On Oct 21, 2008, at 5:28 PM, Chris Larson wrote: > By way of introduction, my name is Chris Larson, aka kergoth. I'm a > software engineer, but primarily kernel and driver development, but I > have little insight into user interfaces. I've always had financial > issues, until a couple months ago when I discovered YNAB > (http://youneedabudget.com/). I purchased YNAB Pro ($40). It was my > first direct exposure to envelope style budgeting, and the concept of > financial software geared toward the future rather than the past > (adios, quicken & money). It's the only budgeting setup that makes > any sense to me. Being able to roll over balances is just intuitively > obvious, in my opinion. > > At any rate, I recently (a few weeks ago) switched my primary > workstation to a MacBook. It's the first Apple machine I've ever > owned, and the first time I've used OSX. Naturally, I've needed to > hunt down the right apps for a whole lot of things I already had > solutions for in the Windows and Linux worlds. > The YNAB folks are working on an OSX version, but they're using Java > for it. I'm going to avoid getting into a rant, but I'll just > summarize my thoughts by saying that portable codebases are a good > thing, but portable UIs usually end up uglier and less consistent than > native UIs. So I started looking elsewhere. I discovered Budget by > Snowmint, used it for about a week, and then discovered MoneyWell. > I'm currently trying out MoneyWell version 1.4. > Hi Chris,
I saw a nice response to this email so I didn't rush to respond but I'm catching up on emails so I thought I'd take a crack at this one. > I have to say that the developer has done an excellent job on it. The > user interface is clean while still retaining a fair amount of > flexibility (always a challenge). It's obviously much more pleasant > to look at than Budget is. Thank you. > In fact, the only things I noticed that > Budget had that this does not were: > - Easier to see all budget balances at once, at a glance (this is > fixed in 1.4, much easier to see now) This was a big issue with many customers so I've changed the UI considerably in 1.4. > > - Ability to allocate funds from specific income sources. I had a bit > of fun playing with this, since I could use it to show certain things > being paid out of my girlfriend's paychecks, and certain from mine. > This isn't a necessity, and I've gotten along without it fine with > YNAB Pro, but was something I took note of. I'm certain first half > and second half of the month will be sufficient for most things. I've looked at this ability and I'm still wondering how best to address it. My concern is that the interface will be overly complex so I'm holding off a bit. In the initial design of MoneyWell, I did have "pipes" that allowed you to connect certain buckets to always flow from one to the other. This may appear in a future release. > > - Envelope/bucket balances per account. I'm sure it being done > otherwise in MoneyWell was a conscious design decision, and I'm sure > there are points to be made in either direction. You cannot manage cash flow per account that's why buckets are a layer above your statement level. Now if you are working on two different sets of accounts, like a business set and a personal set, then just create two MoneyWell files and treat them as completely different cash flow environments. That's actually what I do for my family cash flow and our No Thirst Software LLC flows. > > - Integration with Address Book for payees. This is actually a pretty > cute feature, and might be something for you to consider at some > point. It can complete payees out of your address book, and can add > payees from its list to the address book (to a specific Group). > In the 2.0 release, you will have the ability to tag transactions with people and events. The Address Book in OS X may play a part in that. > Issues thus far: > - Double click on an expense bucket. Input a new name for the bucket > and hit enter. Now create a new transaction and try to assign it to > the new bucket. It will be unable to do so. After deselecting this > expense bucket, I was able to switch the transaction to the > appropriate bucket fine. That seems to be fixed in 1.4. If you still can make this happen in the latest builds, send me an email directly. > > - Right clicking on a transaction appears to blank out the transaction > line. EIther the text is removed, or its foreground color becomes the > same as the background. Once the right click menu goes away, the text > returns. This has been fixed in 1.4. > > - Capital One Credit Cards is missing from the database of OFX data > for the online account setup. I also note that there's no way to > create a custom entry with user supplied url, etc, but yet I can > select an existing one and change its settings.. this is a bit odd. > I'd say either you shouldn't let the user tweak it at all, or you > should let the user add a custom entry.. but that's just my opinion. > Once I selected capital one bank and then changed the settings to > match the capital one credit cards ofx settings I obtained from the > online MS Money database, it was able to connect, but it says my > username and password are incorrect, as though it actually used > capital one bank despite the settings I inputted. These settings are really only there for the beta test period. The final UI will be a bit different. We'll also have a way for you to request an additional FI to be added. > > - ING Direct is missing from the database, but I was unable to find > anything on this elsewhere too. I gather that most that have access > to this must go through yodlee to pull it off, so that's not really a > bug report, just pointing it out. Also note that there are entries in > the list of connections which have no url and stuff. Might be better > to remove them from the list entirely if they aren't going to end up > functioning. I could see this confusing the new user if they run into > it. ING Direct refuses to do direct connect banking. Complain until they change their minds. They are in the list so you can at least use the Connect button to get to their website and download transactions that way. Many other FIs are set up for web connections as well. > > - Orchard Bank credit cards isn't in the list, and I had difficulty > finding anything on this online also (it's actually an HSBC card, > however). So many FIs change names and information that it's hard to keep up. It may take us a while to smooth out the update process but 1.4 has dynamic updates build into it so we can push out new FI lists and individual updates for a specific financial institution. > > - The app gets a bit confused if you try to add a connection via > manage connections, but it isn't able to get an account list via that > connection. It then -forces- you to create a new manual account, even > though I already have a ton of accounts, and will end up changing > their active connections to this one later. It shouldn't be forcing > me to add an account, -particularly- a manual one, and when I added > the conneciton through manage connections, since that isn't an account > creation path. > Continue to report problems you see in the 1.4 beta to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . If you have not joined that list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the single word join in the body. > Random possible feature suggestions (beware the feature creep! but i > have to mention them anyway..;): > - Spell checking in memo wouldn't be a bad thing, if it didn't add > much overhead, and if it isn't too much work to add. It's already there, you just have to right-click in the memo field and turn it on. > > - The aforementioned Address Book stuff. > - It could be cool to have an option to show the dashed lines on the > income/expense graph, when you select multiple expense buckets, or one > of the smart buckets, so that you can see the planned amounts going > forward, not just the scheduled amounts. I'll add this to the wish list. > > - In the spending plan, I noticed that the amounts it sets aside don't > take into account the amount of time from now until the month where > the money is needed. For example, were I to set, on the GIfts bucket, > an amount of $0 for every month but December, and set $600 there, it > would set the monthly amount to $50, $25 per half. However, it's > October. We only have 2 months until the most recent December, so an > option for it to want to set aside $200 in oct, $200 in nov, and $200 > in dec, to ensure I have the money in time, and then drop back down to > $50/mo after that, would be a useful feature. I do this myself in a > Numbers spreadsheet, so I can manage my spending plan that way, but I > figured I'd point this out, since with that option, I could just rely > on the spending plan, at least for the repeating expenses that occur > within the next year. > It's hard for MoneyWell to know how much you already have saved so it gives you two options: Set an annual amount for the bucket and have an average amount appear monthly to set aside or, set the bucket amount to zero and set a specific amount for a month at the bottom and MoneyWell will only allocate that amount on that month (or months if several have amounts). > To sum up, great job. Clean interface, good functionality. Much > improved visibility on bucket balances, and allocations are much, much > less confusing than in Budget. The ability to download transactions > isn't that important to me personally, but I can see where that would > attract a substantial amount of users. I'll almost certainly be > purchasing MoneyWell shortly, now that I've played with 1.4. Thanks Chris! Peace, Kevin Hoctor [EMAIL PROTECTED] No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
