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Spending Profile is a free web-based tracker for your finances, developed by Lisa Wall, a software developer, in her free time. The tracker, which would be familiar to users of Microsoft Money or Quicken, can be used to record your income and spending. For each transaction, you can enter the amount, date, type (fixed or variable) and vendor and assign it to a category. The main web page displays pie charts of expenses and also a list of transactions for the current month.
The website also offers features such as the ability to import transactions from a chequing or credit card account, an income versus spending graph, a monthly summary statement delivered to your email and a rudimentary budgeting capability. I found a few minor annoyances and Ms. Wall notes that she is constantly improving the tool based on user feedback.
If you are already using personal finance software, you won’t want to switch to Spending Profile (though as a programmer myself, I appreciate how much hard work Ms. Wall has put into the website). If you are just starting out in life or you are starting to become smart about your finances and your needs are fairly basic, you may want to consider using the website to track your finances. It is very easy to get started, you can access your account from anywhere and best of all, it’s free.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Jon D. // Apr 11, 2007 at 11:15 am
At a glance, it looks like it does exactly what MS Money does for me. So if anyone out there doesn’t want to buy MS Money give this site a shot. The primary reason I use MS Money is for importing for different accounts / credit cards and then sorting spending by category for month to month comparison. Highly recommend anyone wanting to know where their “money” goes to give this a shot.
2 Steve D // Apr 11, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I created a simple Excel tool for the same. Basically my own chart of accounts and a few lookups and lists
The bank allows data exports to a text file, which is first loaded into Excel and second coded to accounts, in a general ledger. Some coding is automated, for example all buys from the grocery store are groceries, unless I make a manual override. It only takes 5 min 2 times a week to import and code the transactions and then add a couple of lines for any cash buys. In accounting like fashion when the debits don’t balance with the credits, I do my best remember what I bought to bring each T account back into balance. It’s probably in the cash transactions. Querying the data in the general ledger, pie-charts can be created to analyze spend. The tool is nothing fancy and without the QuickBooks extra’s that got in the way. Found the hardest part to be managing duplicates in the Bank data downloads.
After to get started with QuickBooks a few times, I became frustrated with tracking my spending and investing. It just took longer than using Excel and wasn’t flexible enough to accommodate by securities trading. The Royal bank’s action direct trading service doesn’t have export capability in to QuickBooks, what a Royal pain. Should clarify, at least it didn’t last year with my latest attempt using QuickBooks
A free online tool sounds like a good alternative solution from the main providers.
CC- thanks for the great website and your daily efforts.
-Steve.
3 awardtour // Apr 11, 2007 at 4:20 pm
wesabe.com does similar stuff and has some really well-executed features for tagging (and auto-tagging) transactions.
4 Payday Loans UK // Apr 20, 2007 at 11:37 am
its good to have track of your fianances. and it is more convenient to acess your account from anywhere and that too, free of cost. i like it.
5 Marc // Jan 4, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Anyone know what happened to the spending profile website??? Seems to be down!
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