Banktivity Review 2023
The Best Personal Finance Software for Mac
Quicken is the personal finance software of choice for Windows users, but what if you're a Mac person? Quicken 2018 for Mac should be the easy answer, but it's completely different from the Windows version, and many users have found it to be a nonstarter. That's where Banktivity 7 by IGG Software steps in.Cost - 8
Customer Service - 7.5
Ease of Use - 8.5
Tools & Resources - 8
Synchronization - 8
Accessibility - 8
8
Banktivity 7 is a great alternative for dissatisfied Quicken for Mac users. This personal finance software has all the features competing Macintosh apps have and a few features typically available only on Quicken for Windows. However, you must have the latest edition of iOS in order to use this software.
Banktivity used to be called “iBank.” But in early 2016, IGG software renamed it. In this review, we'll check out the updates that have been made for the release of the app's seventh edition. And we'll compare it to what I still consider the gold standard among personal finance applications: Quicken for Windows.
(Note: If you still want to try to run Quicken on your Mac, I recommend using Quicken for Windows on your Macintosh via some virtualization software.)
Banktivity Features
| Price | Min: $69.99, Max: $69.99, Term: none |
| Budgeting | |
| Bill Payment | |
| Investment Tracking | |
| Access | Web Based, iOS, Android |
| Credit Score Monitoring | |
| Bill Management | |
| Retirement Planning | |
| Tax Reporting | |
| Reconcile Transactions | |
| Custom Categories | |
| Import QFX, QIF Files | |
| Two-Factor Authentication | |
| Online Synchronization |
- Calendar View — You asked for it, and Banktivity delivered. View your posted and upcoming scheduled transactions on a handy calendar.
- Mojave Dark Mode — You can use Banktivity 7 in Mojave's dark mode, which makes for a very sophisticated and attractive user experience.
- Customizable Summary View — Choose which accounts you want to see and which accounts you don't want to see in the Summary view.
- Synchronization With Zillow — When you have a Direct Access subscription, you can integrate the Zillow estimates of your property values.
- Tagging — Allows you to track spending across multiple categories for events such as a vacation.
- Workspaces — Access side-by-side windows that allow you to work in multiple parts of Banktivity at the same time.
- Quick Reports — Drag and drop to create an instant report of your finances.
- Direct Access — Connect to more banks than ever. This is done via Yodlee. But this service isn't free. A one-year subscription is $44.99. A 90-day subscription is $13.99. A 30-day subscription is $5.99. A free 30-day trial is available.
- Budgeting — In an improvement on the previous version, you can build savings, track spending, monitor daily progress, incorporate scheduled income and bills, compare goals vs. results, and sync your budgets to Banktivity for iPad.
- One-Button Update — Similar to what's offered in Quicken, you can now download all financial transactions with one click.
- Improved Investing Tools — Enhanced investment support for bonds and options.
- Setup Assistant — Making it easier to import from other applications.
- Prevent Duplicate Download Transactions — Superior elimination of duplicate transactions from bank downloads.
- iPad Synchronization — Sync scheduled transactions.
- Improved Speed — Better use of import rules to speed categorization.
- Better Categorization — The ability to categorize investment transactions.
What Is Banktivity?
Banktivity is personal finance software for Macintosh users. Created by IGG Software, it helps users pay bills online, track their spending patterns and maintain a budget. It's a good alternative to Quicken if you've got an Apple-centric household with a Macintosh computer and “i” mobile devices.
Converting From Quicken
I'm a longtime user of Quicken for Windows. To test Banktivity, I exported a QIF file of my current data from Quicken. I suspect many people will do this, so I tested this part out extensively. In its fifth version, Banktivity added a setup assistant, which makes the import process much easier than previously.
Banktivity requires the latest macOS — 10.13 or newer. If you have an older Macintosh, you won't be able to use Banktivity.
I was surprised by how painless the conversion from my Quicken for Windows file was. I had a few minor issues in account categorization, but that was it. I don't use Quicken for Mac regularly, so I wasn't able to test this feature. I suspect the import process is similar and just as easy.
Unfortunately, all of the online download account information is not passed to the QIF file. You must manually set up each account within Banktivity. Most of my 52-plus accounts are set up to download. It can be a long, tedious process to set up each one. Mind you, this isn't the fault of IGG Software. Rather, the limitation is in the QIF file format (which was developed by Quicken), and security reasons require this setup.
When using Banktivity with any bank that requires a direct connection for synchronization, you must create an account with IGG Software. The direct connection service is in addition to purchasing the software. A one-year subscription costs $44.99. (I suspect most people will purchase this.)
Banktivity Screenshots
Mobile Synchronization
Like Quicken for Windows, Banktivity Mobile can sync with your iPad or iPhone, so you have access to your information on the go. Until recently, the app cost $9.99, but now it's free (and ad-free).
Banktivity also offers an easy-to-use but comprehensive iPad app, which costs just $19.99.
I don't need a total view of my finances from my iPhone. The mobile app is useful primarily for transaction entry. So that would mean I would need to have access to only my checking, cash and credit card accounts. I wouldn't care about investment accounts while on the go. Empower does a better job with its consolidated view of investments.
Beyond this, the synchronization works well and gives you access to the same information you have within your desktop software. The app does not give you access to these sections: budgets, memorized transactions, scheduled transactions, historical security prices, account interest rates or reports.
If a conflict occurs, your desktop software will notify you and allow you to pick which transaction should win. It's possible to synchronize with multiple mobile devices. But your Banktivity desktop software will always be the master.
Quicken also has an iPhone app, but from testing both apps, it appears that Banktivity's functionality is slightly better.
Investment Tracking
The investment area has been improved from the previous version, but it's still not as useful as either Quicken for Windows or the online service Empower.
The positive: This section allows you to reconcile your accounts and does allow for downloading transactions from popular financial institutions. It can even download the latest stock quotes into Banktivity.
Banktivity offers a centralized portfolio view that shows you all of your investments in one place. But Banktivity's investment “type” category is based on investment instrument, rather than sector.
IGG Software touts currency conversion as a big feature in its application. And I do consider it a good feature that pretty much no other personal finance software offers. But there is a good reason nobody else offers it. How many individuals have accounts in different currencies?
Assuming that the United States is IGG's primary audience, there is very little need for this feature. U.S. citizens must comply with a complex array of compliance issues when owning foreign bank accounts.
So this is a neat feature and a must-have for those who have this problem, but I just don't see that many users needing it.
Banktivity Pros & Cons
[table “proscons” not found /]Summary
For those who want a native Macintosh application, Banktivity should be on your short list. Banktivity 7 has all of the must-have features you need in a modern personal finance application.
It's great to see Banktivity improve with each new version. This version makes it just that much closer in comparison to Quicken for Windows and, in my opinion, surpasses Quicken for Mac. However, while the investment functionality has improved from the previous version, it could still use some improvements to match Quicken for Windows.
Compared to Quicken on a price basis, Banktivity 7 is a good value. Quicken has switched to a subscription model, which means you'll have to pay $74.99 annually if you want all the bells and whistles. Conversely, Banktivity 7 is still a one-time purchase and costs just $69.99 (with an additional yearly charge of $44.99 if you want the Direct Access synchronization feature). However, if you are upgrading from either Banktivity 5 or Banktivity 6, you'll pay just $34.99.
From my extensive testing, I actually like Banktivity enough to perhaps personally use it as a supplement to Empower, which I like using for investment tracking.
For this version, we have increased the rating to 8.5 stars. This rates Banktivity higher than its Macintosh competitors, Moneydance and Quicken for Mac.
If you're looking for desktop software that's Macintosh-based, Banktivity 7 is hard to beat.
I loved the app until I had to deal with a non-responsive customer service. A horrible experience of passing the buck and never contacting you as they claim they will do. Looking for a replacement. Banktivity freezes and it’s my problem despite being able to show it is on their end.
Response by Banktivity is nonexistent. That wouldn’t be a problem except the user is led to believe that “somebody” will answer his or her query. I’ve never experienced a freeze, but I DO know that it can’t do simple addition and subtraction. Anyway, best wishes, Ellen, and I hope you get your problem solved in some way.
I have just cancelled my subscription to Banktivity after continuous problems with direct access. I had contacted support many times and while they did respond most of the time, their responses failed to fix the problem. I have since gone to Personal Capital which is free and seems to be working so far. I also had problems with its arithmetic, especially when trying to budget: numbers were strange. Could not get an answer to that one either. Too bad, It has a nice look and good features if they just worked.
I am facing the some issue with Banktivity, hard or not exiting support at all. on top they charge me twice for yearly membership. very disappointing .
Banktivity/Ibank sucks. I asked simple question, upgrade from an old version and I was given instructions. However when I followed all the instructions, only part of my bank files were transferred (through 6/1/20, its now 1/15/21) and in the process, all of my apple time drive files were over written by the missing information ( I’ve tried to restore all of them) . I had to download bank info from like 7 providers/banks to recreate my files.
You do say in your article that the software is principally aimed at the US market BUT it has a strong UK following and purports to service their needs. We don’t have Direct Access, but personally (as a Certified Accountant) I don’t need it and wouldn’t pay extra for it.
What disappoints me is the lack of consistency in the hnandling of UK investment values, the majority of which are quoted in Pence. The data download show the Pence value per share but the program then proceeds to treat those values as Pounds when calculating Profit/Loss and most irritating of all: the value in Summary.
Last year Banktvity 7 lost essentials features, like auto update for currencies and stocks (from outside US)… the features the features that made me buy the software, because I have account and investments in 5 different countries/currencies.
I opened some supports tickets, but they never solved it and I never could get a refund because the problems came after the 1st month.
But the worst came now Nov-2020… they are launching Banktivity 8 with all that features working, but now I should buy again the “new” yearly membership for only 99usd.
I realize that features never had problems, only IGG just took them out to launch the new version and sales model.
I am reluctant to state that i have to crawl back to Quicken. Banktivity 7 has issues that they need to fix asap. The automatic download from my checking account was entering duplicate and some triplet transactions which made my balance less than what my bank states. Its been problematic for about a month. After Banktivity finally gave me answer/fix to the solution over a week later, I was directed to delete my checking account and reload it. I did that and my balance is STILL not correct. Until Banktivity fixes their software so that it works as intended, I’m using quicken.
I live and Bank in Canada. I have been using this sw since Banktivity 5. now on 7. Paid for newer releases as they came out. All the broken and bad stuff stays broken and bad, only difference is the incremented digit in the name. While Banktivity isn’t bad, direct access is complete garbage and is broken more than it works. They don’t provide any refund to this subscription either for the periods it does not work. Given how bad direct access is, they should be paying customers to use it.
I am done with this garbage.
I have used ibank Banktivity5 and subsequent upgrades thro to Banktivity 7.5 and until Jan 2020 all served their purpose.However in early January 2020 stock tracking no longer worked. I was advised that the data source was being changed and since then I have not been able to get prices for any London Stock Exchange stock prices making the programme not fit for purpose. Despite a chat no solution has been offered to rectify the problem.
Re: V. 7, How can you possibly give such high rating to this buggy software. At first it looks nice but it is so buggy, it is useless. This is perhaps the worse piece of software I have ever used. I used Quicken for nearly 15 years before migrating to Banktivity 6 then version 7. (1) Most transactions do not migrate properly, (2) several investment institutions migrate but all purchases are always zero, (3) sometimes it assigns transactions to vendors automatically, and even their tech support could not bypass this, the only being to stop automatic download, which defeats the purpose of the software, (4) very buggy… even with multiple assignments, it always automatically chooses “medical expense” for my grocery store that does not even have a pharmacy. …I can go on and on…avoid it..I am now putting essentially everything manually until I find an alternative or just go back to Quicken.
Hi Ron
I sympathise – since January 2//3 2020 the stock tracker is not working and nobody has fixed the problem yet
I have used Banktivity for 10-years. My biggest complaint is budgeting. It does not allow for month-to-month budgeting. My property taxes are paid in November. My vacation is in August. Landscape overhaul will take place in May. Banktivity won’t let me budget with those realities. IGG has been telling me for ten years that “they are working on it,” but nothing happens. My old MS Money program offered this feature 20-years ago!
After an update to Banktivity in Sept 2018, I found that in the reconcile window I could no longer see the full data in the DATE column. When I contacted UGG they admitted this was a problems and engineering was working on it. Well, here we are in April 2019, I’ve recently updated and this is still a problem. I can’t believe they can leave something that is so basic in a state where it doesn’t work properly on something so basic to the application. Just so you know, I’ve written about this twice again and each time I get the same answer–‘we know about it and engineering is working on it)
Hmmmm…….doesn’t look like they’re working on it very hard.
I agree with one of the others that submitted a comment about the investment part of the program not being intuitive. I thought I’d learned my way around it, but now I get stymied on a regular basis. I’d love to have a go at UGG’s test process. I think it needs some input.
I’m working on my taxes for 2018. A couple of months ago I ran a report that gave me a good overview of my gains and losses in my investments. There have been 2 updates to Banktivity since then. I ran the same report yesterday and the page came up blank, other than the title of the report. I’m a very experienced iBand and Banktivity user and I cannot find how to get a capital gains/loss report. Rediculous. I’ll try and get some help from UGG, but that has not been very helpful in the past. Still……I’ve got to give it a try. They’re posting that their CHAT service is not working, so I’ll have to go through the snail method and send them an email.
I’m running version 7.2.2. If anyone has a hint for me, I would like to try it out.
I, also, have been using iBank and then Banktivity for 4 or more years. Last week suddenly I had no transactions from Nov 13 to last week. This involved more than 100 transactions in both of two credit cards. The tech was of no help and ending up advising to either re enter the transactions or download from my bank online. The latter was not a solution at all, as any and all notes I made with each transaction would not be there. The notes included confirmations for bank and future reservations at time shares as well as pertinent and valuable information. The amount of time re entering data will easily amount to 2 full days of work and will not be complete (for example confirmations of banking and other transactions as well as categories). No apology was made, and certainly no compensation in any way for the error by Banktivity. Your glowing review of Banktivity is dimmed, to say the least.
Ive been using Banktivity for the last 4 years. Banktivity 5 was trashed when they upgraded to Banktivity 6. It’s buggy, they’ve been inattentive to the bugs, they made changes to how the reporting functions and prints — the last two years of my tax preparation have been a virtual nightmare. This year, I found out that the buggy syncing (which never worked right … so I quickly ignored this feature) was deleting transactions AND reconciled statements! I had to review ALL of my items and re-enter many transactions based on my credit card statements. I’m done! Looking for a replacement now. Not even going to bother trying Banktivity 7, based on how they pretty much ignored all the problems with Banktivity 6. I’m guessing that if they tried to improve on an already buggy product, then they’re just building crap on top of crap.
Bill Pay is just loading your own bank’s bill pay website in the browser inside their software. That’s not provide bill pay, that’s just a fancy way of using what you already have, and why should you pay a subscription for that?
I’m coming up on the 3 year mark using Banktivity (5, 6, 7). I got to this site because I’m considering reverting to Quicken (Windows) which I used for 25 years prior to converting to BT. There are many positive things one can say about BT. When I converted I wanted Mac software and Quicken for Mac was a poor budget program. BT was hands-down better (but not near as good as Quicken Windows).
Now, I’m tired of dealing with consistently buggy software. It feels as though the BT folks release the software with minimal testing and rely on their user base to test it after release.
I continually and consistently have problems with the direct access “feature” – duplicate transactions, connections to my brokerage accounts breaks often, it doesn’t handle investment transactions as well as Quicken, etc, etc.
Because this article doesn’t address the rookie bugginess of BT, I wonder about the review of Quicken for Mac (2018)? That is not a criticism of these reviews or the author – what is written is helpful.
Is Quicken now mature enough? It appears from the comparison charts that they are about equal. If that is the case, then I probably will go back to the windows version in a virtual machine. I hate to do that but…
Thanks to the author and anyone else who may have a point of view.
I have been using Banktivity for many years, recently however, I have multiple issue with “Direct Access”. One institution specifically , Bethpage Federal Credit Union” has become nearly impossible to fix. Customer service has responded but in one case I ultimately found the fix after a number of emails back and forth with customer service. Unfortunately, less than one week later a different problem arose and now I have to download the transactions manually from the BFCU website. It has been over two weeks and still waiting for Banktivity to find a fix. Moreover, the problems existed in Banktivity 6 and continue in Banktivity 7.
I switched from Moneydance to Banktivity a little more than a year ago when I was trying to find something that would also work on my iPad. After a year, I’m moving back because of multiple issues. First, the iPad version was *not* a full version and is missing significant features, and while Banktivity had somewhat more connectivity with banks and credit cards, you have to pay an additional $45/year for it, plus an additional $70 a year for upgrades to the software itself. Beyond that, I have had recurrent issues with online connections breaking or downloading duplicate transactions, making me waste hours tracking them down. Support has been responsive and helpful, but the fact that I have to contact them on a monthly basis to fix something is frustrating to say the least.
Moving from MoneyWiz to Banktivity
I’m in a Herculean task, trying to get out from MoneyWiz. I realized last month that I’ll be stuck with MoneyWiz forever if I don’t leave right now. So I choose to do so. I’m using CVS export. Never again a finance software that doesn’t support QIF export.
Quicken for Mac does not work in any country outside USA/Canada. Banktivity does. Serious investors do buy/sell shares in currencies other than $. Banktivity handles that well. I do manual updating of my banking transactions for security reasons. I wish Banktivity would improve its investment reports and bring them at part with Quicken for Windows.
I have issues with Banktivity hanging, not just latest version, very upsetting.
I would give Moneydance a higher rating than Quicken for stability alone. However, I will say that I do not connect to my bank accounts through the app, so not sure how well that feature works in Moneydance. Basically I don’t trust ANY app to do that, so I enter everything manually.
I recently purchased Banktivity upgrade 6. I think it stinks. It is so different from the Banktivity 5 that I am going to switch to another vendor. I have used Banktivity (formerly IBank) for 5 years but they have stepped on the toes of the long time users. I do not like the support system. Charging for phone calls would be faster and better and get resolves quicker. I suggested this but they ignored it. The new version is so unlike the other and not intuitive at all. I would have to place many chat sessions with them to determine what went where in the system. Like I have the time to mess around with their support system chat. I don’t. I am writing a letter to Apple to tell them do not sponsor this program. The version 5 was good and I do not care about the securities stuff as I can view that online and have my own spreadsheet for that purpose. Anyway they do not care what I think. Hiding behind a cyber wall is not my idea of support. If the program WAS intuitive we could figure it out from the old version, but that is not the case.
I agree. I’ve been trying to resolve a problem of constant, never-ending updating since mid-March. It makes it difficult with their reply every 10 days. I am no closer now than 37 days ago.
Thanks for the thorough review. I have tried Banktivity and it is not as intuitive or easy to use as Quicken. The higher cost is the biggest hurdle. I am thinking of going back to Quicken because I am so accustomed to it.
“IGG Software touts currency conversion as a big feature in their application. Yes, I do consider it a good feature that pretty much no other personal finance software offers. But there is a good reason no others offer it. How many individuals have accounts in different currencies?
Assuming that the United States is their primary audience, there is very little need for this feature. U.S. citizens must comply with a complex array of compliance issues when owning foreign bank accounts.
So this is a neat feature and a must-have for those who have this problem, but I just don’t see that many users needing it.”
……………..
Well for the over 9 million of us Americans that have or are living abroad it is a godsend!
Not to mention the 200+ million native English speakers that can make use of the different currency options ..
Hello, Nadia,
There is a lot more to the world than just the US.
I’m a citizen from Portugal who moved to the UK some years ago.
I still have a bank account in Portugal, and I spend money from that account every time I go back to Portugal, or when I visit any European country which uses Euro as a currency.
Plus, I also do EUR-based investments.
In the UK I have a GBP account, as I pay and get paid in GBP in my everyday life.
In this day and age, this has become a common scenario, so having a way to aggregate your financial life which might be split across different currencies, is actually very useful.
I can second that. If you need multiple currencies, you *really* need multiple currencies
So first you have to pay for the program and then extra for online access? That is a deal buster for me. Further, your rating bars shown in the article, are for all purposes tied. So why shift and pay even more for fairly poor performance that matches Quicken?
I started using Quicken on my Mac when it first came out, then stopped when it started to vacuum so badly. In many ways it still does. It seem to “break” on a regular basis or they completely forget to do thins, such as remembering to include the Financial Institutions in one up date. Further, it seems that they update/repair it every other day; after which things are even worse.
So, why can’t someone develop an actual, truly good program for Macs?
I have been disappointed by Banktivity 6 vs Banktivity 5. The loss of significant digits in securities prices means my B6 records no longer match my brokerage records (okay, so the disagreement is down in the cents, but if B5 could do it, why not B6?). B6 often chokes ingesting QFX files from my credit card company (the exact same file is processed fine by B5), and the program often hangs attempting some action like “preparing to close document.” Unfortunately, an unrelated Unix issue required me to upgrade to OSX 10.13. That forced me to use B6 (B5 will not run under the new OS). I’m soldiering on, but not liking it. I dumped Quicken years ago when their Mac offerings became so dreadful, but now I see that, on paper at least, Quicken is almost adequate…
Okay, I have been running Banktivity 6 and Quicken in parallel for a month. While I would prefer to give the nod to Banktivity, because it’s what I’m used to and I have years of records, Quicken simply works better. I have two reasons for this judgement. First, credit cards: either automatic updating or downloading and processing QFX files, Quicken never skips a beat. Banktivity works for some accounts but chokes on others. Because it always hangs on the same accounts, I suspect the problem is that my Banktivity files are malformed. That error probably arose in the conversion from Banktivity 5 to Banktivity 6, since Banktivity 5 worked flawlessly, but I’m not about to spend hours trying to track the problem down.
Second, brokerage accounts. My comment above about B6’s lack of significant digits making my B6 records disagree with my brokerage statements I now regard as trivial; there is a much more serious problem: reinvested dividends. B5 used to split reinvestments into two transactions: a credit to the account followed by a buy, so that the cash balance correctly remained the same. That was a bit clunky, but it worked. IGG obviously wanted to make B6 better, so they did reinvestments right, almost. Now they have a single reinvestment operation which both brings in the new cash and buys the new securities (though if you look in detail at the transaction you’ll see that they actually accomplish this by stuffing a double-the-price amount in the “commission” box; I guess whatever works is okay). The problem is that, like B5, B6 *also* records a separate dividend transaction, which adds new cash–cash which doesn’t exist–to your account. You can correct this problem by deleting the separate dividend transactions, but the next time B6 updates things, it will stick those transactions right back in. That’s most definitely a bug (a bug easily fixed, but why do I have to discover it? I’m not a beta-tester). Meanwhile, Quicken handles reinvestments with smooth aplomb; everything is put in the right place and all the numbers agree with my broker.
Overall, I like Banktivity 5 the best, but I can no longer use it since it’s incompatible with High Sierra. I am reluctantly switching to Quicken since Banktivity 6 is so buggy. BTW, the transition from Banktivity to Quicken is not for the faint of heart. Banktivity can export to QIF format, which Quicken can ingest, but some information is lost so you have to scan through all the imported transactions to make sure they’re doing the right thing. I set up my new Quicken records going back only a year. That took a couple of days and a lot of coffee.
Thanks for your comments Gerard.
I agree with Gerard. I have had an on-going problem with never-ending updating and no meaningful support in 37 days. I used to use Quicken for Mac and will look into it again.
I hope you will update this regarding IGG’s poor support. They very recently had a huge issue where stock quotes were no longer updating among their entire history of products including iBank 4, Banktivity 5, and Banktivity 6. They are not fixing iBank 4, forcing users to upgrade (with a mere 25% discount for Banktivity 6 or 50% or Banktivity 5). 5 year old software should not be FORCING users to pay for an update.
Will TurboTax import from Banktivity? Also is your data stored on your computer so you don’t have to be connected when working on data?
Can this software group expenses by (the personal equivalent of) departments? For example, Auto Expenses could be allocated to two different ‘departments’. Another example, utility company 1 expenses for ‘department A’ and utility company 2 expenses for ‘department B’ would be categorized in the Utility expense category, but show up in the appropriate department report.
Tags only come close in what you want to achieve.
I ONLY use Quicken as a check register and to do reports for tax preparation. My Quicken for P/C has so many defects I bought a Mac and am about to migrate my Quicken. These reports about Quicken for MAC worry me aqnd it is clearly a program too heavy for what I need… ideas please??
I LUV BANKTIVITY 6.0+ !!!! This does EXACTLY what I want in a MAC program. While I’m new to Investment processing, I have more information than I can absorb. I keep discovering new aspects and it’s like Christmas everytime I discover the feature. The simple bank downloading feature has simplified my financial life by a REAL 95%. I would like to see a little more on tax categories reporting which should be easy since the data is already captured but not really used. Hopefully, soon.
Banktivity 5 or 6 can’t handle any Merrill Investments. Share Balances will vary from -10,000,000 to + 9,000,000 when downloading. It appears to me that Bantivity has no idea how to manage bond transactions – buying or selling – the dividends appear ok.
I have spent hours with the Chat Experts, sent screen-shots, logs etc and they haven’t a clue. They just say I should look at each transaction and make it match Merrill – a joke there are thousands.
Even after deleting an account and re-establishing with direct download, within a day or two outrageous errors begin to appear again.
The program is only good for keeping balances in bank accounts and credit cards and for categorizing for tax purposes. If you are looking for anything to keep track of investments, I would recommend your bank, certainly not Banktivity!!!!
Got this when we switched from windows to a Mac. We pay for their download services and I have to constantly go in to correct transactions. You get these inexplainable phantom transactions and transfers. Makes more work for us. Took a lot of work to set up as well. Unfortunately quicken for windows has set a high bar and it’s mind boggling why the Mac doesn’t have an equivalent.
Good review – but just a comment on your view that the currency capability is useless – not everyone who will buy this lives in the US. A great many Canadians have US dollar accounts so this is very useful.
Long time Banktivity (even when it was iBank) customer here. I am sad to say that IGG Software has continually made customers purchase and re-purchase their apps. I kept upgrading so that I could get full use of the tool. I am a CPA and liked the design of the software for simple personal use. But not only am I bummed that they keep charging me money, but the apps are unstable and they say it’s my data when I call them…I go through all the process to get the mobile apps working fine and then the next day, the apps crash again..and again. So in 2 years I have NEVER been able to access my data on the go, I have to always use the desktop to do my work. Lastly, I calmly and respectfully attempted to get support and my emails/support tickets are completely ignored. I think it’s because I haven’t paid them (AGAIN) to upgrade to v 6 yet. But I am just guessing. So sad… the software has a good design, but I think the culture at IGG Software makes it unlikely that they will assist the original users that made them so successful in the first place. Goodbye Banktivity.
A big thank-you to all who have reported on their experience here. I purchased Banktivity 5 and found it complex and too expensive. I was thinking of upgrading to version 6 but the other reports here have convinced me to return to Quicken, even though I am on a Mac.
Portfolio holding reports are extremely odd and almost useless except as a summary.
No easy way to view all holdings, or to see combined portfolios, or to group investments into asset classes and view investments across a portfolio within those groups.
The whole approach to managing investments in very strange and awkward.
In Banktivity 6 there is a Portfolio item where you can see all of your investments together, grouped by account, type or risk.