GreenBooks - Money Manager App Reviews

I dont usually write reviews but Savings is too good to go unlauded. Totally worth the money. Totally customizable, simplicity is the best way to handle complexity and this app is great at it. Emails to the author receive prompt and friendly personal replies. P.S. There IS a way to export/ backup your Savings data- shoot off an email and ask Yi how. Time Machine will back it up too.

I was looking for a Mac OS X replacement for AceMoney, something I used on the Windows side for years and then used for a while via their Wine build on Mac OS X. After growing tired of the non-native look and feel of AceMoney under Wine, I finally shopped around the App Store and found Savings. It looked right and had the same basic register-based accounting as AceMoney, and indeed, it for the most part duplicates much of the latters functionality. Unfortunately, Savings insists on hiding useful features like "Projection" (in which future pending transactions are shown in the register) and a balance column behind optional settings, and some of its basic functionality like the ability to sort on a column in the register is actually broken in that the balance column, if shown, does not sort correctly along with the rest of the data. I have found that the author is very responsive to feedback, and that is a good thing, but basic functionality needs to be made thoroughly robust before I can give this application 4 stars or more.

It would be nice if you didnt make you app look like a app that actually is usually this app does not automatically sync your accounts…. basically what I am saying it is useless (=

It is a limited app but does exactly what I need to do. It helps me track expenses and see trends in my spending. I can download my bank statements directly into it which is very convenient. There may be better apps out there but you will pay ten-fold for something with just a few more bells and whistles. I use it regularly and am still happy with it.

Run! Dont walk away from this app! it is the worst app I have EVER purchased. Not worth the money, not even if it were free!

No matter how many times I look around at other finance and budgeting software, I keep coming back to Savings. Yes, its simple, but simplicity works to its advantage. Its been a reliable program that lets me track my expenses, budget, and plan for the future. The charts are actually useful, the scheduled transactions work great, and the hidden gem of import-to-reconcile is fantastic. By far this program is the quickest way to get a functional budget going.

I just switch from PC to Mac. I tried Quicken for Mac, didnt like it. I decided to get away from 3rd party money programs, and wanted something just to keep track of my accounts. I am happy with this ap. It what I was looking for, not a lot of bell and whistle.

really good basic power tool to keep rough track of finances. importing transactions from online bank sites is really effective. In the next update, please look into splitting the annual budget so that you can do a 12 month budget with single month view of that budget. i.e. so it is easy to see the amount spent and available in each category for the particular month. thanks and keep up the good work

The app is pretty nice if you need simplicity. Good design. But I need to be able to upload the data on the cloud. What if someone steals my computer? I will lose everything I had carefully inputed all this months? This is crucial, allow DROPBOX synching as soon as possible.

I purchased this app and had some questions the 2nd day. I contacted the customer service per their web site policy, emailed them twice in a week, then tweeted them (again per their policy). I never got a decent response back. The problem with these apps i’m finding is people do them in their spare time, and have a full time job which takes precedence. So they’re not available to help other than weekends or extended time after you contact them. I’m asking for my money back.

I’ve been using Savings for several years now. I must say that I’m very impressed with Savings. It is simple, easy to use, yet powerful enough to manage all of my personal finances. The price is reasonable, and the developer is responsive and continues to update the application frequently with new features and fixes. This is one of my favorite programs to use on the Mac!

Five years later I am still using Savings. It has continued to evolve (albeit at a slow pace), and is still my favorite finance app. It balances simplicity and efficiency, and presents me with the information I’m most interested in seeing in an elegant way. The pace of development has quickened in recent months, and I have really enjoyed the recent updates. Review from Jan. 2011 - I was first drawn to Savings because it looks good and reminds me a little of Cha-Ching. Ive continued using it because it does a better job of visualizing my spending than any other app Ive tried. It also gives good feedback on whether your spending and budget exceed your income. There are some missing features (scheduled transactions, payee autocompletion), but those are coming and missing features are to be expected in such a young app.

I have been using ths program for over 4 years and Yi has been wonderful in both support for specific issues and in continuing to improve the product. I was so completely frustrated with Quicken after having used it successfully for more than a dozen years, that I was ready to go back to spreadsheets when I couldn’t get Quicken to quit linking transactions in different accounts and completely ruining all of my budgets & plans. Then I found Savings. YAY! It was simple and elegant at the same time. I’ve been able to replicate all of my former budgeting processes and am very greatful that I was able to find this software!

I have been using this app for four years. It is intuitive and very easy to use. No, it won’t do tax report or help managing your small business. But for daily life expense tracking and planning, this app is all you need. For most of the time, I just export activities from my cards and bank accounts and import it to Savings. Then, I can keep track of my balances, incomes, and expenses. You can also visualize your budget, which help planning ahead much easier. It can sycn with your iOS devices via iCloud (I think the iOS version of Savings is a separate purchase). The new version added automatic categories, which is a very nice feature. If you are finding a personal finance app, you should seriously consider Savings. The developer have been keeping up with updates and newer versions for many years; your investment will not go away any time soon. If you need a free trial, just click on their website.

This is my third year using Savings. I have found it easy to use, with excellent responses to customer inquiries and problems. It gets better, too, with each version, without losing the best of prior versions. Trained in double entry bookkeeping, I had to get used to “accounts” meaning bank or other such accounts, and “categories” meaning what bookkeepers call “accounts”. I think it’s good for beginners AND experienced bookkeepers to track personal finances.

I installed Savings to serve as my checkbook register. It did a great job of importing my accounts as a .qif file, and has a nice enough look and feel to it. I have a couple of issues that Id like to see added: 1. Running balance for each transaction. 2. The ability to import scheduled transactions. 3. The ability to sort accounts on any of the fields (Date, Payee, Category or Amount in both ascending and descending order). 4. The ability to identify transactions as "tax item" for easy reporting at year end. 5. The ability to do multiple-account transactions (e.g., when paying a credit card account, one entry posts as a debit to checking and a credit to the CC account). 6. The ability to account reconciliation.

I’ve used this for several years and it keeps getting better. It’s slow progress for updates sometimes, but it’s reliable and has an iphone app.

In the most recent version to date, 1.8.3, Savings does everything for me that I need for it to do, and it does it well. I like to keep things simple, and I find Savings to be very intuitive. I can bring up the program and make entries quickly, and for this reason, and because it is so easy to use with the recent changes, I find myself entering transactions the same day I make them. I have not been that consistent with other finance programs, and eventually ended up not using them. Not so with Savings. I originally purchased Savings quite some time ago while it was in the early development stages. In the early days, there were some issues that caused me to put the program on the back burner so to speak and use other software. Yi promised to make needed changes, and recently has been fulfilling those promises. The program today is well worth the purchase price, and, as previously stated, simplifies the finance tracking and budgeting process to the point of making entry of transactions easy and, in my thinking, enjoyable. I highly recommend this program, and encourage you to work with it a while and get to know how it functions. I think you will be pleased. Maybe the best part of buying Savings is the customer service. If you have a question, Yi is prompt and thorough in helping talk you through it via email. As you might guess, I am a very satisfied customer.

At first I really liked this app because it was very simple, didn’t try to force me into some convoluted way of thinking about my money, and did most everything I wanted it to do. I’m sorry to report two things that make it a deal-breaker for me: • It is unstable and allows certain operations that will gaurantee a crash, such as setting an Emoji on a budget category group (as opposed to just a category). • Worst of all, it reports incorrect data in budget categories. I have an expense listed in my account register which mystifyingly does not appear as a deduction in my budget for the catetory assigned to it. It’s just this one, as far as I can tell, but the fact that I can’t trust amounts in my budget is a total deal-breaker. It prevents EXACTLY the peace of mind and planning that I want from budget software and could cause me financial problems. There is one small thing that is really frustrating but was not a deal breaker for me. Within the budget screen you cannot sort by category name. The categories appear in a seemingly arbitraty order and there is nothing you can do about it. This causes un-needed difficulty in scanning expense tracking. You know software, especially from a downloadable source; once you pay you are screwed. It doesn’t even matter if the software is broken, you are probably not going to get a refund. Pass this up and don’t get burned like I did. At least it is inexpensive.