The developers lack of updates would prevent any purchase from me.

I've been using Prospects since the end of 2008. I tried all the others at the time, and still regularly look at other releases (including Moneywell, iBank, Quicken Essentials, YNAB, Squirrel, you name it) and still feel this comes up trumps.

It was designed by someone who was unsatisfied with what else was out there at the time; not a big software company out to make a lot of money. Because of this, there has been very little marketing of Prospects, so most people seem to find it only after doing a bit of searching.

Data entry is simple, budgeting, transfers, reconciling, scheduled transactions with reminders are all adequate. But the thing that makes it stand out - GUI and charts - is in a class of its own. The GUI is very customisable, and the main screen can show up to 3 charts at once, which gives a good grasp of your financial situation. The "My Prospects" summary screen is also rich with data.

During 2009 updates were few and far between, and some thought the product had been abandoned. This did not really concern me as it was already doing most of what I needed, with one exception - ability to mine data for reporting. But 1.2.8 brings the addition of a custom "search" report. This gets over the 12 month limitation of some of the charts. It brings fully customisable reporting, and includes the option of a chart in the report, a nice touch.

I don't want to sound like the Prospects/Motimotion marketing department, but since they seem to lack one, I'm happy to blow their trumpet. Check out the free trial, the full version is reasonably priced too. It's a pleasure to support indie software developers, especially when they really get something right.

Have just tried to import 3 years worth of accounts from Moneydance using qif. Prospects doesn't seem to be able to handle it.

Prospects is the best financial application out right now for Mac. Like many others, I must have downloaded the the trial versions of every Mac financial app out there including Cha-Ching, iBank, Moneywell, Squirrel, Money, Moneydance and even the beta for Quicken Financial Life. None of these quite did it for me, and could not combine at-your-finger-tip information, and ease of use in the same way Prospects does.

Budgeting features tend to turn me off many of the apps, where either they weren't intuitive or not attractive in their presentation. Prospects budget manager was nice in that it can be toggled on or off, and even swapped out with more detailed segmented information like individual spending per category, balance tracking, and monthly summaries.

The charts tend to be robust with drop down submenus, and multiple methods of sorting through data. This makes it easy to track and compare spending and saving habits in side by side segments.

The Prospects home page is a series of easy to read charts tracking total assets versus liabilities, and a month by month breakdown of how your total net worth has changed over time. All of these graphs are quite visual and can be viewed at any time without the need to run them as reports.

Importing OFX, QFX, and QIF from my banks has gone smoothly, although there currently is no automated "connect to bank" feature in the program. I've had no problems with any of the calculations, and all of the features that are in, seem to work.

Currently, there is no support for investment data, no direct-connect, and no bill pay so be careful if those are "deal breaker" features for you in a financial application. I've found that what Prospects does do, it does very well however. I look forward to many solid releases to come.

How is this different or better than MoneyWell?