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mini$4.2.1

Name: mini$
Rating: 4.4286 (1 reviews)

07 April 2011

Miniature sized money manager.

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Overview

mini$ is a miniature sized money manager that features simplicity and power in a small package.

What's new in mini$

Version 4.2.1:

Added a 'Last Modified' view
Keywords/Tags can now be imported/exported via CSV
The "Convert to Transfer" option has been added
The internal jar file is now universal (Mac/Linux/ Windows)
A few other minor fixes.

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60 Reviews of mini$

Just to let everyone know, I am in the process of rewriting mini$. The "Core" has already been revised and fine-tuned. It is faster, more organized, and tested rigorously via a comprehensive test suite. The UI is currently being completely overhauled. The new mini$ will support "Keywords" and "Color Labels" that can be applied to transactions. The UI will use the same icons and colors found in other iLife apps and the layouts will be streamlined. Tools similar to "Smart Folders" will be available for creating user defined searches (which will most likely replace budgets). Lastly, one of my goals for the new version is to be very keyboard friendly. I hope to have everything finished in a few months. I have been able to get a hold of a PPC Mac, so there will be support for those machines. Cheers !!

(3)

Great software. I am only having a problem with the new version. Is still there a way to see a budget organized by categories AND customizable time period? I would like to be able to review the categories of expenses by month starting at any date in the past. It was possible before I updated the software. Now in trends I can only find predefined dates while in the statement account the expenses are not classified by category. Am I missing something?

(0)

I'm coming from Microsoft Money and this app almost fits my needs. The only thing missing is reports. For example, where I can pull by pay and see how much i spent, pull by month, year, category, etc. This is the only thing that's stopping me from using it.

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kc2005

25 March 2011

Version: 4.1

Dear Roth, Ver 4.1 looks great! Thank you for the amazing product. I was used to using the right click to covert transactions to transfers between accounts, but I can't find this feature anymore. I work around it by creating new transfer transactions. Will the conversion feature be added again in later 4.x versions? Thank you once again! -KRS

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Hi Roth, how do I update the older mini$ version to the current one? do i have to re-download and enter all accounts manually?

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Qiliang

29 December 2010

Version: 4.2

Hi, May I ask if mini$ can track the loan outstanding on my mortgage everytime I make an instalment payment, taking into account that both principal and interest is paid? Also, can it track individual stocks in a portfolio, either by manually entering the price or is there internet update of prices? Thanks.

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Good morning Roth: How the heck are you doing? I'm someone who used to work with you... Hey I just downloaded mini$, extracted the jar, and am running it on my Linux machine. Works great! It's a nice piece of software -- simple and easy to use, with a clean user interface. The only problem I have is that the reminders repeat function doesn't seem to be working. Any chance you can explain that to me? Hope to get in touch with you soon. Have a great New Year!

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csm1th

08 December 2010

Version: 4.1

I just upgraded from 3.1. What happened to the budget feature? Am I overlooking it.

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Hi there. I would like to ask Roth if there's any chance of having the other languages also updated. My wife is using mini$ in Portuguese and if possible I would like to show her the nice improvements since version 3.x but in this case the English version is not an option. Thank you!

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A brilliant little program, I installed over 8,000 historical transactions with QIF and only a few errors occurred which I can easily rectify at my leisure.. Only one teeni weeni comment to make if I may... Although negative and positive Splits are imported with QIF correctly they cannot be entered manually from within the program itself. I came across this problem when trying to create an Automated Entry for my Salary. Example : (Positive) Gross Salary 2,000 minus (Negative) Income Tax 500 should result in 1,500 being allowed to enter in the Register. Alas... only ALL negatives or ALL positives are handled within Splits... Otherwise .... Brilliant piece of software....

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This is a great app. Really simple and straight forward, and very easy to use. I downloaded quite a few apps to try and googled everywhere for a good, free app that could manage my finances. Most of them were too complicated for me, or looked really ugly in terms of interface. Download this app if you don't know all the terminologies of finance and just want a simple planner to manage your money. I really love Mini$! Thanks Roth. This app deserves more attention. :)

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Does it not download, or does it not run once you download it? If the latter, make sure your Mac meets the requirements. Otherwise, email me and I can send it to you directly: rothearl@gmail.com

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i tried to download the app but was unable to do so. is there any other alternative way to download and install this app. pach macbook

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I've been using 2.1 for the longest time and never thought about updating until today--and found that I was way outdated. mini$ has been with me since I got a Mac back in 2008, and I am very pleased with it. It has not let me down yet :) just remember to back up your data because i lost everything when my hard drive crashed D: Judging by the (major) differences in 2.1 and 4.0, i definitely love the new look and how everything is organized. The color labels are amazing! I just love everything. It definitely looks like a Mac application now with the drop down menus on the left and the simple design. On a side note, I was dumbfounded for about 15 minutes about how to edit post-dated transactions (gimme a break, i've jumped from 2.1 to 4.0 lol). For those of you who don't know, just click select all dates :)

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Excuse my extreme ignorance, but I have been using mini v2.6.2 for a couple of years and it holds all my old quicken data going back 10 years. It ceased to work after upgrading to Snow Leopard and so I downloaded v 4 beta. Whilst I have balances, I have absolutely no historic transactions. I cannot even find where my old mini data files are held. Clicking on the old app only brings up the Mini in the left hand corner with no other menu bar options and no data. Is this beta version ready to use and if so, how do I import all my finance records from v2.6.2? Extremely confused and concerned all my data is somehow lost? A full back up was taken before upgrading by the way but cannot find data files on that either? Many thanks, Graham

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It would be nice if the title indicated what version of a beta release this is. All I see is the same 4.0 version popping up on MU over and over, and you can't tell if these are duplicates.

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I just switched from PC to mac and am trying to find a financial software program. Quicken Essentials does not have good reviews and I have been using Microsoft money but read they are no longer making it. So, I want to try this product. I have a question about downloading data. My credit card, Citibank, downloads to Quicken, Money, QIF or spreadsheet. Will any of these work with this program? Thanks for your help!

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I'm happy you like the changes. It is still in beta, which means there is missing functionality. I plan to develop these slowly over the next few months.

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This new version is Mac centric. Although it will run on any platform that supports Java, there are some visuals that only look good on the Mac, and odd on other platforms. I am more than happy to share the source and work with anyone who wishes to create UI enhancements for other platforms. Progress is coming along nicely. The following links are screen shots of the new version: http://rothearl.googlepages.com/SetupAssistant.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/AccountSummary.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/Backups.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/BalanceMenu.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/Exporting.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/Keywords.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/ManagingData.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/MenusWIthShortcuts.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/OrganizingByDate.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/Searching.png http://rothearl.googlepages.com/TransactionCounts.png

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(3)

I love this app! Only what is needed, it looks nice, and it's fun to use. I though it was a bit limited until I realized I could click on an account to see and edit each transaction. Hah woops. This gives me an instant representation of my current financial situation without overwhelming me. Bank, paypal, and cash are now ONE. This app could fit on a floppy and uses nearly nada CPU, and it's free. I'm almost sad that I can't find something to complain about... Not just two thumbs up, all of my fingers up.

(0)

Although I have a Mac at home, I use my office PC on the road. Since mini$ is written in Java, it should follow the "write once, run anywhere" philosophy of Java. Yet if I extract the contents of the mini$ zip file and attempt to run the minimoney_eng.jar file, I receive a message indicating that "mini$ encountered a fatal error and must close". This happens immediately after I specify a path to the mini$ data file and click OK. I'm running JRE 1.0.6_16. Is it possible to run mini$ under another platform's JVM? Is the source available such that I can try and compile it myself?

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mini$ is now a Java 6 application which requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later. I'll be posting a version of mini$ compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 soon, which will be available under the "Related Links" section.

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Here is the mini$ issue: I upgraded my Mac to Snow Leopard a few months ago and I sold my Mac with Tiger on it. When I recompiled mini$ to the latest version, it was done on my new computer. Apparently, there are new libraries on SL and now, mini$ requires Leopard or later. Because when mini$ starts, it fails because the libraries it now requires are missing. The source code is available. IF ANYONE OUT THERE wants to compile mini$ for Tiger (which would also be Leopard compatible) that would be awesome. It would fix the starting up issue.

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Yes, the reconcile process is manual. There is an arrow by the balance in the register. If you click on it, you will get some options. This helps to reconcile. For me, I always have it set to reconciled. That way, only cleared transactions are in the balance. I enter my transactions as they come, and once a week or so, I log into my bank, and check off the ones that have cleared. As I do this, the balance auto updates itself. When I have checked all the cleared ones off, my bank's balance should match mine. If not, then I have entered in a wrong amount, forgot a transaction, or I was charged something I was unaware of.

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First, thank you Roth. Mini$ is terrific. It's rather intuitive, but I am a bit confused by the reconcile process. Applications I've used in the past give a beginning and end balance, purchases and payments. I just wanted to confirm that it's a manual process in Mini$ and I'm not missing something. Also, is there a way to deselect all in the filter if you only want one from each column? Many thanks again, Margaret

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I am having the same problems with opening the app...just a quick bounce in the dock and then nothing. I really, really want this to work!

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I've been trying number of personal finance softwares. This is a really kick-ass application. Simple, intuitive and powerful. The only thing is it doesn't allow to manage account in different currencies and limited number of currencies support. Kudo to Roth. Thanks for creating a fantastic application

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I have loved using Mini for quite a while. Great program. BUT I just downloaded this patch, and I cannot open it. I'm running OS X 10.4.11. The dock icon bounces once, then stops before the program ever opens. Unfortunately, I overwrote the previous version on my computer so now I have no way to access the account and budget information I've been keeping track of over the past year.

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I have successfully downloaded and opened this software on my Mac Mini with Intel Core Duo 2 running Mac OS 10.5.8. I am apparently not the sharpest knife in the drawer, however, as I can't figure out how to enter transactions, among other things. Any chance there are some rudimentary instructions somewhere? Thx! Alan

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I tried several times but cannot get mini$ to launch in my PPC Mac running 10.4.11. It shows for a quarter-second in the dock and then disappears. It stays in my application, but no matter how I try to open it, it won't!!!

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I'd love to see a more customizable reporting function all-around. I love the program, but am not a huge fan of the way the html reports print. Maybe an xml output option, and some xsl??

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In the short time I have used Mini$, I'm really impressed with the layout and the ease of use. I have come upon a problem, though, in that when entering a new transaction, the categories do not include donations that need to be tax related. Unless I have missed something, the category field will not allow me to type in a customized word. Any suggestions? I can't use "gift" because some are not tax related. Trina

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The source code is now available from the mini$ home page, as well as versions for other systems and languages. Just use the "Developer" link above to access the mini$ site.

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Important: For all 2.x users upgrading to 3.x, make sure to make a copy of your data. Budgets have been completely reworked and are no longer compatible. If you do not like the new budgeting system, you will want that backup for going back to 2.x.

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This is by far the best free personal finance tool I've used, and I've tried them all. It's fast, robust, and handles everything I throw at it. The ability to split transactions, set budgets (with rollovers), create reports, search abilities, and totals view are all useful. I can also tell that Roth has put a lot of effort into making the UI flow naturally from task to task. However, I would say that the UI is still the weakest part of mini$. That is not to say that it is bad, but it has some problems that have simple fixes. Of course, simple fixes may not be so simple to implement.

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For those that are interested, there is a mini$ 3.0 beta available. http://rothearl.googlepages.com/minimoney_eng_3B.zip mini$ 3 has been rewritten from the ground up using a test driven development model. Note: Make a backup of your 2.x data. mini$ 3 uses a new budgeting scheme and it is not compatible with 2.x budgets.

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On eporblem noted: If you change the name of an expense category after already assigning it to several transactions, it will not update the transactions with the new category name. Rather, it designates them all as 'uncategorized'. Pretty frustrating, but lesson learned-- luckily I found this out when I just started. EDIT: This seems to only have effected transactions in which the renamed category was used in a 'split' (to assign different portions of a single transaction to seperate categories). The ones categorized outright seem to have updated okay.

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I have been enthusiast of using MiniMoney, but after installing the last update I found it's not in italian and there's some problem when import from .qif I would like to know if I could downgrade to the earlier version.

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What an embarrasment! I released an update that had a MAJOR bug in it. The Scheduler window did not appear. Well, thanks to user who caught that for me.

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A user notified me of this display bug and I felt it serious enough to fix it, even though 2.6 was supposed to be the final release. For users who use the balance column and sort their transactions by date in a descending order, then this release is critical.

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Sorry to hear, you stopped working on it. I have provided full localization for German, but I guess that won't make it in any more ?;-) While not adding Multi-Currency features to each account yet, I have succesfully refactored the codebase of the last EZMoney you provided earlier to use a JSR standard extension I am SpecLead for (Units, Measures and Use Cases like Monetary System) If you were able to contribute the code for mini$ at a trustable place (SF or others) I'd be very happy to contribute both this and the localization myself. After all 90% of all Mac Financial programs listed here or elsewhere are crap only suitable for US$. Most even have the symbol hardcoded ;-) mini$ is among the better ones, but the only true multi currency one I found here is ChequeBook. Considering its reasonable price of 15$ I'd call it the best option beside mini$, but using Java it has some big advantages (e.g. working elsewhere) Kind Regards, Werner Keil Creative Arts & Technologies

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This is the final release of mini$ and will be hosted by MacUpdate. It was a pleasure to contribute to the community. Enjoy.

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Sweet. There are some currencies lacking that I use often: Danish Crowns (DKK) Indonesian Rupiahs (IDR) Please add.

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Very simple and straight forward application. If you are looking for a not complicated way of tracking your finances this is it. This application is written as you were doing it in paper or a simple spreadsheet. I was looking for something like this for a long time. Still trying to find out how budget sub-categories work.

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Mini$ is a wonderful program and I think I've finally found a replacement for Microsoft Money on my PC. It does everything I need it to do and it does it well. The developer has done a great job and really listens to the input of those who use it...he truly wants to develop a quality piece of software.

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Apologies for the quick update. There were a few... wrinkles that had to be ironed out. I just want to ensure that users have a stable and reliable program. And regarding attachments, praise be that Photoshop is not your default program for simple images. However, there are far too many advantages for accessing the default program. This way you can attach PDFs, HTML pages, or any thing you like, and view them appropriately. Enjoy.

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I just love the new version. A real improvement over the last one. Only one grip. Why didn't version 1.4 automatically upgrade. I even checked for upgrade in the application and it says I have the latest version. If it wasn't for MacUpdate, I wouldn't have known about the new version.

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Wow.. this application is just what I was looking for. I was using some other application for a while but I switched to mini$ and I'm pretty happy. the interface and the way it shows your expenses, all account balances is so good. thank you to the developers. keep up the good work.

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mini$ is, or was, "EZ Money". Same code base, same developer, etc. They both share the same data set, so a backup for one, is a backup for the other. Only the name and logo were changed. mini$ however, contains bug fixes and other enhancements that are not in "EZ Money".

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Is it my imagination or wasn't this identical app called EZMoney?

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REPLY TO KC_CHEIFS Buddi plug-ins are not created by it's developer. If you would use Buddi without them it will never crash. I have been using it for the last few months on my iMac Intel 10.4.10 - without the plug-ins - and it never crashed. You should not import data from your bank account into a personal finance application as this defeat the purpose of bank account management. Bank account management means entering the every day transactions you make, e.g. issuing a cheque, into the personal finance application and then when the bank sends you a statement, reconciling the entries in the application with those on the statement. Buddi is a double entry application so if, for example, you want to transfer money between bank accounts you record the transaction once and it post it to both accounts, debiting one and crediting the other. In buddi, you can create unlimited income and expense accounts and thus, categories your incomes and expenses. The current version of Buddi is the best free personal finance application.

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What I needed was something that could import data, allow me to "Split" transactions among multiple categories, and provide reports. This one does all of that plus more. Although I prefer the iTunes like interfaces (Cha-Ching, Moneywell, etc.), the fact that mini$ is free makes up for any interface differences. Among the free financial applications, this one is the best by far. However, I'd like to see a feature where I can automate entering transactions for reoccurring events like a paycheck.

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In response to previous thread: Although mini$ is not by any means the best financial application, I have been using it without any problems and it does everything it claims to...and it's free! I can import my data from my bank and it never crashes. Buddi on the other hand consistently crashed, did not support importing. When I installed the CSV plugin, Buddi would not start anymore. I thought the search text field was the ugliest widget I had ever seen. Buddi looks and feels like a "built overnight just to get it out the door" kind of application. You have to constantly resize windows to get everything to fit.

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I can't understand why people fell in love with this application - Buddi IS the best free & simple personal finance application

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Excellent piece of software. Easy to use, intuitive and comprehensive. I actually switched off Quicken to use this because it is so much smoother. It is missing some of the online features of Quicken but I could care less. The autobackup is very nice and the ability to ad accounts and categories is straight forward. I would like to see the ability to add liability accounts that are not credit cards (such as equity lines) - but currently I just add them as bank accounts now.

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