Version .31 feedback - some ideas and frustrations

[mthadm]

Multiple reconcile is not a bad idea actually. As a stop-gap, if you absolutely need it we support it in the main register,
you always can select a bunch of transactions on a given criteria of filter, and then use "Mark-as"-Reconciled.

It works well and people use it particularly after large imports when they don't have paper statements.

We will add it to the reconcile dialog also, it sounds like a useful option

Thanks

[mthadm]

- Category can't be added as a column (does anyone really care about payees anyay? Groceries are groceries).

- On the Chart of Accounts screen, you cannot edit the columns; many of them are a waste of space. If you've had your checking account open for 3 years, do you really want to see the opening balance as $0.00 forever? I would say for informational purposes, its here where you want to see:

So you know, these got addressed in the build 33

List Manager: I love this page, but there is a great opportunity here. One feature that's great in iBank 3 is that the category list shows all you spending in each categories, and there is a nice feature of being able to highlight 2 categories and immediately combine them, which updates all items at the same time. This is great when you're first importing and want to use categories set up in your old finance app, rather than the default one's of your new app.

We support category/payee combination today. There are 2 distinct ways of using them: In the list manager you can select categories/payee you want to combine and click on Merge. The dialog will ask which one is a surviving entry and then will proceed to fold all data into that entry.

Another way of doing it is to use Refactoring functions from the register (Quick Edit- Refactor Category)
No matter how you do it your entries will be updated against all affected accounts, open or closed.

Finally, still no budget or securities support? I assume they're on their way? Quite interested in seeing these integrated.

These are being worked on, we don't have an ETA but securities has a high priority

[Zoolook]

As soon as the budget and securities are added, I'll probably plunge for a license. Any idea on the dates? I'm running iBank and MS Money in parallel. I want to close out XP on my Mac, but iBank is just too shakey.

How are you now dealing with loan/mortgage accounts and calculating payments? If this isn't feature complete, please think about allowing the user to input the financial manually and have the app figure out the interest.

What's sometimes frustrating on financial apps is when you input the figures and the application tells you it doesn't work... iBank is a classic for doing this, even though you input the correct data as per the paperwork, even though you can make it work on a spreadsheet. I think the issue is around accrued interest.

Example: If you borrow $100 and pay it off over 2 years, with a 10% interest rate, calculated monthly. The actual accrued interest would be 5.21%, but this won't be shown anywhere on the paperwork and unless you're an accountant, you probably wouldn't come up with that figure - you need the app to help. Just to explain this:

Month 1 - $100 principle. 83 cents interest (100*10/100/12). $5 payment to cover the principle payment plus interest ((100/24)+Interest).

If you extract that out of 24 months, the total payments are $110.42, divide that by 24 and you get a scheduled payment of $4.60

Obviously $10.42 is your compounded interest, divided by 2 years gives you actual equivalent interest rate of 5.21% per anum. Most apps (iBank and Quicken Mac for a start) don't help you here. MS Money, to its credit, will if you input the payment amount and term as well as the principle loan.

[mthadm]

Please check private mail,

Thanks