Best app for categorising past spending

Gardeningjen

What's the best app for quickly categorising and analysing my spending over say the past 2 years? I would like one that connects to my bank account (I just have one, with First Direct). I would like an app that will pull in past data and categorise everything itself, with an option for me to change the categories or define my own. My husband and I need to sit down together and sort out a joint budget. We currently pay for different expenses separately and I'm not sure exactly how much I've been spending on what, so this is data that would help that discussion.

grumpy_codger

2 years? Do you really need that much to start budgeting?

I see only 1 year worth of transactions in my FD app, anythihg older is PDF statements. And I don's see any options for exporting the transactions in any format.

I'm no expert, but I don't think that an app exists capable of doing what you want for any bank or a special app for FD.

glennevis

When I installed a money management app on my phone and connected to current accounts from various banks through the years, each time it pulled in data from the previous 12 months.

The app was installed about 6 years ago so, for example, I can still see with my oldest current account a continuous record of transactions back to 2019.

I suspect that at least 12 months historical transaction data is related to FCA guidance i.e. a 'banking industry convention'.

Gardeningjen

Thanks for your help guys. I installed Snoop and it automatically pulled in exactly 2 years of transactions so that was perfect!

Diaz09

Since you mentioned this is for a joint budget discussion with your husband, I'd suggest both of you use the same app so you can compare categories and spending patterns side-by-side. Most apps let you export data to spreadsheets too, which might be handy for your budgeting chat. Just be prepared that the automatic categorisation isn't always perfect - supermarket spending often gets lumped together even if you bought petrol or clothes there.

SFCooper

Emma finance app