iBank 3.5 is going to be the next big release of iBank and it will coincide with the iBank Mobile release.
Building seamless integration between iBank and iBank Mobile has been no small undertaking. For true syncing to work well and easily, we need to track every change of every syncable entity — in this case, accounts, categories, transactions and currencies. That way when it comes time to sync, we know exactly what has changed since the last sync and only need to deal with processing those records. (Imagine how inefficient it would be if we had to compare the complete database on the desktop with the database on the phone.)
While these changes to the underlying structure of iBank aren’t of too much interest to most people, there are several new things that we’ve added to iBank 3.5 to make it an even better program.
One of the biggest changes is how v3.5 handles multiple currencies. In past versions, if you made a transfer from an account in one currency to another, it applied an exchange rate. And in order to adjust the amount of the receiving account you had to adjust the exchange rate for it to work out properly. For people dealing with multiple currencies this quickly became cumbersome, to say the least. Now, you can just enter the amount, and voilá, you’re done — iBank automatically adjusts the underlying exchange rate so that the transaction remains balanced and you can adjust each “side” independetly.
Another great improvement for iBank 3.5, my favorite actually, is that we now cache all account balances and running balances for transactions, which means iBank launches a LOT faster. I have over a dozen accounts in my personal iBank file (many are closed) and launching is no longer a chore. Just a quick press of the iBank icon in my Dock and my large iBank document is open within a few seconds.
There has been a steady march on improving reconciliation with iBank. In version 3.4 we greatly improved the process and we haven’t stopped with version 3.5. New, is the ability to reconcile and mark as “cleared” two different sides of a transfer independently. This has been one of the most requested improvements to reconciliation so we are happy to be able to add it.
There are many other minor bug fixes and changes, like improved handling of multi-currencies when making charts. But I’m not going to dive into those now; I’m going to get back to testing iBank and iBank Mobile.
Thanks for all of the great comments, please keep them coming.
~Ian
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Can i pre-purchase iBiz Mobile?
iBank improvements will be icing on the iBank Mobile cake. Can’t wait.
I didn’t really understand how the multiple currencies will be handled, but I have quit attempting multiple currencies in the past with Pocket Quicken because it never matched what the bank had. If you can match the multiple currencies to my bank downloads, I’m in LOVE! I know there won’t be many beta testers, but I am on the edge of my seat for this product.
The thing that frustrates me most with mobile finance apps, is that I spend more than half the year in other countries, and that means no categorization of my expenses until I get home each time. There’s always a catching up day, to organize. If I can do this WHILE I’m on the road. . . I’ll easily pay $20.00 for your app!!! Thanks!!!!
Lawrence
I would like to know when we can expect it release?
Please add multi-currency support to iBank Mobile and draw a nice icon =)
Thanks!
This is the most important thing for me. iBank should do it.
To me seens that the app should download the exchange rate at the moment the transaction was done. Of course we could edit the rate manually. This feature will make people like me, that deal with different currencies, more updated about our expenses…
Right now, if I expent US$100 and more R$100 seens that I expent 200 and not the real value in my primary currency
Any word yet on how the beta is going? Are we looking good for a release in the next 10-14 days? I’m dying to hear some word here! Give us the blessed release date already! 🙂
Love the new currencies support idea. I’m neither in Euro nor in $ country – when I use my credit card in US, it is first exchanged from US $ to Euro, then finaly from Euro to my currency. Automatic exchange rates never works in this scenario.
I also have some stocks on NYSM, some credits in foreign currency, in general – I have to work with multiple currencies problems every month.
Can you share how do you plan to deal with split transactions? I would like to have a chance to manualy put total in my local currency, and split in same as on original bill, but see in reports numbers again local, as at the end of the day this what mostly counts is a currency of my paycheck. Will it be possible?
Honestly, I think the recent changes to reconciliation are the biggest detriment to iBank. Reconciling my statement has gone from taking about 5 minutes to taking about 30 minutes because there’s no easy way to check items off. I literally remove everything from the “Reconciled” box then add them back one-by-one as necessary because all of the checkboxes are disabled.
I have just purchased iBank but cannot use it yet because when I am importing all my QIF ata from Money it does not reconcile the transferred transactions between different account… thereby there are a whole load of double entires – which would take way too long to manually delete. It sounds like 3.5 will address this issue – can you please confirm and also advise when 3.5 will be released. Many thanks
Paul
When and if will iBank have the capability to send payment instructions to my bank (Wells Fargo right now) so I can perform online banking through it every month?
Looks like nice work on iBank Mobile. But online bill pay is still the huge obstacle to a full-featured financial product. Hard to switch from even dying Quicken without the ability to schedule and pay transactions.
Interesting to observe the lack of discussion of this feature by IGG.
I do not understand how you can neglect key board short cuts for so long. It is very difficult to enter information for transactions. I frequently have splits and they are even more quirky.