We’re thrilled to announce that the public beta for Banktivity 9 is now available, and it comes packed with exciting new features and improvements designed to make managing your finances easier and more efficient than ever before.
One of the most significant new features in Banktivity 9 is the single-line register, which condenses all transaction data onto one line for a cleaner, more streamlined view.
We’ve also added the ability to remove and archive historical data in Banktivity 9 for Mac, which means that you can keep your current document lean without losing access to older records. This feature is especially useful for those who have been using Banktivity for many years and want to keep their records organized and easy to manage.
In addition to these features, we’ve also added reports to our iOS app, which means that you can now view all your financial data and reports on the go.
We’ve also included interface scaling on Mac, which makes it easy to adjust the content within Banktivity to suit your preferences, work style and eye sight.
Another important improvement in Banktivity 9 is the updated scheduled transactions feature, which now includes support for recurrence patterns like, “the last Wednesday of the month” or “the second Tuesday of each month” and so on.
Additionally, we’ve improved cloud sync capabilities with push notifications, so you can be sure that your financial data is always up-to-date across all your devices.
We know that managing your finances can be stressful, which is why we’ve designed Banktivity 9 with your needs in mind. Our software is designed to help you stay on top of your finances and make smart financial decisions, no matter your level of financial expertise.
To download the Banktivity 9 public beta and start taking advantage of these exciting new features, simply visit this page. Please note, this is beta software and we do not recommend using it unless you are computer savvy and have a full understanding of the inherent risks involved with beta testing.
We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing how Banktivity 9 is helping you stay on top of your finances.
P.S. The majority of this blog post was written by ChatGPT
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‘The majority of this blog post was written by ChatGPT’
🤣
I don’t see the updated scheduled transactions feature, which now includes support for recurrence patterns like, “the last Wednesday of the month” or “the second Tuesday of each month” and so on.
Go to Configuration > Payees, Schedules & Rules. Then select the Scheduled Transactions tab, then click the date you want to edit. In the popover click the “custom” checkbox to get more options.
So far, so good… but it doesn’t feel like a major version update superficially – I understand there may be significant back-end changes that warrant the version number increment though so I’m not going to be too picky. A few things:
The lack of folders for account organisation on both iPhone and iPad makes the chart feature a massive list of disorganised charts, whereas on my Mac they’re all neatly grouped into categories. This needs addressing I think as it’s basically unusable for anyone with lots of charts/reports
The red for negative transactions is great in the single line view, but in dark mode the contrast is not quite good enough and is hard to read. Perhaps a slightly different shade of red would work better, rather than just ‘standard red’?
Thanks for the comments. I can’t wait to get account and report groups on iOS, but that obviously didn’t make it for v9. What I do for my reports is put the ones I use most often above the “cut line”.
As for the red contrast, I assume you are referring to simplified register view on iOS (or you are referring to Mac?)
I will look forward to folder organisation on iOS with great excitement! I have done what you suggested and it’s a reasonable workaround for now..
Regarding the red text, yes this is on the macOS version. Contrast & legibility is great in Light Mode, but in Dark Mode the red is ‘too dark’ so the contrast between the dark background and the text is very low.
To my eye it looks like it’s using .red rather than .systemRed perhaps? In Dark Mode .systemRed is slightly lighter & desaturated to ensure legibility on dark backgrounds.
One other suggestion while I think of it. The single line register is great and while I understand how the ‘Type’ column is important, I think it could be tweaked a little. It doesn’t need to be that wide, especially as the text is abbreviated to Wth., Dep., Trn. anyway. It results in things like Payee & Category fighting for space and often being cropped in multispace views.
So perhaps either shrink that column so it only is wide enough for the 3-4 characters of the ‘Type’ categories, or allow users to toggle & resize their columns themselves – either on an app-wide basis, or on a per-account basis (which would be better).
Thanks again for the great work. Banktivity for Mac is where I get *actual* work done, and bringing iOS closer to it allows it to be far more useful when out & about, and charts & reports are very, very important in this regard.
Just had a closer look, and the red *is* a little lighter in Dark Mode, but not quite enough I feel – but I guess that’s a study of n=1 😉
In Banktivity 9:
Light Mode: R:200 G:46 B:32
Dark Mode: R:234 G:54 B:38
The actual .systemRed has more variance and is brighter in both modes, with better Dark Mode legibility:
Light Mode: R:255 G:59 B:48
Dark Mode: R:255 G:69 B:58
When you look at the ‘accessible’ version of .systemRed there is even more variance:
Light Mode: R:215 G:0 B:21
Dark Mode: R:255 G:105 B:97
The ‘accessible’ variant is automatic if a users selects ‘higher contrast, etc’ from Accessibility settings on their device.
Anyway… just my 2 cents and I don’t mean to step on any Developers toes here! Thanks for replying!
Following on from that, I’d like to see a lot more standard ‘system colours’ in Banktivity, especially with charts. The colours of the charts since (?) version 6 has always seemed a bit insipid to me. Competitors charts seem to pop a lot more and honestly, it’s often down to the colours if nothing else.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/foundations/color
I don’t know if you guys are talking about grouping accounts or reports, but +1000 for grouping accounts on iOS. I operate with three different banks, and for each bank I have a regular account (I think it’s what Americans call Checking Account) and two credit cards. Using macOS I can group each bank into a folder and not only keep everything organized but I’m also able to see the “bank’s balance” (amount of money in the account minus what I’ve been spending using their CC) to keep a better control and not spend more than what I have. I also have 3 investments accounts (one on each bank) I keep inside one separate folder. So opening Banktivity on macOS I have every balance I need at a glance thanks to groups/folders. Using Banktivity for iOS is a mess, just a really long list of every account I have…
Very pleased with the changes brought in , a great progression of the product with improved transaction scheduling , purging and some bug fixes. About 99% of my interaction with Banktivity is MacOS so it is pleasing to see the product more versatile with this release.
Would love to see a couple of ‘minor’ enhancements in an upcoming 9.x release :
1. An Attachments register filter (other competitors have this).
2. The Goal component to support a target date , rather than the other way around (ie how much you want to save).
Keep up the good work.
Vanguard sends over a reinvested dividend transactions as two separate transactions. One is a Reinvestment transaction, which also has the shares, price, and amount. This is correct.
Vanguard is also sending over a second income transaction, with the Dividend category. This duplicates the amount in the first, which gives me a balance of cash equal to the dividend (not correct). Cannot delete it as it comes back from the feed. My solution is to make the first one a BUY transaction and everything reconciles.
Can this be fixed in v9? Thanks!
Are you connected to Vanguard via Yodlee/Direct Access 2 or OFX?
Direct Access 2 (Y). Thanks for the follow-up
Any thoughts on this? It is still coming over as two transactions, which requires me to edit to make it balance. Thanks!
FWIW this has been happening with Vanguard and Fidelity both since at least v5 of Banktivity. For as long as I can remember. So it’s not new to v9, but yes Yes YES please handle this scenario better!
I believe we have fixed this.
I am a new user to version8. So far I am impressed with the software coming from Quicken. The only thing I would like to see is the ability to add custom transactions types such as ATM, bill Pay etc. Any plans on doing this?
This is something we’ve discussed and have considered it, but other features have always taken precedence. I’m not saying we won’t do it someday, but it isn’t on our top list right now.
+1 for that. But yes not an urgent need for it.
Just curious, what made you change out of Quicken?
OK… where do we report bugs, because I think I’ve found a doozy….?
All my ASX shares have now all been compressed into a single ‘purchase date’ – ie the date I updated to Banktivity 9 – so the cost basis is no longer there. I’ve lost all information on dividends, reinvestments, lot purchases, etc and there is no IRR figure any more as well as no long/short gain information!!
The US & EU shares seem to have translated just fine… so I have no idea what’s going on here.
If I look in the transaction register, for every stock there are two transactions:
Buy – ‘SECURITY ADJUSTMENT’ in the Note field
and
Sell To Open – SECURITY ADJUSTMENT’ in the Note field
These are all auto-generated transactions and they weren’t there before the update.
OK… so I did some testing with a duplicate file and to fix this I just selected all those Buy/STO transactions that the update somehow created and it restored all the data to how it was before.
Why did it create them though… and why only for ASX listed stock?
I selected *and deleted* them I meant to say…
This really sounds like you used the Remove Historical Data feature. Do you think this could be possible?
No, I didn’t and it was never a choice I was offered. I would have said NO if it did as this is something I don’t need.
All the old transactions were there in the register for the trading account, it’s just that all these auto-generated transactions seemed to nullify them. Deleting them all restored normality. Very strange… and an upgrade bug I think. I should point out that it was ONLY my domestic share trading account (ASX – NabTrade) not the international ones (US/EU – NabTrade).
Also, where is best to report bugs as the macOS version isn’t running through TestFlight?
Hmm… it seems that it’s doing again it every day I open the app after I’ve previously deleted those transactions.
OK… I’m working on this with your team. Seems to be a Direct Access issue specific to either that account, institution (NabTrade) or a change in the way Banktivity ingests that particular data.
Is there a way to change the width of the columns in the register, or if not any plans on adding this feature? I love the ability to have the sidebar and then two other split views. In my case, I usually have an active register and then my budget. However, with the single-line register view (which is great) I noticed that I have a lot of wasted space in my columns of the register with this view. For example, the Type, which is typically just 3 characters for me (WID, DEP, TRF), and Amount have a lot of empty space in the column width, while my Payee and Category are truncated because they tend to be much longer. It would be great to be able to adjust the width to show more of the first two columns and less of the other two.
If you have a check, the check number will also appear in the Type column. But to answer your question, there isn’t a way to change those column widths individually.
Yes, another vote for this… or at least shrink the ‘Type’ column down so it’s as wide as the title ‘Type’ – as all the types appear to be only 4 characters wide.
One other question: when the beta versions are updated, how are we notified? Within the App?
Can I import investment data downloaded as .csv files? That’s the only format my broker provides. (no, I won’t change brokers, it’s a long story…)
This didn’t make the cut for v9 😕
+1 for that. Glad it is in the pipeline.
I manually update my ASX stocks because the day’s prices are available next trading day in my case (AU) just before market opens. Updating via a CSV would save mistakes and effort.
I want to use Banktivity but can’t figure out how to import transactions in Quicken 2022 to Banktivity 8. It doesn’t recognized the qmtf or the qxf files that I created in Quicken. I sent a request for response ticket last Friday and as of today I still have to receive response to that ticket.
You could try changing the file extension from qmtf to qif.
I like the one line register! Thanks!
Unfortunately, Banktivitiy’s biggest usability bug remains. The rules for importing new transactions can’t be trusted because of the automatic update of rules. Here’s an example: Most of my purchases from Swanson’s Hardware should be assigned the Household category. Occasionally I purchase Gift there. If I update the category on that transaction, it will put all subsequent transactions into the Gift category as well unless I remember to switch it back.
What I really, really want is a way to lock down all the rules — They are they way I want them; don’t change them!
I had an extensive email conversation with Tech Support about this issue about Feb 7, 2023.
Please allow resizable columns and custom views….so that memo and tags fields are viewable without opening the transaction.
I second that this would be a good functionality to have.
Still hoping for a way to track metals (gold, silver). I tried using assets and collectibles, but that doesn’t work.
I recommend setting up an account as a brokerage/investment account. Then set up securities for Gold, Silver, etc. And then create transactions to Buy the gold or other precious metals.
Do you recommend a particular symbol pattern for these types of “local” securities? Obviously “GOLD” is already take by Barrick. I thought about using a prefix like “PM.” so that gold would look like “PM.GOLD”.
That’s fine. You can also turn off downloading quotes for that security since we can’t fetch gold prices.
Using this method, I can equate one “share” to “one Troy ounce”. That’s simple enough. And if I accumulate a (metric) 10g bar, I can certainly do the math to present that 10g in Troy ounces. But, that’s what useful programs are for and why this would be a useful feature.
We haven’t optimized Banktivity for trading precious metals. It’s something we would like to improve, but in full disclosure it is pretty far down the priority list right now.
I had hoped in Version 9 I would be able to create a complex schedule in a single yearly calendar. For example Property Taxes are paid in April and December. I want to be able to highlight both months in a single calendar. However, when I highlight April and December in the calendar blocks and save, and then look at the schedule again only the first highlighted month block remains. Is this the way it’s supposed to work?
I’m not sure I entirely follow. Can you file an issue here, http://www.banktivity.com/contact_support.php
If I was scheduling this, I’d create a scheduled transaction with two schedules attached to it: one repeats yearly every April and the other repeats yearly every December.
Where do we report crashes etc when using the beta? I’m getting a repeatable crash on macOS when changing categories from within a report.
You can file bug reports here http://www.banktivity.com/contact_support.php
Just DL’d beta-9. I notice that the simplified register is a global setting and not a per-account setting. Not sure about that. I’ll keep playing.
Before opening beta-9 I created my own backup copy of my data file. The initial screen asking to open my previous file also claimed it would make a backup. Where did your backup copy go? It’s not in the same location as the original.
The integration with the macOS keychain is still quite rough. Using the keychain to keep track of the various passwords used for connected bank accounts would be helpful.
I found the backup. It’s in a sandbox container.
For Direct Access the form that collects credentials is a web view that is managed by our backend provider (Yodlee or Salt Edge). Apple doesn’t let us integrate into keychain when using a web view. I’d love to integrate better, but I don’t think we have the tools yet.
I’ve downloaded B9 224 – the release notes say that you can now End a scheduled transaction – not just delete it. How does this work because I can’t find any changes to the dialogue boxes or instructions?
If you press the delete key to delete one, it will ask if you want to delete it all, or just the unposted and future occurrences. Or, select the scheduled transaction and go to Transaction > End Selected Scheduled Transactions.
If ended does this also remove future instances of the scheduled transactions from budgets and future cash flows?
I hope it’s not too late to add a minor feature to Banktivity 9…
If yo have a filter hiding transactions (like you just reconciled a statement and have it set to show Unreconciled only) and it will give you a message “No transactions found”
I think it would be a better user experience to show something like “Transactions are hidden by filters” if there are transactions that are hidden and “No transactions found” if there are no transactions for the account.
This was setting up a new checking account and I had just reconciled the first bank statement and was confused at first why nothing was showing up.
Not sure if this is already possible (I may just not know how to do it) but if not, can you please consider it for Banktivity 9?
I want to be able to compare actual to budgeted using custom dates. For example, January 1 to April 30. The closest I can find is “Year to Date” but if I do not remember to do that on April 30, or just want to see that period in the middle of May, I cannot figure out how to do that.
Being able to do that would be very helpful.
This currently isn’t possible. I’m not sure if the right solution is to allow setting a date range on a budget or introduce a new report to report on a budget.
Will version 9 support Currency Conversion rates based on Transaction date as opposed to current date exchange rate in version 8?
You can set an exchange rate on a transaction when it involves two different currencies. Reports still pull only the latest exchange rate.
Are there any plans to apply historical foreign exchange rates to historical financial data in reports?
Current method to apply current foreign exchange rate to historical financial data may simplify technology programming but seems financial nonsense.
Banktivity collects foreign exchange data, so why not use it to report accurate financials?
Hi Ian, any news on a launch date yet please for B9?
One great feature would be the ability to group accounts. It could even be as simple as a (non-selectable ) dividing line between the groups in the list. Think Business/Personal or even Mom/Dad/etc. Just a quick way to visually find the account group you need.
This is already doable in V8.
Yeah… but not on iOS – the groups/folders don’t sync.
An idea for a future release , I would love to see register transactions grouped by month as a sort or view option, kind of how the latest email clients do on a per day basis to facilitate viewing. Each month could give an end balance summary, a competing product just released this and I think it looks very useful.
Happy for this to be in the single register view if that makes it easier to code.
Do you have a targeted general release date for 9? Looking forward to it. Banktivity fan here.
The budget improvement which shows remaining budget (over/under) is welcome, but it is still hard to see what is material as the order of the report seems to be limited to alphabetical list of expenses and the horizontal bar chart is the same length regardless of the value.. Would it be possible to provide more flexibility – at least to order differently, particularly by “remaining” amount as this would quickly show what is driving budget overrun. Ideally, to filter as in a pivot table e.g. overbudget > x. Thanks.
It would be possible for comparative reports to have a column reflecting the numerical difference in the two quantities compared?
I still wish for an improvement to budgeting to better support zero dollar budgeting in the manner that EveryDollar and YNAB support, with better integration between income and expenses and showing how much is remaining to be budgeted.
I also ask for Direct Access to better support MFA/2FA to automatically prompt me for the MFA method and automatically prompt for the 2FA code without needing to manually use the update-everything button.
Finally, envelopes are largely hidden and separate from expense tracking, including when I overspend and have no accountability in envelopes.
Installed the beta temporarily over the weekend. Very smooth and no issues. May I make 2 requests for future enhancements?
(1) I primarily create year-over-year reports. It would be helpful to add a shortcut key to page back-and-forth across years, rather than me trying to find the keys with my 70 year-old eyes (and trackpad hands).
(2) I have multiple securities within a Vanguard account. It would be nice to create a graph of the value of an individual security within the account, not just the entire account.
Thanks – a satisfied Banktivity customer.
My question is the same as that of Jerry Coleman (May 30/2023) regarding release to general Banktivity users. Also long time user.