I found this application on the net a few days ago and after using it for the last little bit, I have to share since I whole-heartedly think that we have an application that is going to take the Mac financial community by storm.

Cha-Ching takes a completely different approach to money management: it makes it fun. Yep, managing your finances can be fun. I bet you never even thought that before, have you? I’ve been a Quicken user since it came packaged with my Mac over a year ago. I used it because it had the basic features that I needed, but I never enjoyed the experience. It felt too fragmented, like something was missing and the interface was horrendous, possibly left over from the Carbon days, I’m not sure….the design was just out dated and bad.

Cha-Ching just saw it’s 0.2 release today and the three man development team is headed up by Juan Alvarez, the cool guy that developed the application I talked about awhile that makes using RSS technology a breeze and fun, Cast Life. You can read more about that awesome application here.

What sets this app apart from the likes of Quicken is it’s unique feature set and the interface (you knew that was coming, I’m obsessed with the application’s looks…if it works, but it’s not stunning, it’s not on my list of “awesome” apps). The interface is playful with plenty of custom effects that I’m sure took Juan quite a bit of time to get working just right. The design guy on board did a wonderful job with the graphics and the team’s hard work shows off. Features like smart-drawers for easy organization of transactions, iSight integration so you can easily add photos for your transactions and plenty of other nifty features make the app fun to use and make you productive too.

Cha Ching isn’t a Quicken killer just yet. Juan says he is working on adding more features like accounts and more, but at the moment the application isn’t quite ready to just take over all of your finances. It works great for seeing who owes you money and what you’ve spent, but it’s not a replace-all app just yet. Stay tuned, I’m sure that will all change shortly.

Below is a quick screenshot of the app in action from the Cha-Ching website. Watch out in the next couple weeks as Juan and I plan to have a talk on a podcast episode about his plans for the application and more.

Cha-Ching website