Back in the day I kept too much financial information on Intuit’s popular Quicken. Checkbooks, accounts, credit cards, banking info, and more were the hallmark of the last good version of Quicken for Mac (back in 2007).
Then Intuit quit updating Quicken for the Mac and many of us saw the handwriting on the wall and started to search for different solutions to manage what little money we had left at the end of a month.
That’s when I turned to CheckBook on my Mac. It’s an affordable personal finance manager without the torture inflicted by many other complex money apps.
What you get for very little money is a mature Mac app that works pretty much like a check book. It’s a single window interface so it’s simple to navigate and it works like an analog check book. Set up accounts, enter transactions, totals are updated automatically.
Fortunately, there’s nothing magical about Check Book except an adherence to simplicity. Create categories for your transactions. Set up scheduled entries to pay bills at the same time each month. Transfer money between accounts. Click to view an account summary.
Each entry automatically updates the totals, so it works similarly to your check book, except you don’t have to do the math to keep everything in sync.
Bells and whistles? Not much. There’s not automatic bill paying. No tracking of stocks or mutual funds. Just basic single entry accounting as if your entire fortune is in your checking or savings account.
The Pro version costs a bit more and has a few more features. What’s missing is an iPhone version that syncs with the Mac version. I take my iPhone to more places than my Mac where I write checks or charge on my credit card.