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| Author | Managing family finances - looking for a solution? (Read 52365 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: February 12, 2021, 10:04
So, I know what you're thinking: Someone looking for a program to manage family finances: Quicken. Well, you're right. And then you're not. You see, Quicken is a good tool. (even though it would corrupt my file when I tried it for a short period) But it is also very US-centric. We folks in Europe hardly ever used cheques during the 90's, so the whole idea about "balancing your chequebook" does not appeal to a European. Basically what I am looking for is a tool that lets me enter values into various categories and possibly showing me a nice chart of where our money went. Now I could do that with Excel but then using Excel is sooo boring and IBMish. I wanna have at least a little bit of fun. I thought about giving Spreadsheet 2000 (aka Let's Keep it Simple Spreadsheet) from Casady & Greene a try as it seems a unique Mac / System 7 way of doing things. (you can find a Quicktime video of it on Cornica). Any other solutions? Anyone else "tackling" that problem? Side note: If someone is looking for a dev project on Mac OS, I feel this would be a cool app to have and one that is do-able. Allow for CSV file import - most online banking systems today allow for exporting account movements in csv format, thus banking data could seamlessly integrate into your app. Dang, we need a bounty list ... ;-) |
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Last Edit: February 12, 2021, 17:36 by Bolkonskij
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Syntho
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64 MB  Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #1 on: February 13, 2021, 17:33
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I've transferred/converted a lot of things into the ancient Mac formats of the 90s to try and stay off of modern computers as much as possible, but one thing I never could find was what you mentioned in this thread. I use Quickbooks for Mac (modern OSX system) for my business accounting and have searched far and wide for accounting software that works on System 7 to no avail. Wish there was something like that.ˇˇ
Last Edit: February 13, 2021, 17:35 by Syntho
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #2 on: February 21, 2021, 11:57
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So I've been finally giving Spreadsheet 2000 a test drive (v.2.01). It comes with a very Mac-equesce interface that I immediately took a liking to. This is no cheap DOS port. It comes with a few dozens of templates (called "solutions") for home & small businesses: http://images.macintosh.garden/2021/02/21/business-solutions.jpg Bear in mind, this program is (like Quicken) also very US-centric. I couldn't find an option to change the currency from Dollars to anything else. There's also some categories in the templates that are catering to Americans. (no idea what "costco" was or is, really. Maybe some of our fellow US members can enlighten me :-) ) But you can change all the categories anyway. And that applies to virtually anything. In a true System 7 style you can alter the templates to what you prefer. Want to add something to the equation? Want to change colors of the tables? etc. You can make it your own. It's kind of a middle way between a traditional spreadsheet tool like Excel and a "locked-down" solution like Quicken. Since I was looking into something that helps me to budget my family finances I picked the respective template and started to fill in some fantasy values (nope, not real ones :-) ). Here's a screen: http://images.macintosh.garden/2021/02/21/entertainment-expenses.jpg All that you see here was already in the ready-to-go template, I merely changed some category names. Handling of Spreadsheet 2000 works very much in the way of Excel & others but it does present things more Mac-like and less dry. That is also thanks to splitting the content up into various "reports" that you access individually. In case of the Home Budget template it's stuff like "home" "insurance" "income" "entertainment" and such. Finally, there's a summary for your home budget: http://images.macintosh.garden/2021/02/21/summary-expenses.jpg Bottom line: Just like Quicken the onboard solution is very much centered on the average American home and small business user which will require workarounds as a European. I do, however, very much like the flexibility and the Mac interface. Will I give it and its home budgeting program a serious try? Yes, I'm inclined to use this tool for the next few month. I'll report back what my experience is. Maybe some of you guys want to give it a look as well?
Last Edit: February 21, 2021, 12:01 by Bolkonskij
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lilliputian
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64 MB Posts: 68 A Good Apple!
Reply #3 on: February 21, 2021, 13:00
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(Costco is a very well-known grocery and retail club here in the US [and possibly also Canada?]. You pay a yearly membership fee, show your club card at the door, and you can shop there, like any regular store. But, the supposed advantage is that they ostensibly offer much cheaper prices than most competitors, and are also known for carrying huge bulk quantities of various items. Think dozens of rolls of bathroom tissue, huge bags of rice, that sort of thing. Basically a big box store akin to Walmart or Target, but on steroids. Even sells some furniture, though nothing like an Ikea.)
Last Edit: February 21, 2021, 13:01 by lilliputian
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252 
Reply #4 on: March 08, 2021, 17:36
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Go look for a copy of fileMaker Pro 3 or 4. this is a database program. I think they will both run on System 7 ( it has been a long time). FileMaker went relational in FMP3,but had a data cap of I think 32 Mb. but if all you are keeping is numbers and text, that will give you a lot. I am not sure what is left on the net for resources. I actually had a commercial program for appraisers for sales data written in FMP3. It was the first program I ever sold. Making me go in my way back machine here.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #5 on: March 08, 2021, 18:36
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Woohoo... Lichen Software is back!! How many years has it been? Great to read from you again! :-) I hope you still have that avatar PowerBook (or any other System 7 Mac) lying around and will come and visit us from time to time. Thanks for the FileMaker suggestions. Strangely, it didn't cross my mind. I would have probably went that route had I known before but I'm now set on Spreadsheet 2000 and so far I'm fine with it. Still hacking numbers into it as membership bills etc. come in. haha. It might actually do for our little family what I had been looking for. Out of interest, where's your old software? Did you make sure to preserve this piece of software history on the FMP3 page on the Macintosh Garden? @ lilliputian - thanks for the info, so it's something akin to a wholesale with a membership fee? Interesting idea. Even more interesting that something like this obviously works ? It is still in existence, is it?
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252
Reply #6 on: March 08, 2021, 22:01
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Lol .... Yes I am still around. Retired now. I have a vault of old software somewhere. In terms of FileMaker Pro, if you can find the developer's version, you can make free standing apps. If you can find the dveloper's version of 2 or 3, I think, you can make free standing networking apps. Version 3 will allow you cross platform, vintage Mac, vintage Windows programs. So this is not just of interest for bookkeeping.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #7 on: March 09, 2021, 15:43
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That's interesting, I've never fiddled around with FMP before. I may take a look at it. The Mac Garden hosts the 4.0 developer version for download: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/filemaker-pro-40-developer-edition Seeing that you're retired now, you don't happen to look for some fun hobbyist Mac OS dev projects, do you? We sure could use someone with your expertise :-)
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever
Reply #8 on: March 09, 2021, 23:10
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This is so sweet!  So FileMaker 4 runs from System 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2.2  But now curiosity is striking me: I wonder if version 4.0 of the developer edition could possibly be upgraded with the FMP 4.1 installer, http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/filemaker-pro-41, being that this is: a. the last version to support 68k Macs b. it offers instant and custom web publishing c. can import several versions of ms excel d. offers kiosk mode and/or custom menus (w/the developer edition) FileMaker Pro is the juggernaut of Mac databases, just so you know  (for those who didn't know, lol)
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252
Reply #9 on: March 11, 2021, 03:10
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FMP4 if I remember correctly has a data limit of 32 or 34 MB Per file ... Now if all you store is text and keep things simple, that is a lot. Web publishing with FMP has never been the greatest. At that time it is using a custom markup language. On the good side: it is self contained. It is its own authoring tool It is pretty much its own stack. Even the standard desktop version will host a database over a network for a limited number of users. My experience from about 1992 through to 2018 is that most versions are stable. Please note that data corruption is a problem on all databases but I had very few issues. If what you want to do is non relational, pretty much a glorified spread sheet with some lookups perhaps, all you need is FMP2. Anyway, on old Macs, this is one way of makeing some of your own software for data driven or work flow driven problems.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever
Reply #10 on: March 11, 2021, 06:12
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I know! Just the mere thought of any System 7 software being able to publish a database on the web is impossibly cool, even if the software was limited! I also remember the network capabilities of earlier versions; it was pretty solid over AppleTalk networks using PhoneNet adapters, so were the Apple networked printers. And like you noted, FMP was also pretty good at fixing its corrupted databases. No other database came close to FMP on the Mac!
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Lichen Software
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128 MB Posts: 252
Reply #11 on: March 13, 2021, 00:45
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One further thing. Both FileMaker and Clarisworks are great data format changers. Filemaker Pro will import data in quite a few different formats and will export data in several different formats. Clarisworks has multiple translation files to both open and save out in different data formats of the form word processor, spread sheet, paint document (raster) and draw document (vector). In short it is an old timey Swiss army knife. A further thing that Clarisworks can do is show you the underlying structure of a text document. If you are trying to import data into a database or spread sheet, you can determine if it is tab delimited, comma separated values or some custom delimitation. If I remember correctly, just go to the program preferences and choose Show Invisibles. You will then have a visualization for every space, tab and carriage return in the text data you are studying when you open the file using the word processing module.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever
Reply #12 on: March 13, 2021, 03:59
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Yes! Apple designed all of their software to work well with a bunch of PC file formats, and even more file translators were available with the Deluxe version of MacLinkPlus for System 7: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/maclinkplus-deluxe-11
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ovalking
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128 MB Posts: 199
Reply #13 on: March 20, 2021, 17:19
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For finance, I just want to say any package is only as good as the data you're prepared to put into it! Personally, I just use Excel with little more than date and balance columns. And a nice little graph. Regarding FMP, I think it's great. I first used it for a project at work, and liked it so much I bought a copy for myself. I have v2, 3 & 4, and mainly use it for sports data. There is a bit of a learning curve for fancy stuff, but generally it is so much easier to use than other databases. I once went on a Microsoft Access database course (not my idea). It actually proved useful - it taught me to never use such junk again. And I never did.....
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #14 on: March 20, 2021, 17:57
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You certainly can use almost anything as long as you can "put up" with it, that is true. But like you experienced with MS Access, there's software and there's software. :-) I for one don't like the Excel-style and would rather like something more "Macintosh" - Spreadsheet 2000 just gave me that. Still using it and thus far it's doing a great job. I'd love to hear from others using it but I suppose I might be the last user on earth left ;-)
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