App that tracks all credit card and account activity??

Busymom104

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 9:23 am

Has anyone had success with a secure app that is linked to credit cards and bank accounts and automatically logs all purchases/returns, account debits/credits? I'm finding it overwhelming to manually log all our income/spending.
Please advise!!

youngishbear

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 9:28 am

Have you tried mint?

Busymom104

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 9:48 am

I haven't tried anything yet. Mint.com has bad reviews.

Iymnok

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 10:13 am

Does your bank have an app? That should solve part of it.

GetReal

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 10:20 am

I use quicken on my computer. Not sure if they have an app.

GetReal

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 10:22 am

Google says yes!

Busymom104

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 10:31 am

Op here I'm talking about a full blown budgeting app that tracks spending and categorizes every purchase

LiLIsraeli

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:12 am

I've been using Mint for a few years and have had good experience with it.

Busymom104

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:18 am

Can you explain how mint works

seeker

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:19 am

Mint isn't perfect but it does do what you're asking. It doesn't have ruach hakodesh so you do need to manually tweak some things like tell it that "Keren Dovid" is charity and not fast food, or stuff like that. And of course when you buy things with cash you need to put that in yourself. And there are some things I haven't figured out how to do on the app so I need to go onto the website (like change the options on a budget.) It isn't perfect but it is a great, free place to start tracking spending and then if you feel you need something different you can go on from there.

runninglate

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:21 am

I also use Mint, and I'm pretty happy with it. One thing I don't like is that you can't track your cash. It only categorizes it as cash, but you can't track what the cash actually went for. Unless I'm missing something. ..

Busymom104

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:22 am

Mint shows all cc purchases automatically right?
Did you have any security glitches?

runninglate

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:26 am

No bh.

seeker

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:27 am

Runninglate, how could any app just KNOW what you're using your cash for? Mint does have a place to manually put in spending. The only issue is I don't know whether that automatically links with the cash amount you withdrew from the bank earlier, or if it shows up as that money disappearing twice (once for the withdrawal, and once for the spending?) I guess another way to do that is to split and relabel the cash withdrawal into transactions for whatever you spent it on. I rarely use cash so I haven't explored the possibilities all that much.

Mint shows CC purchases pretty much automatically though sometimes there can be a bit of a delay until it's in the system (a day max, I think) and also bank account activity, debit cards, checking account, whatever you put on it. I have never had any security concerns. It is run by intuit, a very reputable company. If they ever had security leaks it would be front page news.

seeker

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 11:39 am

There's very little to explain. Go onto their website and look around.
You enter account info for whatever accounts you want tracked, and it automatically loads any transactions from those accounts.

It attempts to categorize them automatically but occasionally needs you to help, but you can set it to recognize those transactions in the future (e.g. check off "always categorize Bais Torah as Education - Tuition") You can also add custom categories (e.g. instead of just "income" you can have it categorize your income, your husband's income, and a side job separately)

You can also set budgets for different categories. You first need to have the category, then you can set a budget of how much you expect to spend. It will automatically track how you're doing based on the transactions in that category. You can set a monthly budget or a budget that rolls over from month to month (e.g. I know about how much I want to spend on clothing per year, but not exactly when. So if I put in $100 per month for clothes but have it roll over, then I can buy $200 before yomtov and nothing the next month and it will even itself out. Of course the reverse is even better, if I spend less this month then I start next month with a bigger budget) It will highlight which categories are getting close or going over the amount you set. You can get alert emails if your spending is unusual, which can help you catch fraud (though usually it's just an unusual expense, or something like giving more tzedakah before RH) or if you're over budget.

It will also remind you when bills are coming up or if you're using too much of your credit limit.

questioner

Thu, Sep 24 2015, 3:36 pm

I've also been using Mint for years and am basically happy. You do need to be on top of checking it and recategorizing as needed for it to work for you, because it will sometimes do strange things (like if you ever write a $20 check and categorize it as Groceries, it may randomly decide to categorize a $20 check a few months down the line as Groceries etc)

I would love to be able to create new top level categories instead of just custom sub-categories.