Hi Matteo, Thank you for the wonderful compliments and feedback. I haven't been hearing about crashes as much as you have reported so I'm a bit concerned. What version of OS X are you
Peace, Kevin Hoctor No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com Sent from my iPhone On Nov 19, 2008, at 11:58 PM, matteo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm a software engineer, a lifelong Mac user, and I have an interest > in good UI and information design. I used to use Quicken in the 90s > but I felt like it was taking a lot of my time without giving me much > benefit so I stopped. Now that I have a family the money is being > spent like there's no tomorrow, so I have been desperate to track my > expenses and get them under control. For the last three years, once a > year I try to find a good piece of financial software for the Mac that > will meet my needs. Of course I refuse to go back to Quicken, too > many traumatic memories and too many bad reviews of Quicken for OS X. > I want something elegant. I've checked out iBank, and MoneyDance, and > Liquid Ledger. None of them gave me warm fuzzies or worked > particularly well. I tried writing my own Perl scripts to create > textual reports and that got old pretty fast. Last night I performed > my annual survey of the OS X financial software scene and came across > Cha-Ching (eye candy), and then Moneywell. Holy cow. A choir of > angels started singing. This could finally be The One! > > I've been feverishly learning and testing Moneywell for the past 24 > hours and I'm happy to report that I'm sold. At fist I downloaded > version 1.3 and I really cannot put a piece of financial software > through its paces with only 200 transactions. That's about 2 months > of data for me, and I need about 6 months to have the critical mass of > data to truly evaluate how it works in a real world scenario. > Fortunately I discovered the 1.4 beta which is not limited. > > Moneywell exudes elegance, power, and simplicity. It's a joy to use > and is clearly designed with genius, passion, and extreme attention to > detail. The polish and the first class documentation blow my mind > too. I mean just look at the quality of those video tutorials! Kevin > you are the master. Importing the data from my 6 or 7 accounts and > getting it all categorized into buckets was a snap. It just all works > and makse sense. > > But the thing I am most excited about is the brilliant envelope-based > allocation system. Behind all great design is a deep understanding of > the underlying problem, and reading your articles and documentation on > the envelope/bucket approach to managing spending made it clear you > really get it. Knowing the structure of the problem lets you design > such an elegant solution. The philosophy behind Moneywell was a > revelation to me, and after reading it, it all seems so simple. But I > know how much work goes into achieving that simplicity and clarity. > Bravo. And thank you for the financial enlightenment -- this is > exactly the tool I was looking for to get my spending under control, > and now I see I didn't even know what I needed. > > Here is a list of bugs/features I compiled over the last 24 hours. > These apply to 1.4 (200) Beta. I'm running on a 2 year old MBP > 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs of RAM. > > Bugs: > > - Takes a few seconds of spinning after clicking "check all" in > reconcile window, with only 200 transactions in the whole file. > Something's afoot there. Takes even longer, maybe up to 10 seconds, > after clicking "close" in reconcile window. > > - When I tried to delete the cash account, Moneywell crashes. > Happened several times in a row and then I gave up. I am also > experiencing consistent crashes when I try to delete empty buckets > that I don't want. Every now and then I can delete one, but most of > the time I can't, the program crashes and quits. > > - Once when I selected 'New Account' from the File menu, nothing > happened. It worked when I selected it again. > > - If I select a month, then select a bucket, the month selection goes > away and all months are selected. This doesn't seem right to me. I > want to be able to click through each bucket to scan through expenses > by category in a given month. If I wanted to go back to selecting all > months, I'd do it myself by clicking on the background of the graph. > > - Neither the left arrow nor the little circles at the top of the > graph work to take me back to months in the past, even though there > are two months not being displayed. > > - If I change a bucket name, the entries in the bucket column of the > register are not refreshed unless I force a change. (I came across > lots of other refresh errors as you noted in one of your posts, but > this is the only one I made a note of.) > > - I had a strange glitch twice where I merged two transactions into a > transfer from my checking to my credit card. (I did this by selecting > the two transactions and going to "Create Transfer from Selection" in > the Transactions menu, as you showed somebody in a screenshot on one > of the forum posts.) It worked fine in every way, except that in the > monthly graph the amount of the transfer was being added to both the > income and the expense bar. My other transfers between the same two > accounts did not have that problem, but I used a different process to > create those -- just making one of the transactions into a transfer > using the transaction detail and deleting the one in the other > account. Ultimately I fixed my problem by deleting the bogus > transfers and making new ones using the blue transfer icon. > > - I don't want to assign a bucket for transfers from checking to my > credit card, for exactly the reason discussed in your transfers > tutorial. However this means that those transfers show up in the > unassigned smart bucket. This is annoying because I want to keep that > bucket empty. I don't think unassigned transfers should appear in that > smart bucket. > > Feature requests: > > - Automatic memorized transactions are great, but there are always > some unassigned transactions that I need to put in buckets after > importing. I'd like a way to do this quickly without having to touch > the mouse. (I'm an emacs user after all.) For example, one way of > doing this would be to allow editing of the fields within the > transaction register. Hitting return would go down to the same field > of the next entry. If editing within the register is not in the > cards, perhaps there could be a keyboard shortcut to move to the next > or previous transaction when the focus is in the transaction detail > pane. Right now I have to click back and forth between to select the > transaction and then to focus on the bucket field in the transaction > detail: two clicks and a bunch of mouse movement for each entry. It's > very tedious. > > - I'd like my memorized transactions to match based on the aliases but > not change the payee. A checkbox next to the payee in the memorized > transaction form would do the trick. For example, I want to be able > to put "EXXON" in the alias field, and have it match on the following > and save the bucket, but not change the payee: > EXXONMOBIL 34102301 QUINCY MA > EXXONMOBIL 34632133 GLOUCESTER MA > I don't want to lose the information of where I got the gas. > > - How about a balance column in the transaction register on the right > hand side? My bank registers have that and it would make it a snap to > find exactly where a register goes out of balance. Somebody on the > forum suggested some sort of mark to show each point where you know it > was balanced, but I think a balance column is simpler and more > effective. > > Kevin, thanks so much for an incredible piece of software. It's > already so much better than Quicken and you've only just begun. I'll > be buying Moneywell now and telling all my Mac friends about it. > > Yours, > Matteo > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
