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It's almost that time of year again. Instead of scrambling to gather all of your receipts and paperwork for tax time like you've done for the past decade or two, hopefully you've started keeping electronic tabs on your finances. (This is the information age, isn't it?) One way to do this is by using Reilly Technologies Moneydance 2006 for Mac ($30; www.moneydance. com/mac), a simple, feature-packed and smooth-operating application that helps you get a handle on your finances.
Moneydance is easy to set up, and packed full of features. It's easy to stay connected to all of your online banking details, including not only your checking and savings account information, but also your investment accounts. There are a couple of different ways to keep track of this information. If you prefer micromanagement, you can manually input all of your transactions into Moneydance, or if you prefer the automated route, you can just import the bulk of transactions recorded through your online bank account using downloaded .QIF, .OFX or .QFX files (something Quicken users may already be doing). In some cases, importing information has been made more complicated by recent security improvements that banks have made, however, a phone call or two should be all that's required to get access to your information. Once you input all of your information, the use of the program is simple and offers you an amazing amount of flexibility.
If you are constantly smacking your head in frustration, wondering why you have such a hard time paying your bills each month, take a closer look at where your money is going. With the categorization method in Moneydance, you can group your payments together, and figure out if you're spending $400 a month on groceries or $1400. (This will help you determine if maybe it's time to cut back on the expensive cheeses.) The categories could use a little fine tuning, considering that credit card payments don't have their own category, forcing you to put them in either "Expense: Miscellaneous" or "Personal Expense: Miscellaneous." If you're putting together a budget, odds are good you're working on a credit card balance or two, and if you mistakenly don't put them in the same category, you may wind up under-budgeting how much you're sending to the creditors. However, Moneydance is great when it comes to setting up a plan for you to keep track of your upcoming regular payments. You know that on a monthly basis you'll be paying X dollars for rent or mortgage (or even your cell phone bill), so set yourself as many different reminders as you need—likely one for each incoming bill—and then use the banking features to pay these bills through your bank's online features.
Using Moneydance to monitor your investments works out very nicely, as well. After inputting a couple of pieces of information, Moneydance is set up to download up-to-date information for your investments. Maybe you hadn't heard about a stock split, but if it has affected your share values, Moneydance will show you exactly how much your shares are worth at the moment you update the information. Monitor your stocks, bonds and mutual funds; really, anything you're invested in.
Perhaps the most obvious feature when you first load Moneydance is the ability to convert your assets into different currencies, with up-to-date exchange rates, (you may even translate the program into eight different languages, which makes budgeting for that Finnish vacation all the simpler). Moneydance also allows for all kinds of different graphs and documents including budgets, missing checks, cash flow, income vs. expenses and so on. If you have a monthly budget that allows you to sock away an extra chunk of change, save it and use it to compare with other months when you've had to pull your belt a bit tighter. Quicken users wishing to move to Moneydance can transfer information easily, as Moneydance reads exported .QIF, .OFX or .QFX files.
– PETER BODROG
Moneydance 2006 for Mac: 
Reilly Technologies | www.moneydance.com/mac | $30
Pros: Plenty of helpful features and useful graphs, online updates make future use a breeze.
Cons: Ability to create your own categories would help, some downloaded updates need explanation.
Requires: OS 10.3 or higher
macHOME recommends: Taking advantage of Moneydance’s online banking capabilities
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