About.com Rating

Moneydance works well to track finances, but even if you're familiar with other personal finance software, you should read the user guide to accomplish financial tasks quickly and to get the software set up correctly. This is not to say that Moneydance is difficult to use - it isn't. It simply operates differently compared to much of the other desktop personal finance software I've tried and reviewed.

Moneydance is available for Mac 10.6 and up, Windows 32 and 64 bit, and Linux operating systems. A free app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is available, but nothing for Android devices yet. A free trial allows for unlimited account downloads and up to 100 manually entered transactions.

Accounts

Moneydance's account register looks like a checkbook, which is familiar to most people. You enter a transaction by clicking on the New Transaction button,then entering the date, assign an income or expense category, then the amount you paid or deposited. Moneydance keeps track of a running balance. Of course, you need at least one account to use Moneydance, so the first thing you'll do is set up your accounts. Once that is done, review the spending categories and add, change or remove the category names according to what you would use to define your transactions and your budget.

I imported accounts from another personal fiance software, and it worked flawlessly. My categories were added to those that come with Moneydance, so I had a lot of cleaning up to do on the category list to make it easiery to select categories when entering transactions.

Moneydance is supposed to automatically categorize transactions you download once it "learns" your spending patterns, but as with other financial software, you'll need to edit some of the category choices Moneydance makes. I tested creating categories and subcategories, and while it was easy to do, I inadvertently created a duplicate category name. I'm surprised that Moneydance let me do that, so be aware of this if you use the software.

If you use a high resolution screen and the text in the account register looks too small, the font size can be adjust up in the software preferences found under the File command menu.

Transaction Tags and Splits

In addition to categories, Moneydance supports tags and split transactions. The split transactions are easy to do, but not intuitive, and I had to refer to the documentation to see how to do a split. Categories can't be created on the fly. In other words, if you're entering a transaction for an category you've not yet created, you'll have to back out of the transaction and go into the Categories list to create it, then return to the account and complete the transaction entry.

Accounts can be reconciled, and you can print checks from Moneydance.

Setting Up a Budget

Budgets are created in the Budget Manager tool, and you can have more than one budget. The Moneydance documentation says that creating a budget from scratch with your own categories is possible, but when I followed the directions, I still had other categories that weren't min in the budget. Strangely, you have to click on a Calculate button even if you're creating a budget from scratch, and this automatically calculates a budget based on past spending - which draws in existing budget categories. If you want to do a budget from scratch, either do so before entering transactions or it appears that you'll need to adjust amounts and add and delete categories as needed.

The Home Page

The Home Page is your base for an overview of your budget, accounts, investments, current exchange rates and other financial items, including a financial calendar, which is my favorite feature in this software. Use the calendar to create reminders for paying bills on time, and these reminders can be a one time deal or can be set up to recur weekly, monthly and in other time frames. Click on a transaction reminder and a window pops up so you can record the transaction when needed. The transaction will then be recorded in the proper account register without you having to open that register.

The Home Page can be customized in the Preferences settings. Modules can be moved to appear on the right or left on the Home Page, and modules can be added and removed.

Downloading Transactions

Moneydance can automatically download transactions from hundreds of financial institutions, but if you're an ex-Quicken user, you may find that some of your FIs aren't listed (Quicken downloads from thousands). You can download and import transactions from nearly any financial institution, and I did so successfully, although I ended up with some duplicate transactions that were weeded out by other software I've tested.

Hoping to simplify importing transactions from a bank that didn't do automatic downloads with Moneydance, I installed the CSV importer extension and also hoped that this would eliminate the issue with duplicate transactions. Unfortunately, this extension did nothing, even for my Discover Card account, which the extension specifically says it supports.

I was able to set up automatic transaction downloads from my money market fund, but after the download, Moneydance showed a negative balance of over $200,000 where in reality, the balance is nowhere near that and is most definitely on the positive side.

For the one account that I successfully set up and used the automatic transaction downloads with, the process went quite smoothly and I was happy with the results. The fly in the soup is that you may be able to set up transaction downloads, but they may not even work. It would be better if Moneydance alerted you when your account wouldn't download transactions.

My problems with account downloads don't completely originate with Moneydance. Automatic account downloads are an expensive feature to offer, and your bank may require you to enable this type of download on their side. Doing so may cost you. For example, Chase Bank charges around $10 per month for this service, although there is no extra fee if you use Quicken.

Take Away: When you set up Moneydance, test your accounts to see how automatic transaction updates work. Remove accounts from the auto update list that don't work and plan on downloading and importing those transactions or just enter them yourself. This issue is not a deal breaker for people who prefer to enter transactions themselves, and the multiple currency support is great for people who travel often.

Investments, Reports, Other Features

Other than downloading transactions from my money market fund, I did not test the investment features in Moneydance. Going by what I experienced in testing other parts of the software, I suggest entering investment transactions by hand to avoid having to clean up messy transaction downloads (this isn't the only software I have this problem with, as is the case for many people). Moneydance's information says that you can track stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, and other investment types, and view the total value of all investment accounts and individual stock and mutual fund performance. Stock splits and cost basis computations are supported, and current market prices can be downloaded automatically.

Moneydance has a great selection of financial reports. They don't use the latest glossy graphics, but definitely provide the information you need. Move your mouse over different parts of pie or bar charts to see more information, and graphs can be printed or saved as PNG image files. It would be better if they could be saved as PDFs.

Getting Help with Moneydance

Support options for getting help with using the software are:

• Online documentation with very detailed instructions. I suggest that anyone who wants to use Moneydance read this, even if experienced with other personal finance software. You can skip around in the documentation very easily by clicking on topics in the table of contents.
• Searchable online forums that offer user discussions and help from support reps when needed.
• An online knowledge base.
• Quick Start Guide, which is nice to have, but, again, you will need to read the full documentation.

There is no context sensitive help available right in Moneydance, which means that the software won't pop open a help window with information that is relevant to what you are currently working on. Instead, you must click Help, then Online Support which opens a browser window with the support site. Click on the 'documentation' link, then the link for the User Guide and search user guide for information on how to do something. You can also take a look at the listed topics on the support page or use the search bar on the upper right to search for help in the forum. While you'll most likely find help this way, it's a lot of steps that really could be streamlined.
Data Back Up and Security

You should always back up your financial data, and do so regularly. Moneydance can synch data to Dropbox (you can get a free account, and this is the reliable back up app/service that I use), but the documentation indicates that this requires the free iOS app to set up. Not so. If you don't have an iOS device, look for the section in the online documentation entitled, How to move your data file to a different location in Moneydance 2012 along with Dropbox's information on your to set up synchronizing data, and you'll be good to go.

There is an auto backup setting in Moneydance, but that simply backs up data to your hard drive, which is where your regular data file is located. If your hard drive crashes, there goes your data and your backup. It makes more sense to store backups in a different place, so use the Dropbox option, another online storage service or a USB drive for back ups.

You data file can be encrypted with a password, which you should take advantage of. Just don't forget your password or you'll never get into your data - which is how secure passwords should work.

Bottom Line Review, Free Trial and Pricing

This is not the most glowing review, but I think there are many people who would love working with Moneydance. The transaction downloads need work and it should not require more than one or two clicks to get from the software to the help documentation. That said, the support resources are well written and detailed, and everyone who posts in the support forums gets help. The Moneydance support reps never pass any issue a user is having off as "user error", but they help until things are resolved. You don't find that kind of help every day.

If you enter transactions manually, Moneydance will work perfectly. If you download transactions yourself, save them to your computer (OFX, or MS Money format as some banks call it) and then import the transactions into Moneydance, you'll also do ok, but you could have a few duplicate transactions here and there depending on the dates you choose on the banking site for the download. If automatic downloads worked, the software would rate a 4 out of 5 stars.

While reports aren't all that flashy, they are informative and there are many to choose from. The home page is also not as flashy as what is found in some other personal finance software, but it is attractive and gives a quick, understandable financial overview.

The budgeting feature is a little confusing with the Calculate button for creating a budget from scratch, but once you get that ironed out, the budgets work fine and the reports are customizable by date, category and other views.

Buy or Upgrade to Moneydance 2012

Moneydance sells for a regular price of $49.99, and if you're upgrading from Moneydance 2010 or 2011, Moneydance 2012 is free. If you're running an earlier version, the software is half off.

• Download the Moneydance free trial for Windows, Mac or Linux
• Buy or upgrade Moneydance

You can find more information at Moneydance.com.
The fully-functional free trial for Moneydance was used for this review, on a Windows 7 64-bit quad core laptop with 6 GB of memory.