Best online current account user interface

peterf_3

So after listening to Martins advice on current accounts I started thinking. Apart from Interest what is wrong with my current account. Currently I am with HSBC, what I really hate about the internet page user interface is that displaying account details is based around statement dates. This is a problem because it is not straight forward or easy to scan through several months of accounts to easily attempt to spot patterns in spending.

What I would like this thread to be about is: How can a current account internet access provide a user interface that can actually save me money and is there one out there?

For example. Looking at my 'statement' I would like to go through and very quickly say, that item is food, that item is a bill, that item is etc. Then other tabs to view graphs and trends in these sections. I realise that quicken or MS Money probably do this for you, but I want a Free on-line version that integrates very easily with my current account.


So in summary
1/ Which banks offers the best user interface on their internet site and offers the best interest rates.
2/ Is there any free online tools for organising expenses with ultimately easy (automatic)? integration with the online bank

This is my first thread. I realise Martins site is all about money saving, however I do believe that if I was able to view/sort and plot my money spending then I might be able to organise my expenses to actualy save money.

I look forward to see what happens with this thread

regards

Peter

Rafter

Not aware of any free tools around.

I'm with First Direct, also part of HSBC and there you can scroll back a bit further than one statement at a time.

I read somewhere that banks and credit card companies have been looking at 'itemised' statements that could show spending by categories.

Problem is with general retailers, if you have a big bill from tesco how is the bank supposed to know how much you spent on food, clothes, dvd players or all the other types of goods you could have bought?

You should be able to pick up a really cheap older version of MS Money or Quicken somewhere that will allow you to download bank statements and categorise though.

R.

peterf_3

Thanks Rafter.

I had a quick look on ebay. There certainly seems to be a lot of Quicken software for sale £10 - £15. Has anyone any experience of using this in conjuction with internet banking (HSBC or other). I like the idea of it, if it can log in, get my statements from date x to date y and automatically import, but if I have to faff around exporting data to comma de-limited files, saving file, importing from date x to date y remembering not to overlap previously imported dates I think I may loose enthusiasm very quickly.

Recommendations and advise gladly received.

Regards

Peter

Anwen_2

MS Money is only £8.99 on Amazon, I imagine it probably works for downloads with HSBC.

Rafter

Used to do it between HSBC and Quicken - but that was a while ago.

Lost interest in tracking all my spend and now just scroll down the bank statement and tell myself off for spending too much on clothes and meals out without totting it all up!

Spotted one error in my favour in 3 years of doing it - otherwise everything was spot on.

If you are interested in finding out whether you have a good deal with all your finance products you might find the moneysupermarket account aggregation service useful.

You set it up and all your account logons and stuff are held in an encrypted file on your computer. You then log in and it displays all your accounts in one place, and also tells you where you might make savings switching to a better account.

I think the latest versions of MS Money will do the categorisation thing you are after. You just need to go through and check it has done it correctly for things like the tesco example above.

R.

realaledrinker

Don't buy cheap-looking software on Ebay. It will almost certainly be counterfiet & in my case the access code thingy on the back of the CD case didn't work!!

materialsmonkey

Hi, can you not just download your statement into MS excel or similar, then use a lookup table to compare each of the retailer names that show up with various categories. Obviously it will still suffer from the same problem re the Tescos example earlier. I've got MS Money 99 and it allows you to split transactions into different categories, so that should get around the problem. As it is 6 years old, I'm sure you could find a cheap copy somewhere ? I know micromart used to have adverts for old versions of MS office that were 'new' examples with cd key still for sale.

HTH.

Paul_Varjak

peterf:

I have just been thinking along the same lines. My mother had an account with HSBC and scrolling though previous statements was a pain. I bank with Halifax and scrolling through previous bank statements is much easier.

Halifax really want people to switch to paperless statements. That would be ok if I could annotate each transaction on my bank statement using the Halifax website. Currently, I write a note against each transaction on the paper statement.

I guess I will just print of each statement, saving Halifax money, but at my expense in ink, paper etc and just annotate as I do now. At least that may help to prevent fraud involving interception of the mail!

Fatboy_NSS

Abbey will print a page with your statement giving you a breakdown by retailer if you want one. It's not available online though.

Darryl

peterf wrote:

For example. Looking at my 'statement' I would like to go through and very quickly say, that item is food, that item is a bill, that item is etc. Then other tabs to view graphs and trends in these sections. I realise that quicken or MS Money probably do this for you, but I want a Free on-line version that integrates very easily with my current account.

I don't think there are any free online tools that do this for you (and it's not in the banks interest to offer this is it?). But if you have a OneAccount mortgage with Virgin, you can use their online interface to categorise your spending and then create graphs to view results.

See this demo for an example:
http://www.oneaccount.com/onev3/demo/flashdemo.html

Now, obviously using this requires you have a OneAccount mortgage, which may or may not be the best for you. And I wouldn't choose a mortgage on the basis of an online account categorisation system.

I suggested on the Budget vs Actuals thread on this forum a product called Accounts Express. It's like Quicken etc, and uses the similar data file import process, but gives you some good budget to actual spend comparisons and charts. You can trial it for 30 days before having to pay approx $30 (£15) for the full version.

http://www.felitec.com/ax.html

I've been dabbling with it for a couple of weeks, and it's OK, but it still needs the manual input/setup approach found in Quicken and MS Money. So, if that turns you off, it won't be the solution you want. But, then I don't see any other options available.

Darryl.