Moneydance Review

Full review

Moneydance is available as a one-off download ($49.99) to be installed on however many computers you have in your home. The cost is the same no matter how many different operating systems you use or how much data you work with. A free trial is available if you need to look at the program before purchase.

Accounts

If you like the idea of linking your bank accounts directly with your personal finance program, Moneydance is designed to meet your needs. It will automatically download transactions from your accounts and allow you to make payments direct from Moneydance. You can link to all kinds of account from checking to credit card and loan account. It should automatically clean up and categorize transactions to keep the workload at a minimum for you. In reality, it is not completely automatic and it does need a bit of tweaking – for example you need to confirm each transaction after it has been brought in. If you prefer you can add the transactions manually or use the accounts feature to reconcile the account against a statement. The auto-complete section for the payee is useful and it helps save a little time.

Use the feature to set up a regular payment schedule for transactions that occur often, and you can make sure you don’t miss any payments. And you can attach files and documents to any transaction, including scans or photos of paper receipts.

Moneydance adds a little more to the accounts offering by focusing on investments, and you can bring your portfolios into the program in order to watch your stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Through this accounts feature you can view the total value or monitor individual stocks or funds. Moneydance links to stock price information sites so you can check the value of stocks in real time.

Budgeting

The budgeting tool in Moneydance is effective but not entirely comprehensive – it doesn’t seem to be the main focus for the software. You start by creating a budget and then adjusting the categories with individual limits. The color of the line changes as you get close to your limit or exceed it. You can change the budget display and look at only current items, and you can adjust the budget limit as you progress through the month. If you want to set alerts you can have the software remind you when you are reaching a limit.

The feature for copying an entire budget over to the next month is useful and saves time if your spending remains the same each month. If you don’t spend all of your budget you can roll it over to the next month, but Moneydance has none of the focus of a software like YNAB on saving, getting out of debt, or general money management tips.

Reporting

Moneydance offers some pretty impressive reporting options and it is one of the most comprehensive sets of data reporting tools available. Choose which type of graph you want to display, and enter the settings for date range and type of data. Simple reports include cash flow, overall budget report, income versus expenses, and net worth. You can print charts and graphs or save them as image files. There’s no specific tax reporting feature but you can sort and analyze by category. We used the cash flow report which is a good indication of where your money is going and how you spend it each month.

Mobile app

The Moneydance mobile app is a free add-on and works for Android and iOS. The app allows you to enter transactions, make changes to your budget, and check your cash flow situation. The synching between the mobile app and the PC software works through Dropbox so you need a Dropbox account if you are going to use the mobile app to “speak” to the PC.

Security

The syncing from mobile app to software takes place with the Dropbox platform, so this ensures your data is safe. And syncing data from bank to Moneydance account is also secure.

Help & Support

You can start a discussion with members of the support team, which is either a private or public discussion depending on how you mark it. There are also options for looking for answers to your questions in the Knowledge Base or by browsing the public discussions.

Overall

Moneydance is useful, effective personal finance software with a good set of reporting features, and some handy additions for watching investment accounts. The mobile app synced to Dropbox allows you to work with your accounts and budget on the go.