Fresh Finance for Mac

1.0 stars

"HORRIBLE support, manuals, knowledge base."

December 18, 2012  |   By workindog

Version: Fresh Finance 1.8.7

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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5.0 stars

"Great mac finance manager"

June 18, 2012  |   By AlanGia

Version: Fresh Finance 1.7.5

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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2.0 stars

"Product was fine until I renewed my license"

February 6, 2012  |   By carolbschultz

Version: Fresh Finance 1.5.8

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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1.0 stars

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

July 21, 2011  |   By blue4miles

Version: Fresh Finance 1.5.6

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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2.0 stars

"Poor Support"

February 21, 2011  |   By adummy

Version: Fresh Finance 1.5

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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4.0 stars

"Good Basic Product"

January 5, 2011  |   By duboser

Version: Fresh Finance 1.5

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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3.0 stars

"Good & basic home finances software"

December 29, 2010  |   By forkboy

Version: Fresh Finance 1.4.9

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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5.0 stars

"excellent program, tremendous support"

October 17, 2010  |   By hik12150

Version: Fresh Finance 1.4.6

Pros

The program is easy to use and set up

Cons

There are still some growing pains--but they are rapidly being corrected.

Summary

Not only is fortora a powerful and easy to use Financial program for the Mac, the support is incredible. I had a specific problem with one financial institution and the developer kept emailing me with instructions and ultimately issued a new (free) update to the program in order to deal with my problem. I can't say enough about the incredible support by the people at fortora.

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1.0 stars

"The program lost all my financial data. No support"

June 28, 2010  |   By charry47

Version: Fresh Finance 1.4.3

Pros

When it was working the program was reasonably fast and easy to use. For the simple financial tasks in my household (expense tracking, budgeting, etc.) it did the job fine.

Cons

It developed an error where it stopped working and is unable even to access my data backups. Absolutely no tech support available.

Summary

A few weeks ago the program developed an error which prevented me from accessing any of my data. It wouldn't let me access the backups either. Re-installing the program did nothing. Worst of all, 4 emails sent to tech support have all gone unanswered. The company's website claims in several places that they offer phone support but there are no phone numbers on the site and it's impossible to find a listing on the internet. Some rigorous searching pulled up a phone number on an old press release which goes straight to a Fortora voicemail box that is full and can take no more messages. Consumer reviews from a few years ago talk about how wonderful the tech support is but now it seems to be non-existant. I'm wondering if the company has gone out of business but can find no news about them on the Internet. Do NOT use this product.

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