the problem of organizing your finances through simplified methods. It’s easy to enter transactions and repeat transactions, plus you get to see your progress through five different windows: Overview, Daily, Categories, Budgets, and Graphs.

Squirrel:

Provides you with powerful tools to analyze, control and keep track of your spendings.

Money:

A powerful, comprehensive, and intuitive system designed to help you keep control of your financial life. Oversee your account balances, track investments, keep budgets, and manage your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, assets, and cash.

Please note however that many of the Apps mentioned above are Premium products and not freeware.

A comprehensive list of financial Apps available for Mac users can be seen here.

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    +1 for GnuCash, which I slid right into using on OS X after moving off Linux earlier this year. It's also one of the few GTK-based apps I use that doesn't require X11.
    – zigg
    Aug 28, 2013 at 14:07
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    GnuCash is ugly as hell.
    – Jean-Denis Muys
    Aug 28, 2013 at 14:11
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    Rather than doing wiki style research, consider picking one application that you feel is best and stake out why and what it doesn't do well. As stack exchange gets more mature, we find wiki posts less and less desirable since they don't age well and don't search well.
    – bmike ♦
    Aug 28, 2013 at 22:04
  • What do you use, and what do you like and dislike about it?
    – Daniel ♦
    Aug 28, 2013 at 22:50
  • @bmike I understand, will keep in mind for future answers.
    – Simon
    Aug 29, 2013 at 10:24
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Mint.com

It's owned by Intuit (owner of Quicken). It's a free service, their backend connects directly to your bank (most but not all financial institutions are supported).

Use the website on your Mac and their free App on your iPad, iPhone or Android device (the Apps have a subset of the functionality of the website).

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  • With the major caveat, that it's US centric. Down to the bottom of the list it goes
    – Jean-Denis Muys
    Aug 28, 2013 at 14:10
  • +1 for Mint, at least for a US user. Best feature set of any online banking system I've ever used.
    – da4
    Aug 28, 2013 at 15:38
  • It doesn't look like mint lets you do a reconciliation. How do you know if your charges are for the correct amount?
    – Victor Grazi
    Aug 30, 2013 at 2:29
  • You are correct -- there is no reconciliation built in as you are enjoying in Quicken. I too used to reconcile every account every month when I used Quicken. Mint features aside I can't keep up with that burden any longer. The best I can do now is to look at Mint every couple of days to see if there's any unusual activity. Since the transactions often post to Mint on the same day I find its in some ways better than doing a monthly reconciliation.
    – AllInOne
    Sep 3, 2013 at 18:03
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Splashmoney

enter image description here

Manage your money anytime, anywhere. Connect to your online bank from your desktop computer or wireless handheld and download transactions directly into SplashMoney. Create budgets and then track and analyze your spending with customizable reports and charts. Synchronize your handheld with your desktop computer to stay on top of your finances whether you're at home, on the road, or in the office.

I've used Splashmoney since the Palm OS days, and I've stuck with it mainly because it handles direct OFX downloads from my various banks.

EDIT: I should add that Splashmoney also handles QIF imports.

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I manage my entire financial life in Quicken, including my chequing and savings accounts, employee stock plans (from both current and former employers), other individual stocks, 401(k) through my current employer, retirement plans, life insurance, mortgage, and credit cards. I also have a budget that I track progress against. I know that I'm an edge case in the amount of stuff that I actively track in a financial application.

I haven't found any of the Mac applications to meet my needs. I've tried them all, repeatedly, and none of them are satisfactory for what I do. It's usually the stock or the retirement plans where they simply can't do it. As a result, I use Quicken for Windows. It's the only reason that I use a virtualization application on my Macs at home.

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  • Isn't it incredible that Quicken hasn't figured out yet that there is a vast Mac market waiting to buy their product.
    – Victor Grazi
    Aug 29, 2013 at 1:32
  • Even though this is a particular pain point for me, I'm not willing to extrapolate that there is a vast market opportunity here that is worth the engineering effort necessary to make it happen. If the market opportunity was that large, it seems like one of the other Mac-native applications that have been listed here would have the features that I need to manage my finances without having to revert to Quicken for Windows.
    – nadyne
    Aug 29, 2013 at 5:05
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Chronicle

enter image description here

Enter your bills in Chronicle, then forget them. You won’t need to wonder if you’ve paid a bill—Chronicle remembers for you. Why risk a late fee? Chronicle never forgets: it keeps track of all your bills, and reminds you when each one is due using Notification Center (Mountain Lion required) and Calendar (optional), even when it isn’t running.

With multiple repeat options, all you have to do is set up your bill once. Each time you make and log a payment, Chronicle automatically updates the due date, and will remind you next time.

Now, if all you care about is reminders for payments, and you aren't tracking a budget or a bank statement, Chronicle is perfect. I've used this since it was an alpha software, and I very much like its simple UI, notifications, and iOS/OS X syncing via DropBox.

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Money

Money Screenshot from Mac App Store

I'm currently using Money.

I bought in a bundle but I like it. Take a shot.

It seems that can sync with iPads and iPhones.

Money 4 presents a powerful, comprehensive, and intuitive system designed to help you keep control of your financial life. Oversee your account balances, track investments, keep budgets, and manage your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, assets, and cash. Do it all in a straightforward and stylish interface.

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You might want to check out Microsoft Money and a Mac, a post I wrote in July of 2008 and frequently update, in which I detailed and reviewed about thirty different personal finance programs for the Mac and gave them all failing grades. (The article also includes over two hundred comments from other frustrated Mac users.)

Please don't flame me for posting a self-link; this is a topic about which I am very passionate and truly believe I am offering valuable input.

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  • I have no doubt there is not a viable product out there. It's kind of unbelievable that everyone is willing to vie for a share of the Windows market when the Mac market is easy pickings for anyone who wants to grab it
    – Victor Grazi
    Sep 4, 2013 at 0:00
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Moneydance

Moneydance Online Banking

Moneydance is easy to use personal finance software that is loaded with all the features you need: online banking and bill payment, account management, budgeting and investment tracking.

I've used Moneydance for many years, and it handles credit cards and bank accounts in multiple currencies quite well. The main app is written in Java, and has OS X, Windows, and Linux versions. The iPhone companion app is free, but requires the desktop app to work.

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I am a Mac user attached to elegance and esthetics as a significant factor in productivity for cognitive reasons. Personal finance is also for me particularly problematic because I hate doing it. I will find excuses to procrastinate. Therefore, the cognitive efficiency of the human interface is of paramount importance.

For transaction entry that means (for me) inline entry. Entry in a dialog or sheet is a major impediment. Entry in a side or top/bottom panel is a minor impediment (because when I conclude the entry, it is displayed far enough from where I entered the data to require a visual shift of context to make sure the entry was correctly accepted).

Another (secondary) criterion for me is an iOS version with synchronization, allowing at least the quick entry of a transaction when and where it is incurred.

Having pondered all that, and having tried many contenders, I would recommend two programs:

  1. MoneyWiz: excellent Mac native interface. Excellent overall feature set. Unfortunately, transaction entry is not inline, but in a popover window.

  2. YNAB: even better feature set. The right approach to personal finance (IMHO), inline transaction entry. Big minus: written with Adobe Air, the Human Interface is not native, and gets infuriatingly in the way. I wrote extensively on their user forum about that, and clearly, they are not sensitive to that at all.

Both have an iOS version. YNAB's is not full-featured.

Eventually, I chose YNAB. Inline entry is that important, and their approach is really good. I will continue now and then to push them on making it a native program, but I don't hold my breath.

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  • I was annoyed at the behavior of YNAB. Now that I read it's Adobe Air, I understand what's wrong with it. I'll try MoneyWiz. For me your answer was the most helpful, because: Yes, good usability is good interface design. Ugly just don't work for me.
    – user28268
    Feb 8, 2014 at 18:58
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Let me put in a half-vote for SEE Finance. For my purposes the biggest missing item is Tags, promised in the next version which I'm afraid is far behind schedule. I've tried most of the other products listed in the other answers. Correct handling of investments, decent UI (especially category assignment), and tags seems to be a hard triple to find.

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I finally found the solution to the Quicken on Mac problem. I downloaded Oracle Virtual Box, a free tool that allows me to run Windows on my Mac. (Windows becomes a separate running application, that you can tab to).

Then I installed Quicken. The original one and only! Note, to do this approach, you need to have a Windows IOS file (ie an installation CD)

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  • Why is it that whenever a person says something that can be interpreted as a slight preference for a windows feature over a Mac feature, they can pretty much count on getting down-checked. :( I scoured the market for 4 years looking for something to substitute for Quicken on the Mac. I finally found Virtual Box, allowing me to have my Mac and my Quicken too, and I announce that here, only to get down checked.
    – Victor Grazi
    Feb 19, 2014 at 2:37

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