In June 2009, on a Thursday evening, my brother James and I sat down for dinner at a small trattoria in downtown San Francisco. Over a delicious Italian meal we began brainstorming a vision and plan for iBank version 4. We asked ourselves what features from version 3 should really be taken to the next level. We also contemplated what our users have been asking for, and how to incorporate those requests into a new release. And last, we asked ourselves what we needed to do to the software’s “back-end,” which wouldn’t necessarily culminate in highly visible features, but would ultimately lead to a faster and more stable product. After hashing out our list, we decided our starting point for iBank 4 would focus on five things: a new reporting engine; more functional budgets; a single-streamlined view for displaying and editing transactions; speed improvements across the board; and a brand new “core finance” engine to run it all. And now, just over a year later, I’m very happy to announce the release of iBank 4 Public Beta.
Now I don’t want to trivialize iBank v4 down to five features, because that would be inaccurate. There are many, many other changes, like a new assistant for account set-up, document set-up, budget set-up and exporting. Using this set-up assistant, we’ve made it much easier to move from Quicken and MS Money to iBank, a change many new users will welcome. Other notable changes include a new sourcelist, templates and import rules; improved import interface; a new securities manager; a new “mini-graph” pane; a new reconcile view; better web-browser integration; improved multi-currency support; support for attaching any file to a transaction; and many other small enhancements throughout. So as you’ll see, this is a significant new version. Did I mention it is faster? Much faster. iBank now launches almost instantaneously, even for those meticulous record-keepers who have financial transactions going back 10+ years.
One thing seasoned iBank users will notice is our new single-view streamlined register with in-line editing of transactions. We actually started seeking feedback on just this component of v4 back in February. It’s been through many iterations and refinements, and I’m sure we will continue to improve upon it, but overall, we are really excited about it.
I want to thank everyone who helped with our beta program, especially our exceptional testers who have dug deep into the many facets of the program. We’ve been testing iBank v4 with private beta testers since early June, and with alpha testers for a couple of months before that. During the alpha stages we had a few users test specific components of the app, as there were still parts that were missing or incomplete. Once we went beta, all major features were in place and it was a matter of testing, refining and tweaking as necessary. Since our first alphas we’ve fixed over 400 “official” bugs, 74 of which were “critical,” and 125 were “high” severity. Of course, we’ll continue to refine the app going forward — there are still a few known issues that we’re working on, and do let us know if you encounter others.
Instrumental in our development effort has been our new QA manager, a position filled by Jon, one of our first IGG employees. He has been with us for the long haul and his eye for detail and perfection has helped make iBank v4 become the app that it is. I thank him for the thought and attention that he contributed to this project. Lastly I want to thank James, who as chief architect has engineered a truly exceptional piece of software. There is no doubt that without his outstanding architectural skills we would not have been able to have a one-year development cycle involving so many improvements.
So please, download the beta, check it out and let us know what you think!
-Ian
CEO/Founder at IGG Software, Inc.
A California native, Ian's academic background was in biology, botany and environmental studies. He comes to the field of technology purely out of personal passion, and has been writing Mac software for over a decade. He's also an avid birdwatcher, a soccer player, fiddler and an organic gardener. He lives in Oregon with his wife and their two sons.
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Sweet!
Awesome! Can’t wait to dig into the beta!
I love love love iBank! Good job. I purchased as soon as i saw the new software. Wainting for the same job on iPad!
I use iBank fully and will enjoy any improvements to the reporting facilites. The only request is that the new iBank run under iOS 3.1.3 as I am one of the many users who cannot upgrade his iPhone 3G to the new version.
I love the work on version 4. The reports and budgeting system are awesome. Keep up the excellent work. There are a few things that could be better. One is I miss the calendar. I think a calendar should pop up in the field to select a date, someone could still type in the date, but clicking on the box should bring up the calendar. The bottom should have a list view, just as version 3 had for a simplified view. The top of the view should be right click-able to select or deselect any columns that someone doesn’t want to view. Such as the picture, type, or any other info. I like the smaller status bar in version 3 versus version 4. The accounts column on the left should be arrangeable. Please bring back the contextual or right click menu. I think when someone is editing or entering a new transaction, the transaction should be highlighted more than it is, so that it stands out. Overall a vast improvement! Great job.
One aspect that I like, but I think could be better is the new “mini-graph” pane. I liked in version 3 how the portfolio graph was black, which made it easier to view the progression of the security. The “mini-graph” for the securities in version for should be black as well.
V4 is looking very, very good. However I absolutely hate the envelope budget idea. What’s wrong with a simple spreadsheet with each Category budgeted weekly, quarterly, annually or whatever, with performance shown against budget . Simple & effective.
I agree with Eric, we need a calender for dates or as I suggested previously, have the register open on the previous date & move forward or back with the +/-. Perhaps a combo of the two would be perfect.
We still need the registers to move up automatically at the end of the page without having to mouse the + button.I would also like a combo report combining the Transaction List & Profit & Loss Report.
I believe it essential an option to set Custom Dates in the Report Dialogue Box.
Great work to date
Purchased @ Apple Store, cannot get the SW to connect to 3 separate Bank accounts. Each account is listed in the approved list of Banks. Any help or ideas?
I’ve been trying iCompta, Jumsoft Money, iFinance, MoneyWell (if you like the concept), MoneyDance (ugh), Cha-ching (too limited)… and now iBank.
Although not gone deep yet, seems a winner!!
A few things:
1) ERROR: when making a transfer between accounts, the proper currencies should be automatically selected, non-editable, and current exchange rate be autofilled, editable. ; right now, if I transfer 1,000 from my “Euros” account to my “dollars” account, if defaults ‘euros to euros’ and 1000 to 1000 which is of course very wrong. You should never be able to transfer the wrong currency into an account!!
2) it would be ideal for currencies to be able to specify your own display symbol and whether it’s pre or post fix. (while the actual currency symbol as per your table, remains behind the scenes in order to work right and update exchange rates).
3) an account type called “Bills” ; it works as any other account, except that each “charge” transaction you enter there is “pending to be paid”; it has a “due date” in the future, but when you register the bill the expense is registered in the corresponding category at receival date. (so as any other account in that respect, with two added fields: “paid/not paid” and “due date”)
When you press “PAY” it allows you to select an account from which to pay the bill, allows you to add extra charges (bank fees, late payment, etc) it registers a new transaction in the Bills account (the payment) as a transfer from the pay-from account. And if applicable the extra charges are registered in the pay-from account too, as a split, with their categories.
I think I will stick to it even without these changes… but it’d be great to have such things… at least the first two are quite easy!
I disagree with the comment about the envelope budget system. I like it in theory. Still figuring out how I can make it work to replace a copule spreadsheets I’m currently using. The envelope system is especially good for people who aren’t accountant-types. I am an accountant but still use the idea of categorizing my money into funds set aside for various purposes.
I’ve tried to sign up for an account in the forum to leave comments about V4, but the setup didn’t work. So I’ll leave one here. I like version 4 and it is coming along great, but I noticed that a pop up calendar was implemented on beta 11 and when I tried to enter dates the calendar didn’t appear. I checked for a setting, but didn’t see anything. Is this a bug?
The sign-up for the forums doesn’t work…
anyway: I can see the support for customizable currency symbols (in addition to internal codes) has been added – but it’s not yet working as intended, the symbol only shows when entering a transaction, but then in the transaction lists and in all the reports the codes are still the ones being displayed.
Also, it should not allow you to transfer into an account a currency different from the one the account is set-up for…
and it would be very nice if in the transactions list, it draws a bolder line between each day…
thanks for a great product!
Just downloaded it and have made the plunge from Windows Quicken to Mac iBank. I’m satisfied but I must say, the windows quicken does some things very nicely that I haven’t figured out yet in iBank. I’ll keep plugging. Thx for making this version good enough for me to make the switch.
Just tried out iBank 4 to see if it could replace Pocketsmith.com The big feature I like out of pocketsmith.com is the forecasting calendar. I love to see the daily forecast so that I know my money is not going negative at any point in the future and I can budget via that calendar for various events i.e vacations. It would be great if you could add something like that in place of just the monthly forecast. iBank is a great product otherwise though.
I want to love iBank. I like the quality you want to build into your products and I think that the logo should reflect that. The Cartoon bank is does not give the feeling of sleekness and elegance that your apps should have.
Hated Quicken and after years of us and diminishing support from Intuit, set out to find a replacement. It was a daunting task, but finally felt that iBank was the closest to fitting my needs. So far my only complaints are that the report section can not be customized and that the list is very limited. This is a major short coming in my opinion. One other item that I can work around, but would like to see another approach to, is the treatment of the buying and selling of call options. For example, if I write a covered call on a position, I need to manually adjust the download to add the proceeds to my account. When I cover the call or let it expire, further manual adjustment is needed. Outside of these two issues, I am extremely happy with the program.
I just downloaded the trial version of iBank4. I have a Mac Pro which still have Snow Leopard. I cannot upgrade it to Lion because of Quicken 2007 like many others. So I decided to give it a try. I imported everything via QIF file. At the first glance, it looks good, however, one of the most convenient feature Quicken had is missing in iBank. The CALENDAR view. I like to input current and future transactions in the calendar view for the current and next pay period. This is ver convenient for future planning. I hope you will add the calendar view to iBank as well. Thanks.
Trip back to memory lane. iBank has came so far since this post. I use it daily for my business. Keeping track of my multiple income site and expenses for a self employed can be hard. Thanks for making awesome stuff 🙂
Having both my Windows PC and laptop fail and being disappointed with Quicken Deluxe for PC; I’ve moved to my Macbook (an old one that still works very well). Anyway, the reviews for both Quicken for Mac and iBank are not that great so I made sure that I didn’t pay list price (intuit’s list price for Quicken is $74.99 – absolutely ridiculous, and paying high forties for an OK product isn’t so great either).
Customer Service, iBank has it and Quicken does not. I’ve contacted iBank CS twice and both times they’ve been helpful (via chat and email). Quicken on the other hand, I can’t find how to contact their CS if they have it.
I gave iBank4 a 4 star rating but I think of it as right between 3 and 4, now I did pay under $40 so that might be a factor 🙂 but the fact that upgrades are only $29.99 and that iBank has real customer service, even if you don’t buy from their website makes the cost of their product make sense.