The Flying Jalapeño Lives

As indy developers, we need to track our finances. Most of us can’t afford to staff an accounting department, so we look for software to fill the gap.

We need to track cash from sales of iPhone apps and/or iPhone contracting. I assume most of those reading my blog need both. (Side note: if you’re not in the iPhone contracting market, get there, another article…)

We have many contenders fighting for mindshare, loyalty, and sales, from the big boys to the indys. So how do we decide? What is important to us as iPhone developers, software vendors, and contractors?

Like good little programmers, we’ll logically split our problem into bite size pieces.  Here is what we need:

1. Invoicing
2. Job Tracking
3. Project Tracking
4. Bank Transaction Download or Import
5. Double Entry Accounting (for tax purposes)

When I say project management, I don’t actually mean how we as developers track our project progress (scrum, agile, issue trackers, etc…). I am referring to a means to group jobs and invoices under a common “umbrella”, not only by customer.

It would seem to me, and to most of the financial software venders that we have three distinct problem sets. The products I have been demoing specialize in a some combination of invoicing, accounting, and/or banking.

This separation of responsibility leads to an additional requirement: exporting and importing data between apps.

I won’t be doing full blown reviews, there are many available on the interwebs written by better reviewers than I. Instead, I will give a quick impression, some key points, and links.

Without further adieu, a look at the products:

Invoicing, Accounting, and Banking

Quickbooks

Lets get the elephant out of the room first. For me, Intuit’s offering is overkill. It does everything, with all the flair a professional accountant could ask for. As developers in the digital age, we are not tracking inventory and tend to have few employees and a little office overhead. Our needs are small and I don’t feel such comprehensive tool is required for most ISVs.

AccountEdge

MYOB has two relevant products. AccountEdge is poised to compete with Quickbooks. Suffice to say, it is not exactly on my radar.

FirstEdge

MYOB’s slimmed down, small business oriented product is much closer to what I am looking for in an accounting app. If you are looking for a solid accounting app with more features than you will ever need, while remaining as simple and Mac like as possible, look no further. FirstEdge gets high marks from the usual review sites. It’s not as complicated as AccountEdge or Quickbooks, but it’s still very “formal” in the way it handles your data. I know many consider this a feature, but with my limited knowledge of accounting, I think we can go even leaner.

Money

This app by Jumsoft is really nice. It has that familiar iTunes / Mail.app feel. It’s a nice one window interface with a sidebar used for selecting and presenting relevant data. It has decent reporting as well.

It has a template editor for invoices to make you look more professional. One strange quirk of Money is splitting invoice templates between “Styles” and “Layouts”. Styles are non-editable preloaded templates and Layouts are templates you can edit. The downside? You can’t use Money’s professional Styles as a starting point for your own templates. Just weird.

Importing bank data is also not automatic. It does include a “Web Bank” option which launches your bank’s website (in Webkit) within the app, but when I tried downloading transactions this way, it didn’t work. This may have something to do with the Safari 4 beta or not. Bank connectivity is a definite sticking point in an otherwise great app.

Accounting & Banking

iBank

Sure it has a cliché OS X name, but it is a great app. It is similar to Money, minus invoices, plus direct bank downloads. Additionally, IGG Software built in automatic connectivity with their Accounting/Invoice app, iBiz.  This is a great selling point.

IGG  has positioned iBank as accounting and banking with iBiz handling invoicing (with a bit of Accounts Receivable). This puts your Accounts Receivable (money coming in) within a separate app from your actual bank accounts and Accounts Payable (bills). This presents an interesting division of responsibility some may like and some may not. A downside is it may be a few more steps to see your total financial picture.

You can, however, create an asset account representing Accounts Receivable in iBank to which you can then transfer your invoices from iBiz. This works, but is slightly clunky. First my invoices sometime are imported as a withdrawal, instead of a deposit. This seems odd so I may be doing something wrong here. Second, moving a transaction from Accounts Receivable to a real account (on payment) is not automatic. I have to add the transaction to the bank (or download) and then deduct the amount in Accounts Receivable. As you can see from all of my words, this is not the workflow that IGG intended and is involves much extra work.

Invoicing

A note: there are many invoicing apps available for OS X. I probably missed some, or just didn’t include them.

iBiz

I’ll cover this first to keep it close to iBank. As I mentioned briefly, iBiz is attempting a bit of double duty. It has full Accounts Receivable capabilities. It can track open invoices, and send payments to iBank. This workflow is pretty nice. I think the interface is a little lacking, especially standing next iBank, but it isn’t the worst I’ve seen. Also it has reporting, but it’s not dead simple an maybe expects iBank to perform the “heavy lifting”.

It has an invoice editor, but invoices are created using HTML. My job revolves around coding, I really don’t want to mucking around in HTML just to make an invoice. I really feel that any invoice editor should be WYSISWG. iBiz’s users aren’t necessarily coders. I have to think overly complex template editing alienates some potential users.

Profit Train (formerly Billable)

A great, dead simple, invoicing app. It doesn’t waste a single button or window. It allows you to have multiple businesses that you can invoice from. More importantly, switching from one to another is scary easy. It also tracks expenses, and you can bill clients for expenses. Profit Train is still in beta and not feature complete, so I can’t be give a definitive ruling as of yet. Even in beta, Profit Train is extremely solid, with what I feel is the best interface of all of the invoicing apps.

Billings

Market Circle has a great app that many swear by. It clearly divides the interface between work and billing. I think this is good, but I don’t quite like the implementation of slips. They seem needlessly complex. Not that I am saying reduce the functionality of slips, it’s just that the default slip UI should be simple. Billings does allow you to group slips by project and invoice multiple slips. Billings also has many, many reports. Another great plus is that Billings will soon launch a companion iPhone app. Billings also has one of the best invoice designers. Billings also has export ability, but I did not test it.

GrandTotal

GrandTotal is an interesting entry. It fills most of my invoicing requirements and has export capability. It’s interface is pretty nice, but something is a slightly off. I think the structure has layout has something great going for it, but just needs some polish. Not “bling”, which it uses effectively, just some shuffling around of controls. The invoice editor/designer is good, probably second to Billings. GrandTotal has a free iPhone companion app with MobileMe syncing. This is a solid all around pick.

On The Job

Another solid pick. Very simple, very Mac like. I think it has a great invoice designer except for the fact there is no “save”. Don’t mess up, because all changes are permanent! I think the straightforward thought interface goes a long way in this app. It’s hard to write much more about it, you just have to use it to understand what it brings to the table.

Involver, Invoices, Invoice, etc..

I’m not delving into these products for one reason or another. Most do somethings well, but may be unpolished or don’t differentiate themselves from the pack.

SAAS

I’m not really evaluating these, I don’t see a need to keep this data in the cloud. However these are viable options with many in the link provided.

(Long) Conclusion

Overall, I find that none of the solutions are ideal. I’m sure that this is most view their accounting software. I am probably being a little picky and will likely be told so in the comments, but I don’t think I am being too demanding. However, I am self-aware enough to realize I am a UI snob which is heavily infuences my software decision.

I applaud the developers of all these products for creating complex software that is expected to perform perfectly or it is deemed a failure. Customers have (understandably) high expectations when it comes to safeguarding their financial data. With that said, I think that small business accounting and invoicing apps are still going through major maturation.  As a Mac user, you and I have insist on a great user experience. Couple that with the complexity that is accounting, and it gives these developers a tough UI problem to solve. I think several of these apps are on a great trajectory with a lot of room for growth and polish.

So what will I do?

Well, I’ll have to settle on an invoicing app soon. I can’t keep bouncing back and forth.

I like the simplicity of Profit Train, but want to see it in it’s 1.0 (really 2.0) form.

On The Job has much of the simplicity of Profit Train, with a WYSISYG invoice editor.

GrandTotal is solid. It’s a little crashy (Safari 4 beta problems, I believe), but it has promise.

Billings has everything the above three do, a better invoice template editor, but a a lesser UI.

For a one stop shop, I think Money is really close. I want this to be the app. It just seems so odd not have automatic transaction downloads in 2009.

I’ll have to pick one of the above invoicing apps and hope I can export my data to an accounting application I select in the future.

In conclusion, I  have a lot of thinking to do… (And most likely a second post).

After your considerable time investment in reading this post:

Don’t forget to tell us what you use!

Tags: business, development, finance, iPhone

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.