Personal Finance apps (was: Money Dashboard apps closing down)

emsiewill

ClaraSolis said:

emsiewill said:

The main selling point of MD for me was the planner, really a deal breaker to be honest.  I've signed up for a quarter of Pocketsmith at £34.99 (lowest priced version - I don't need to add more than 6 banks so it works for me at that level), it is definitely one of the most expensive out there, but I am finding it really good so far.  The "budget" section is pretty much the same as the planner was on MD - a calendar and a graph view.  You can select transactions and rename / recategorise in bulk, set up your own categories etc etc.  I'm definitely sold so far.

One thing it does which MD didn't do is connect to Chase, although it's a bit fiddly as it needs to be authorised every time you sync.  You have to do it via the browser on your phone (ie log into Pocketsmith on your phone) as it needs to authorise via the app.  That isn't a big deal for me, as my Chase account isn't my main account, so I don't need to sync it all the time.

Hopefully by the end of my first quarter I will have worked out whether it's worth the cost - at the moment, I'm feeling it definitely will.

Would you be able to post a screenshot of what the planner looks like please (feel free to blur out any details of course!)?  

It's the main feature I'm looking for, and I haven't been able to find it yet in some of the other alternatives I've tried. I really need a graph that can show me what's coming in and out on certain days to help me with my budget planning.

This is taken from the Pocketsmith help guide - learn.pocketsmith.com/article/1246-using-the-calendar-and-forecast-graph - hope that gives you an idea of what it looks like (I can't post a proper link unfortunately, apparently I "haven't been around long enough", but just put https:// in front of the "learn...").  Posting a screenshot of my accounts isn't as useful I don't think, as I would have had to blur too much out.  

SamDude

I've found this after someone mentioned it on Reddit - Buxfer (https://www.buxfer.com)

It is a US app, but it ticks lots of boxes so far...

• Detailed/rich web interface
• Open banking for UK accounts
• Mobile app
• manually upload transactions
• custom tagging/categories and sub-categories
• forecasting (pro plan)
• budgets
• split and delete transactions (which you can undelete for 30 days)

There is a demo dashboard at https://demo.buxfer.com/dashboard which I have played with, but no way of testing the mobile app without signing up.

It is not free - the minimum 'Plus' plan is $3.99/mth and the 'Pro' plan is $4.99/mth - so approx £40/50 a year (which is less than PocketSmith, YNAB). There is a Prime plan at $10/mth with more features.

The company has been around since 2007?
They let you cancel and refund within the first month so there is no risk.

I am thinking of going for the Pro plan as it has the forecasting and timeline features.

Just re-reading my post and it comes across as an advert(!), but it's not and I would appreciate others thoughts on this option...

Doshwaster

kirkie_2 said:

In Moneyhub is there a way to rename more than one transaction name at once?

For example, if I searched Tesco and I had 20 transactions, can I rename one transaction and then tick all the others so it renames them all?

You could do this in Money Dashboard and you can also do this in Emma. 

You can recatagorise multiple transactions but I don't see a way to rename them

https://intercom.help/moneyhub/en/articles/5603450-how-do-i-change-the-category-for-a-group-of-transactions

jerrycatlover

one problem that i noticed of snoop, they don't allow me addeding the same bank with different owners. for example i normally add both my wife's bank accounts and my accounts in Money Dashboard to budge the family spending. However I can't do that with snoop. I can either link my Halifax bank or my wife's Halifax bank not both at the same time. To me this is a showstopper.

Max_Wonger

I've been using MoneyHub in parallel with MoneyDashboard Classic for several months as I had an inkling things were not all well with Dashboard when they closed the user forum - and earlier still when the crowdfunding investors lost all their money. In terms of account connections it works a lot smoother than Dashboard in terms of  authentication and speed of update.
However like others MD Planner is a major feature for me. I spend several weeks years ago setting it all up and it has been invaluable seeing how the balance varies months ahead - and avoiding that overdraught moment . 
I have just send a msx to Moneyhub - letting them know I though their "Forecast "  feature was basically useless. All it does is use the same computer predicted spending and income every month to produce a straight line . You can't easily see what's included or edit the existing assumptions . You can add a new item - but a single month only at a time  . So no ability to set up a recurring new spend or income or add a future price increase or check they've got council tax as 10 months not 12 etc etc . Basically useless as I said ! 
Hub have given me a non committal answer in terms of future features.
To be fair Hub is better coping with manual accounts ( savings , pensions , ISA's , shares ). You can add manual transactions which you can't in Dashboard but to be honest unless you can link the account to the provider it's not that useful . The link to my AJ Bell pension worked once or twice then fell over . 
As an aside Dashboard made a major error when they launched Neon. It was completely incompatible with Classic so existing users has to start over . In my view its functionality was vastly inferior and bizarrely it didn't support one of my current accounts - but Classic did ! So I cancelled my Neon account months ago.
It's a great pity Dashboard Classic is closing , I've been using it for over 6 years - I would gladly have bought a subscription if they had gone that route. 

MeteredOut

jerrycatlover said:

one problem that i noticed of snoop, they don't allow me addeding the same bank with different owners. for example i normally add both my wife's bank accounts and my accounts in Money Dashboard to budge the family spending. However I can't do that with snoop. I can either link my Halifax bank or my wife's Halifax bank not both at the same time. To me this is a showstopper.

I've gotten around this by using the Bank of Scotland app for my account and the Halifax web page for my wife's account. These are both Bank of Scotland accounts. Not sure if this would work for accounts that are both Halifax accounts.

Quill68

Moneyhub is doing well at categorising transactions so far- much better than Neon or Snoop

cathybird

I wish that Money Dashboard had shifted to tiered payments options for users similar to Emma once they realised their business model (selling the data) wasn't working, because I would definitely have been happy to pay. I have been using MD to track expenses and budget since 2014 and am very sad to see them go.

I am trying Pocketsmith, which is relatively expensive but seems very good so far. I been able to upload all my historical data from my Money Dashboard account to Pocketsmith, which is great. Contrary to what someone else said it does offer open banking/instant updating of bank accounts. 

I looked at Moneyhub but it doesn't allow transactions to be edited, which was one of Money Dashboard's most useful features. Emma lacks a desktop option. I don't like what I have seen so far of Snoop. I will stick with Pocketsmith for now. 

cathybird

If I could wish for anything it's that someone would buy the Money Dashboard technology from its parent company and set it up with a subscription model for users! Not going to happen though sadly since financially they have clearly run it into the ground.

inspectorperez

Can't see any mention in this thread about Microsoft Store Moneypoint app. I have been using this for several years now and find it an extremely versatile and flexible tool for managing my finances. If you can't get the report you want, it is a simple task to export data into Excel to design your own tailored reporting system. Just putting it out there for those who are still looking.