On the money
I am very much looking forward to the reviews on finance packages, which you mentioned in issue 271’s letters page.
Five years ago, two things prevented my wife and I making the switch from PC to Mac: the lack of a finance package that would work in GBP, use the dd/mm/yyyy date format and import information from Microsoft Money; and we couldn’t create pivot tables in Numbers. We were already using a large Excel spreadsheet, incorporating pivot tables, to record the stock of our wine cellar.
Then, just under four years ago, we identified Jumsoft Money 3 (as it was then) as being Mac friendly, and it appeared to meet our needs. At the same time, we discovered pivot tables could be constructed in Microsoft Excel for Mac. With those two pieces of information (as well as reading MacFormat), we made the switch and have never regretted doing so.
One area where Jumsoft Money 4 fails miserably is with maintaining an accurate value and number of shares currently held. While we don’t hold that many, the four shares accounts we have are added to twice a year through dividends. Jumsoft copes well where only shares have been added. It seems less able to accurately reflect holdings and value where selling and the adding of new shares are involved. We have written to Jumsoft (and included screenshots), on at least three occasions over the last three years, but, as yet, they have failed to find a proper solution for us. iBank may be a candidate to replace Jumsoft Money 4, but we’ll wait (patiently) for your review. Grahame Treasure
Ian Osborne says: It’s great to hear you made a switch to Macs, and are looking forward to our future financial packages group test.
Regarding stocks and shares software, have you tried StockMarketEye (stockmarketeye.com)? I’ve never used it myself so I can’t offer – or withhold – a recommendation, but it looks pretty comprehensive and might be right for your needs. You can use it for free for 30 days, so you’ve nothing to lose by giving it a trial.
And don’t forget, if you absolutely have to use Windows software, virtualisation is the easiest option, using an application such as Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion.