wiseman@tellab5.TELLABS.COM (Jeff Wiseman) (10/21/89)
A little while back I posted a question regarding Dollars and $ense and MacMoney. I have had some question mailed to me regarding the responses so I will provide a summary here. Please Note that I have not used MacMoney other than to briefly look at it. The following descriptions are based on my knowledge of D&S (I've used it for a year now extensively) and mail that I received from the net that was almost all about MacMoney. The following is the current feelings and opinions that I have developed on the subject. --- As It turns out, I did not get exactly the kind of information that I had specifically requested but the notes that I received did help to reinforce some ideas that I had. I will pass on what I know. First of all, this note assumes that products like Quicken are too simple (ie. I what to do extensive budgeting or manipulate several accounts like savings, credit cards, checking, etc. all in the same context -- a simple transaction recording mechanism is not adequate) and products like Managing your money are too complex (ie. I am not doing estate and stock planning and/or market analysis. I am not running a company so accounts receivable, etc. are not needed or desired) for your need. I assume that you need everything required to run a large family and maybe a little extra (eg. I own stock that I want to somehow track but I only use it a little)! Based on the preceeding assumptions, there seems to be (at present on the market) only 2 choices, MacMoney and Dollars and $ense. I have used D&S for a year now (Please note that I am an extremely picky person. I run my accounts with as many as 4 backups depending on their use). I have never used MacMoney but several months ago I started up a copy briefly to see it. From everything that I know and have heard from others, I can surmise the following: FACT: MacMoney seems to have a far superiour support from its distributor Survivor Software than Monogram gives to D&S. This seems to be based at least in part by a syndrome that I've seen in the industry...D&S was originally made for DOS-PCs and in fact was supposed to be the cat's meow there. However, we ALL know what happens when you port a DOS program to the Mac :-) MacMoney was originally made for the Mac. I have heard many people rave about the service that they got from Survivor software but I have yet to hear the same about Monogram (which reinforces my experience). Note that this does not imply that I have heard negative comments (other than my own) about Monogram, only that nobody has told me "Gee, I really like the service they gave me..." or "Their technical support really seemed to go out of their way to help...", etc. with regard to their product D&S for the mac (I say this because I don't know what their service might be like for their DOS products or even their mac based "Buisiness Sense" product). D&S only a year or so ago had a total face lift (version 4.0) to take advantage of the Mac Interface. It was very buggy and went through many changes since then (4.1 4.1a 4.1b and 4.1c the current one). The current version has several (usually trivial) bugs in it still but the interface seems to be a LOT nicer than the earlier (pre 4.0) versions. MacMoney therefore seems to have the jump on D&S since they seemed to have "optimized" for the mac much earlier (ie. from the start). I do like the way the interface for D&S 4.1c works though. It is (by my standards) fairly intuitive and easy to use (except for the cash flow reports. Maybe its just me but after using it a year, I still don't undertand them. And believe me, I've spent hours trying!). I would like to see some features improved and I would DEFINITLY like the manual to be more explicit in several areas, but I'm sure I would feel the same about MacMoney. POSSIBLE FACT (ie. speculation based on fact): D&S may have the edge over MacMoney in some of its feature set. The impression that I get is that this may only be slight though. It has a fairly flexible reporting mechanism in that a given report (eg. Net Worth) can be customized several ways to provide quite different views of your finances (eg. immediate cash worth, short term worth, or with all liabilities in, long term total net worth). A common complaint of MacMoney users is that they want more flexibility in their reports. Also, an article in MacWorld (I think that it was in the Dec.'88 to Feb.'89 timeframe) indicated a little more flexiblity in account name handling and selection for D&S. I do like the way that D&S handles this. Furthermore, I heard (rumor) that Monogram will be releasing version 5.0 (upgrade time! $You$know$what$that$means$!$) sometime in the not so distant future that may help D&S keep this slight edge in features. On the other hand, My feelings are that Survivor software would be more responsive to providing consistent feature enhancements than Monogram would. (Monogram has several other software products to divide their attention) SUMMARY: As far as software products go D&S has a nice collection of features that I like a lot. If only all of them worked consistently. It is a little buggy for my liking as far as a program that is used for such important applications as keeping me from going too far in debt at the worst possible time :-) In order to eliminate these bugs, it appears as though I may have to pay to get an upgrade with a bunch of new features. Upgrading for new features is fine for wordprocessors and drawing tools but (for me anyway) a financial tool should be fairly stable with most of the features you need in it the day you buy it so that if you choose, you can keep your original tool for 6 years worth of records (You HAVE heard that Macs only last 3 years or less before developers stop making software for them havn't you? :-) :-) MacMoney seems to come with a feature set very comparable to that of D&S with possibly a few slight restrictions. However, it sounds to me as though I would really like to have Survivor Software on my team. This support issue can be very important to some people and I feel could be the deciding factor here. Also, with good tech support and a software product that is well structured internally, the additions of new features can be done quickly and safely. My suggestion to anyone in the catagory of assumptions made at the start of this note who is trying to decide between these two products is to proceed as follows: Some software distributors allow as much as 30 days money back offers to allow you to try out software. Purchase a copy of MacMoney and put a couple months of records on it to see how it feels (I ASSUME that you have been doing this all on paper for the past ten years and still have your records :-) :-). If it meets your needs, keep it. If you still have a question, find a friend or someone with a copy of D&S 4.1 and sit down with them and try setting up some accounts with your transactions. You will probably find that with the experience that you got playibng around with MacMoney, you will be able to evaluate the other product very quickly. If customer support is not as much an issue to you as feature flexability, try the same thing the other way around. Again using one of the products extensively will likely allow you to evaluate the other in less than an hour or two. As for me, when Monogram comes out with their next release, I will look at what BUGS were fixed and how much they want for it (compared to the price of a new copy of MacMoney around $60-$68 mail order). I suspect at that time I will probably still change over to MacMoney just because after I spend 6 hours writing a bug report to my product's manufacturers that contains several questions on how to use the product, I know that I will likely receive a response of some kind! (I wonder if Survivor Software has any plans for a filter to convert D&S accounts to MacMoney ones. Hmmm....) Good luck in choosing but I think you can't go too far wrong in choosing either since it is soooooooo Wonderful being able to automate this process in this fashion that you will never go back to pencil and paper! -- Jeff Wiseman: ....uunet!tellab5!wiseman OR wiseman@TELLABS.COM