Finances 2 4+

I get it when an App developer says nice and clearly up front before you download that says its FREE but with limited functionality and if you like there is enhanced functionlity available via “In-App” purchases.

This App has no such statement and is, in my opinon, a backdoor way of getting you to download it so they can claim how popular it is because it has "XXXX number of downloads" and its not until you open it that you discover its ONLY A 14 DAY TRIAL. Whilst the overview of the App looked interesting enough to download as soon as the TRIAL window popped up the App was DELETED and you now have lost a potential customer even before I tried the App.

Please be more transparent and honest with potential customers BEFORE they download by telling them that this is a TRIAL. If other reviews in the App Store of developers who use this misleading method is anything to go by, it does your brand more damage than good in the long run.

My original review from 2020 is below. I recently discovered that this app is no longer being developed nor supported, so after more research decided to purchase Moneydance and transferred all my Finances 2 data across. There were a few complications, but with the help of Moneydance forum members I managed to do it within a few days.

As with all apps, the migration couldn't automate the linking of attachments, so I exported them out of Fiances 2 and re-attached them manually in Moneydance (yes that was time consuming!). I only had just over 1000 attachments with 3 years of transactions.

Prior to 2020 I'd been using Quicken Personal Plus, and migrating 20 years of transactions and attachments into Finances 2 had been impossible, so they still live within an old Quicken backup, leaving only a few years of Finances 2 transactions to migrate.

Moneydance has been a good "upgrade". It's got more features than Finances 2, and looks more like Quicken. Like the Finances 2 developer, it's a small company that may have issues in the future, but the app allows Python app extensions to be developed by third parties (and there are quite a few) so has a diverse development path and is well supported.

So far, so good!!
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This is one of the better personal finances apps available and is very reasonably priced. It is very easy to enter transactions and attachments. Utilising double entry accounting methods also makes it much more suitable for general accounting purposes. The interface is one of the best of all the apps I tested.

I moved to this app from Reckon Personal Plus. It is much easier to use, but is lacking quite a bit of Reckon's functionality. For example, this app does not support investment portfolios (share trading etc) however because it's a double-entry book keeping system it's possible to setup most accounts (including budgets). The app utilises multiple levels of sub-accounts with rollups.

Finances 2 also supports multiple journals, which is great if you have multiple sets of accounts to manage. Many other personal finance apps can't do this.

Importing is restricted to CSV files. QDF etc from other apps is not supported (though importing to any of the apps I tested was never easy!). Be prepared to hand type anything you want entered.

The problems I've had with Finances 2 are:

1. Support is essentially non-existant. I have had responses from the developer on a couple of issues, but most support requests go unanswered.

2. The app does not have an account reconciliation process. The workaround is to "clear" transactions against statement entries. There is no formal matching process. Transations can be cleared or uncleared at any time, so you have to be really careful entering or modifying transactions to ensure they are set (and remain) as uncleared until reconciled. Also "clearing" a transaction clears both the debit and credit entries, so you are inadvertently "reconciling" transactions in other accounts!

3. Attachments are only supported for transactions. You cannot (for example) attach a bank statement to its bank account. They must be stored outside of Finances 2.

4. A transaction entry can be split across multiple expense/income etc categories, however each split item cannot be annotated, so you can't tell from the entry what a particular split item is for. You can attach a document (eg invoice) for those details, however the transaction itself only has one general note for everything. This also means that reporting by specific split items is not feasible.

5. The iCloud syncing across devices sometimes fails. The only way to fix it is to first clear the iCloud data and try resyncing. If that doesn't work, make a backup then delete all your local and iCloud data and then restore from the backup.

6. Reporting is basic, but OK. I have some formatting issues (one of the reports is incorrectly sized and does not fit on the page) but have not received any feedback from the support request I raised about this.

7. The app occasionaly generates errors with codes and text that only have meaning to the developer. It would be useful to have documentation on what the errors mean and where log files etc are held that may assist with identifying the issue.

8. Since the tax coding of accounts is not supported, you must group all tax-related accounts together to facilitate reporting. It's not possible to isolate details from tax accounts across multiple account hierarchies.