hovan@bgsuvax.UUCP (John Hovan) (01/21/88)
I am posting this for a friend, however replies can be sent to the address listed below. Thank You. ----- I am requesting information about personal accounting programs for the mac. Does anyone care to talk about a package they have seen or used. Some of the features I would like for it to incorporate are: *Interest payments *Checking *Savings, such as stocks, bonds, T-notes, CD's and so forth *Loans Please send any information about the program including its name, the publisher's name, and any rating you might care to give it. reply to: John Hovan Bowling Green State University Hardware Support ----------> hovan@bgsuvax.uucp N8JAA
dtw@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Duane Williams) (01/25/88)
I have used both Dollars & Sense and MacMoney, but it has been over a year since I used D&S and I haven't tried the latest version. I switched from D&S to MacMoney because of problems using the old copy protected version of D&S on my hard disk and because I was unhappy that I could not export my data to other programs. The new version of D&S is not copy protected, but the upgrade cost was so high that I could buy MacMoney from a mail order firm for about the same amount, which is what I did. MacMoney takes much better advantage of the Mac user interface than does D&S. (D&S is a port of a program from the MS-DOS world.) MacMoney is very easy to use, e.g., recording a newly written check involves filling in fields in a window that looks like a check. MacMoney reminds you when automatic payments/deposits are due. You select "automatics" from a menu and a window appears with a list of the transactions. Click next to the ones to want to pay and you're done. MacMoney can easily distribute payments/deposits among several accounts. The account types include: Bank Accounts, Cash Accounts, Credit Cards, Income, Expenses, Assets, and Liabilities. Creating accounts is easy and you can do it anytime you want. It is very easy to go back and correct errors. MacMoney can produce a large number of reports and graphs. Reports can be displayed on screen, sent to a printer, and saved in a text file, which can be read and processed by another program, such as Excel. I have gotten better support for MacMoney than I ever did for D&S. The author of MacMoney responds to my questions via email on GEnie. He also has accounts on CompuServe and The Source and MCI. Of course, Survivor Software also provides traditional telephone support. The documentation that comes with MacMoney is not great, but it is satisfactory. Registered users also receive a newsletter periodically. THE CURRENT VERSION OF MACMONEY IS 3.0. I am reasonably happy with MacMoney. Since this is a response to a message that explicitly asked for a program that could handle stocks, bonds, CD's, etc., I will point out that neither D&S nor MacMoney is specialized to manage a portfolio of investments. You can though keep records of your investments using these programs, provided you don't need an accurate minute-by-minute report of your net worth. MacMoney is published by Survivor Software Ltd., 11222 La Cienega Blvd., Suite 450, Inglewood, CA 90304. You can get it by mail from MacConnection, Programs Plus, and other mail order software distributors. Expect to pay about $40-45. Aside from being a customer, I have no connection with any of the companies or individuals I've mentioned above. Duane Williams (dtw@cs.cmu.edu)