Fresh Finance for Mac

User Reviews

• Would Be a Decent Product If There Were ANY Support

  AmphianMay 15, 2014

  Pros

  The program looks nice. Most parts of the app work. Setup is relatively easy.

  Cons

  Bugs are not fixed. The "1 Year License" expires after a few months. Customer support is a black hole with no response.

  Summary

  I have had this product for a few years. There are a lot of nice standard features in this application - accounts, budgets, reminders, even a net worth graph for the last six months. The problem is when something does go wrong. Customer support is an email address from which I have never received a single response. My advice it to save your money for a product with actual customer support.

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• whats all this raving about??

  pdboyerJanuary 1, 2014

  Pros

  This software has an attractive look and appears to keep accurate records.

  Cons

  Very limited in its "direct connection" feature difficult to work with the bank download features imports don't have automatic tagging clumsy to work with no response from software maker for help

  Summary

  I find it hard to imagine what people are seeing in the software. Sure, if your major bank is one that Fortura supports, it probably works fine for you. However, if you use local banks, and this has been an increasing trend for years now since the bank failures, you're just plain out of luck. Importing from an unsupported financial institution is hit or miss, and I haven't been able to get answers out of the company when asked. It doesn't seem to track investments well at all and seems worthless for this application. I downloaded Money for free and it works like a charm. Why I spend $49 on Fresh Finance is beyond me.

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• Perfect for me

  JeffS1984December 19, 2012

  Pros

  * Can connect to my bank and credit card account and download all my transactions with 1 click. * Split feature lets me split my transactions to multiple categories so I can track my exact spending on items (for example when my wife and I go grocery shopping). * Clean user friendly interface, which is a must for me. * Pretty fast, even when importing thousands of transactions from a QIF file when I moved from Quicken to this.

  Cons

  * There is room for improvement in the "budgets" feature, but I don't really use that much. * Not the cheapest software, but worth the price for me.

  Summary

  This is good software that is well designed and easy to understand. The support is also pretty good, I have had a question 2 times, each time I was answered within 1 day. If you need a good money manager that has all the features one may need, definitely give this software a try.

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• HORRIBLE support, manuals, knowledge base.

  workindogDecember 18, 2012

  Pros

  It has a decent user interface, similar to many others, decent ability to create new categories. I can't recall being impressed by much because the bad outweighed the good. It is well reviewed, and that is why I bought it.

  Cons

  OMG, there is NO customer support. 1 month, no reply, want my money back. 3 requests for support, none answered. The knowledgebase has about a dozen questions. I cannot find any decent online support, and the user guide is minimal, not in-depth. The underpinnings of how this program works are a mystery. I found it too confusing to use. Worse, it scrambled data, adding spurious transactions in accounts on reconcile, losing transfers easily. No way to look back at a reconcile like in quicken to fix it. Transfers were easy to break with no way of tracking the problem. Suddenly, the account didn't balance. I spent two WHOLE days reconciling and re-reconciling my data, only to have it mess it up again. There is no demo and no trial, so I took a risk. I haven't had a company be some unresponsive in a long time.

  Summary

  Avoid at all costs. $49.95 to be exact. Try something else.

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• Great mac finance manager

  AlanGiaJune 18, 2012

  Pros

  - Clean and easy to read screens - Has all the features we need - Easy to use and setup - Frequent updates - It doesn't use Java

  Cons

  None in my opinion

  Summary

  I've been using this software for 3 years now (I use it on my PC and my wife uses it on her MacBook) and it gets better and better. I used to use Quicken before. This software is great and is easy to setup and use. The screens are clean and are not cluttered like Quicken is. And for those of you who say you have to re-purchase the software every year, YOU ARE MISTAKEN. When you purchase, you get 1 year of free upgrades. If you want to keep receiving software upgrades after 1 year, you can OPTIONALLY renew your upgrades for an additional year. You don't have to if you don't want to. Plus you get a discount price. Anyway most software works like this, you have to eventually pay for upgrades, so WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL PEOPLE? Bottom line: if you want a great personal finance manager that is easy to use, this is it.

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• Product was fine until I renewed my license

  carolbschultzFebruary 6, 2012

  Pros

  Worked great when I first set it up.

  Cons

  Customer support is non existent. After my initial license expired and I couldn't take the nagging anymore I renewed the license. This is when the problems began. It acted as if I was creating my info from scratch. I think at that time I was able to restore from a backup. This morning when I turned on my Mac and opened the app it asked me for my activation code again. My info was GONE. I reentered the activation code and my info is still GONE. There is no back up to restore like there should be. I've emailed support 2 times. The first time they never even responded. I'm waiting to see if they respond this time. I have no idea what I'm going to do now.

  Summary

  If you purchase this product do NOT renew your license of you will likely lose all your data.

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• Underhand 1 year licence - be careful!!!!

  blue4milesJuly 21, 2011

  Pros

  Loved the actual application, worked flawlessly. Had a few updates over the year, seemed mostly cosmetic.

  Cons

  After a year a pop-up Nag Screen will appear, saying your software has expired, and asking you to pay to 'upgrade'. Nowhere does it say how long your licence is for and the upgrade is about $30 (perhaps for another year?).

  Summary

  Very good application, spoilt by a hidden one year licence that the developers do not tell you about. Fancy spending $30 per year to keep using this app? I certainly don't.

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• Poor Support

  adummyFebruary 21, 2011

  Pros

  Kinda works.

  Cons

  Investment accounts do not work. Unable to change color scheme, somethings hard to read. Unable to personalize home page. Support is non-existent, for me anyway.

  Summary

  I have been using the program for 11 months and have seen 3 upgrades which do nothing that I can see. Have tried to get support for my investment accounts and have received nothing to date. The program works but is a long ways from my old 2003 MS Money which cost less than half of this program. I am really unhappy with the program.

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• Good Basic Product

  duboserJanuary 5, 2011

  Pros

  Converts old MS Money files.

  Cons

  Has issues directly connecting to some banks - not as sophisticated of an interface as could be.

  Summary

  For the Mac, probably the best option.

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• Good & basic home finances software

  forkboyDecember 29, 2010

  Pros

  Easy to install and use; tidy interface; covers all the basics for personal finances; nice 30-day free trial period (full use); imports loose QIF files;

  Cons

  Heavy reliance upon reports to find information; entering category information not as good as it could be; so-so customer service; price;

  Summary

  I've been using the 30-day trial to test this as a replacement for Microsoft Money as I've moved over to the world of Mac. Props to Fortora for offering a full-blown version for 30-days of trial. It's been helpful in coming to my final observations and decision. I'm actually going to pass on purchasing this software and instead look for an alternative for my Windows-driven laptop. I'm having to replace my current laptop soon and my Money 2002 version is not Windows 7 compatible so a replacement for my Mac seemed a reasonable idea. Running Fortora parallel with Money I have found it pretty much handles everything I need it to do. I use Money as my checkbook, register and for tracking expenditures over time. This is pretty basic stuff and I've never been disappointed with Money. For the most part Fortora performed well and handled everything I did with it, but I don't believe it did things quite as well. For example, when typing the name of a category in Money the application will find said category based upon what I type into the field even if what I'm typing is a sub-category to a primary/parent. Fortora doesn't handle this sort of thing. If I want to use a sub-category I must type the parent name first, which requires a fair bit of extra typing in my opinion. The splits box works well enough, but again I think Money had the advantage in how it provided more useful information. As one enters entries into the splits box in Money the programme informs you as to the remaining uncategorized dollar amount, while Fortora does not. I find Money's design more useful. I've also had no small amount of irritation with how the various buttons work in Fortora, but I think this may very well be a Mac issue just as much. If I tab to select a button it often becomes outlined in the requisite colour to indicate it has been selected, but the button itself doesn't become highlighted in the colour. As such, when I press enter it is another button (the one highlighted in colour) that is acted upon. For example: in the splits box "Done" is by default highlighted as the button upon which action will be taken when the Enter key is pressed. If I tab to "Add" (to add an individual split entry) and press Enter the programe responds to "Done" instead of "Add". I have yet to figure out how to alter this problem as I much prefer to tab and enter to expedite data entry as opposed to having to use the mouse all the time. In addition there is the price. $45 isn't a ton of money, but it seems a bit steep for a fairly basic personal finance application. Granted, in the world of Mac there are few alternatives in the great scheme of things and so it is we pay a premium (Apple Tax). Based upon my 30-days of experience I'd be much more inclined to consider this software as a replacement for Money if it were priced around $30.... maybe $35. Last of the 'cons' would be customer support. I've e-mailed three times regarding three different issues/questions and received a reply only once for the very first one. The first and only reply was received within a fairly reasonable amount of time and for that I was grateful. Of course, it was the sort of information which I truly believe should have been included in their FAQ section (pertains to whether or not Fortora Fresh Finance can handle only Strict QIF files or the preferred, in my opinion, loose QIF files). My second and third e-mails have both gone unanswered. Combined with what passes for a very basic FAQ section I have strong concerns about customer support. Considering the importance of the information I would be entrusting to their software I feel the need for a more robust customer service network. Lastly, I had the chance to also reconcile my checking account in Fortora and while I balanced to the penny (as always ;-) in Money I was off by $22.17 in Fortora regardless of the fact everything appears to be perfectly duplicated with Money, right down to the current balance. I spent the better part of an hour trying to track down the issue to no avail. In fairness it may be something simple and something I did, but I've never had a problem reconciling an account in Money in the 9-years I've been using it. Final thoughts..... it's a decent bit of software. Perhaps a bit over-priced, but one must keep in mind it's for an Apple computer and options are truly limited out there. It's neat and tidy and pretty easy to use. Sets up quickly and efficiently. It can handle all of your day-to-day personal transactions readily. But it's price and questionable customer support (in my personal experience) leave me to pass on this product.

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