There is always lots of talk on our forums about iBank in its current release and future releases. I’m here to provide some info about what we’re working on.
The obvious next chapter in iBank is version 4. While we haven’t “broken code” on it yet, we are in the early planning and resourcing stages of development. We are considering adding bill pay for v4 and there are a lot of requests for this. But there are a lot of other features that users are requesting, like better reports, reconciliation and budgets. I know these could greatly benefit from a bit of an overhaul.
While I’m not hear to make promises, at least not yet, it really helps for us to hear what features users want, so please keep the feedback coming. I’m sorry if you were hoping that I would say v4 is going to have feature X,Y and Z and it will be out on Y date, but unfortunately, we just aren’t in a position to say anything like that. But please, let us know what you want!
~Ian
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I’m not yet an iBank user, though I’d like to be. 🙂 Quicken 2K5 won’t limp along much longer.
For me, the most critical component of a personal finance app has to be making the numbers work and work easily – namely, simplified transaction entry, splitting, category-based budgeting, statement reconciliation, etc.
Bill pay is nice, but I can use web-banking facilities for that or go back to (gasp!) old-fashioned check-writing. If I can export data (or type in some numbers), I can make graphs in a spreadsheet. These are lovely features, but they are IMO “extras”.
If my two cents count, PLEASE focus on the numbers first and foremost. _The numbers must ALWAYS work._ I look forward to watching your improvements and thanks for your hard work! 🙂
That’s all good stuff, but I’m more interested in what’s happening with iBiz 4! I’ve been looking forward to a major update for ages now. Any news sometime soon as to what we can expect and when? Some info posted on this blog would be much appreciated.
Thanks for bringing up iBiz 4 Daz. My next post will be dedicated to it 🙂
I would love to see an overhaul as you mentioned to ibank’s reports. This would definitely sell me on the software. I downloaded the trial and was really impressed by the software (much better looking interface) however I was disappointed when I tried using the reports. I would love to see more detailed reports that could be in an easily printable format. For me I love being able to see my year to date expenses and being able to customize reports, which is the one reason I didn’t switch from quicken to ibank. It would also be sweet to have a mobile app on the iphone that doesn’t require mobileme (but I know that is probably a limitation with itunes). Anyways keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing ibank 4.
I’d like to see IGG publish the existing wishlist, as collected from the various feature request emails and forum posts, along with the approximate interest (i.e., # of requests) for each.
I love this software, and while I’m looking forward to the improvements, is there any news about a native iPhone version? I would really love to have my finances at my fingertips on my phone..
It would be great if you would include a note pad into the program so that you can write down reminders.
I’m not currently a user of iBank, however I am looking at using it (moving over from MS Money). Support for futures contracts would be nice in the investment accounts, I’d be sold in an instant given that no program supports them.
I would love to see a good widget for entering simple transactions. You guys had one a while back, but it was kinda clunky. That’s really just frosting though.
What I think would really make the app is an interface overhaul. It’s prettier than it was, but still a bit too “Microsoft”. The import bank records window is the best example, to import you select records, then go down the window to select an account, then back up a bit to select import. Shouldn’t the steps follow visually as well? I know functionality is the most important thing, and you have made epic strides in that realm, but let’s not forget the usability that raw aesthetic value of a good UI, we are Mac users after all.
Ultimately I think the best feature you could include for the sake of the community (instead of me whining about pretty 😉 is the ability to store images in the comments field of a transaction – or better still, have a space specifically for scanned in images. Being able to scan and import receipts (without some kind of trickery) would be brilliant. The ability to enter scans of check carbons would also be very nice. The goal I suppose would be the ability to do away with all but the most important paper work, while saving digital versions that are cleanly categorized within your transaction records. Then, should you be audited or something, you could just export a report- complete with prints of receipts, checks, invoices, whatever.
Thanks for all the hard work so far 🙂
~ Flynn
Bollix- a quick after thought, sorry for double posts.
Your budgeting allows for automatic figuring of a salaried paycheck. That’s nice and all, but not handy for those of us working by the clock. Perhaps a check box that would allow us to enter a “minimum expected income” and then when the pay days come, iBank pops up a reminder to enter the exact amount you’ve been paid. That would be lovely.
Thanks again.
I want to put my vote in for electronic bill pay. I just purchased iBank last week, finished importing my data from Moneydance, timed all of this so I could run my monthly reconcile on checking and saving accounts. Then went to pay bills and no electronic bill pay. So I’ve requested and received my refund, uninstalled iBank and will patiently wait for electronic bill pay. Once you have that I will purchase iBank to replace Moneydance. Note: I did get to test the current iPhone/MobileMe interface and it worked well. Keep up the new development. Especially creating a true iPhone App.
Kind regards, Mark
First of all I’m a Quicken user for mac who has quit waiting for Intuit to update their software and am now looking for a replacement. I think I like iBank the most. Here is my wish list.
Budgets – All Categories show up as the default behavior. Easy way to see actual versus budgeted for any chosen period of time. Right clicking that brings up relevant menu items such as make a duplicate budget. Then I could make minor changes to the duplicate budget.
Charts – Many more standard and customizable options. Right clicking maybe should have some functionality. Double clicking that takes someone all the way to the account where the transaction is located and the actual transaction. This includes the Overview of Charts view. I would like to be able to dynamically change the time interval by clicking and dragging the time axes in the Through Time graph. The mirror effect is not helpful (just my opinion). Printable charts and reports.
Forecast – Clicking on the Forecast in the toolbar while a specific account is highlighted that brings up a forecast for that account. Right click options such as length of time options. Forecasting tool for paying off debt that is based on the balance, monthly payment, interest rate and that allows you to rollover payments into other debt. Pay It Down is a good example of this.
Mini graph – mini budget, mini forecast and also a mini upcoming bills. The bottom left section could be change between different views with a right click or a button option that would even allow to hide mini view.
Automatic enter into account check option for scheduled transactions that never change or even those that do.
Thanks
Hope my two cents
It’s great you’re reaching out to the community at this early stage.
Basically I think you should introduce one or two killer-app features, but really focus on improving the core product. For iBank 3 you introduced downloadable statements and coverflow. While the former was definitely both a seller and a genuinely AAA feature, the latter just made for pretty screen prints and really doesn’t add any value.
For me, Bill Pay would be great, but only if it’s implemented thoughtfully. When a bill is paid online via your bank, this needs to be able to be done via the scheduled transaction screen, it should then appear in the register as uncleared for that future date. When it clears, it should still download to confirm payment. Billpay on Quicken 2007 made a mess of this, but MS Money and Quicken PC handles it well, if you want to refer to something.
Fixing the reconcile would be great too, I have detailed this in a post (4 things to make iBank Rock) but another real bonus would be the ability to genuinely customise reports and report views. iBank has a lot of really good data, but it’s all over the place. ROI, Capital Gains etc, show good information, but it would be better if the report data was available on screen (rather than having to export to PDF) or could at least be exported to excel. The charts need ledgends summarising the data (they look lovely, but again, the reason I’ll run a PnL graph is to see where I am losing value and then I’ll probably want to drill in and see the exact date this started.
On the portfolio side, considering this is a home app, you’ve done really well to support this at all. Moneywell doesn’t, neither does MTH or iCash etc. However the same issue occurs on these graphs as does on the forecast graphs. There is no consistent scale; the date range for % profit/loss is not customisable.
Personally, if even half of the features mentioned in the threads or this blog are implemented, I’ll gladly purchase a new license. Also, I’d be happy to participate in any future beta. With Quicken Financial Life pretty much on the rocks, there is an opportunity to really pull ahead.
I’ve been using financial applications for a while and decided to give ibank a try actually purchasing it. Perhaps I am not happy with it exactly because of my sometimes biased experience with the applications I used before, namely quicken ans MS-Money (french edition). Well, I purchased it already and let me try to help you in improving it for my own egoistically good. First, I miss the return on investmente MS-Money gives me, like annualised returns and all other financial analysis I have built-in. For those investments you do not update automatically I cannot monitor their evolution, becuase I can only enter the last quote. So I only have start date/end date gain/loss. If I make multipe purchases, they have to be considered over time to give me the correct annualised return. iBank budget for me is pretty much useless, since I need to budget my income for specific dates and track the cashflow accordingly, not simply weekly, monthly, etc. The getQuotes button sometimes simply does not work for my Brazilian shares, although they look more or less ok in Yahoo Finance. More or less, because Yahoo finance does not adjust prices for splits, then the graphs look horrible. If could set the start date for the charts would be nice. The charts overall can be extremely improved. I can go on forever on this, but as someone said before it would be nice if you had a summarised wish list to avoid being repetive. In summary, the applications looks nice, has potential, but lacks useful features for those who intend to seriously manage ther finances. I will stick with Parallels and MS-Money for a while hoping that IBank will grow up to the point it becomes usable to me.
I have been using iBank for about four months and I am generally pleased with the the software. I would echo some of the comments on this forum about bill pay. I would suggest putting that feature off until v5 or v6. The most important thing any developer can do with this kind of app is make it simple to use. The core functions of any personal financial software are: Transaction Entry; Budgets; Scheduled Transactions; and Reporting (Charts). I suggest that more time and energy be spent improving this core elements before taking on all of the financial institution connection issues that will arise from a Bill Pay feature. This will only serve to further frustrate users.
Here are my suggestion for improvement of the core functions:
Transaction Entry: The register needs to have an additional column to separate credits and debits. Sometimes it is difficult to see a transaction when the only thing that separates the two is a minus sign.
Budgets: The Budget Monitor should have an additional column called “Remaining”. The red and green bars are a useless feature in my opinion. For instance if I need to know what I have left in the “Grocery” category, I have to get out a calculator and figure it out. Also separate income and expenses in the Budget Monitor just like in the budget master file.
Scheduled Transactions: This feature has a strange bug that Jon has tried to fix. Editing scheduled transactions such as a paycheck that has category amounts (deductions) that change month-to-month will not save properly. I think I have found a work-around for now, but it still needs some debugging. Also, adding a Paycheck transaction to the transaction type drop down menu would eliminate the need to use minus signs to separate gross pay from deductions. This could be done by having a field/column for gross pay and the same for the deductions.
Reporting (Charts): I would suggest simple charts that provide a “portrait view” of income vs. expense for a user defined categories. The current charts are all “landscape” and very confusing and unattractive. Maybe hire a graphic designer to help with the appearance issue. iBank has a nice clean on screen appearance, the same should be true of any chart it produces. I can’t put into words what I see in my head, but a talented graphic designer should be able to design several reporting formats that are functional as well as pleasing in appearance.
I look forward to the new release!
For me the only (and very important thing) missing at the moment is sales tax! For small bussineses that is a must have. Now i’m running iBank and Money next to eachother
You could put all these suggestions in Kindling or similar and let us vote on them:
http://www.kindlingapp.com/
For me the reporting and budgeting are the areas I wish to see the most improvement in. To have the ability to customize the layout of reports, the data elements, etc.
Maybe I may not be fully familiar with how budgeting works currently. But I like budgets that allow you to save up for things. For instance, if I have a “Sports” budget that gets $400/month, but only spend $325 of that one month it would be nice to see that I could spend $450 the next month and still be under budget.
The most important upgrade you could make to the software would be network support.
My wife and I have our own laptops that connect to our home server where shared resources are stored. We’re currently using iBank this way: installed on each machine with a single data repository, even though we are aware of the risk.
It would be nice if you removed the risk.
Echo the comments on budgets and reporting. I’m trialling the software with a strong consideration to buy but am hesitant due to the frustration of not being able to more accurately compare budget to actuals as Lindsay points out above. One such report in this space may simply show categories with the budget allocated and the actual spend for the given period. The bar graphs are pretty and ok for a birds eye view – but it you really want to manage your personal finances then you need to be able to analyse deeper, then take actions based on your analysis.
I’ll add my echo to the others about reporting. I have been using the free demo version of iBank for a couple of days now and am having a hard time getting past the poor reports. They need to be printable on a page, not spread out over three. I also want to be able to print a true Profit & Loss report. I’m wanting to make the switch from Quicken to iBank, but am hesitant mostly due to the inferior reports. I can’t wait for the new release, so if I buy now, I buy with faith that the reports will be fixed in the next version.
Budget Monitor to include “Year to Date” as a timeframe option. Also, please add a “Remaining” column to the Budget Monitor that tells how much money is left in the category for the selected timeframe.
I’m trying to like iBank, and want to move over from Quicken, but can’t see doing that until I can run reports. Example: ability to quickly run a customized report of all transactions including a payee. This is essential at tax time.
The reports are very bad. If you want people to leave Intuit, you have got to offer great reports.
This is a similar situation as with Bento. The key to financial programs and database programs are for the reports. Bento had a killer entry level Database, however, looking at there forums, they had very unhappy customers because of the cheezy reports. Ibiz and iBank need better reports. If I can’t even print a Profit&Loss statement, Balance sheet, or cash flow statement why would I want to leave intuit?
Ability to calculate sales tax and automatically apply it to any given split line item.
Been using iBank for 2 years now. It badly needs Profit & Loss Statements, Balance Sheets, and reporting in general just needs a total overhaul.
The reports and budget needs an overhaul. The budget feature is pointless, really doesn’t allow you to do anything. The charts/reports are about the same — they have no flexibility. I enter the date range for the entire month, but it only gives data through todays date? Seems… odd
Second Jims suggestion – need a quick way to calculate and add sales tax to splits. Quicken does it with the T key.
I am an ibank user. I would LOVE to see different report options, ones that I could customize to my liking. Right now it seems that I can only customize a report but when printing it, it never looks the same on paper as it does on my screen. I usually have to transfer it to Excel and clean it up there. Also, the budget feature, would be nice if it had a feature where you can add your expense categories in one click rather than one by one. Maybe I am too used to the look of Quicken for mac, theirs seems a little easier to work with reports and budgets.
I just purchased ibank and am getting familiar with it. I am coming from using Money on my PC. My main frustration so far is with the budegeting feature, which is the main reason I use a personal financial software. The budgeting as it is does not allow for irregular monthly expenses. I would love to see an option to enter budgeted monthly expenses or income as a different amount each month. And then run reports that show the months and the year. For example, if I have an expense that is higher in the summer, I should able to put that in my budget and not have it average it over the whole year. The screws my budget for each month greatly. This is a tremendous detriment for me with ibank. I would love to see this feature added.
I would like to see an app for the computer. I have Ibank on my home computer and the Ibank app on my Itouch. It would be great to have the ease of the “app” on my laptop that I take when I travel. When I get back just hit sync and I have both updated.
Just tried the public beta of ibank4 and its absolutely perfect for my needs. Love the new bank website feature, perfect for uk users who dont have the luxury of direct ofx banking. However i can’t believe it has no VAT/Sales tax option, as that’s the main thing i would be using it for, calculating my quaterly VAT return. Or am i mistaken, maybe i have missed this feature? In Money dance you assign ‘apply VAT/GST’ to each category and then you can split up the net cost and the cost after VAT/GST… please tell me i have missed it!!?
I love using ibank for my salon books but would like to know if I can set up a GST component I guess I am asking the same question as bertjenkins!! I dont really want to switch to MYOB if possible! 🙂