Managing Your Personal Finances

Pageonce Personal Finance

Premium version: $6.99, app2.me/2559; iPhone/iPod touch: free, app2.me/2557; iPad: free, app2.me/2560

Personal Finance main screenPersonal Finance lets you manage all your online accounts from your iPhone or another iOS device. After you install the program, the first time you run it you are asked to sign up for a free account at pageonce.com. Personal Finance: account details screenThen you are asked to set up your individual bank, credit card, and other accounts. Once you've done that, Personal Finance does the rest. It lets you manage bills, make payments, monitor credit card transactions, make deposits/withdrawals from your bank accounts, track frequent flyer miles, and more. The Personal Finance main screen lists your accounts organized by categories (finance, utilities, shopping, travel, etc.). Tap on an item in this list to see the Account Detail screen.

Personal Finance's main screen (left) lists your accounts. The Account Details screen (right) gives you information about individual bills.

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PocketMoney

$4.99, app2.me/2561, free "Lite" version, app2.me/2562

Pocket Money: main screenI tested the paid version of PocketMoney on my iPod touch 2G. The app's interface is quite intuitive and easy to navigate—even a novice user can get PocketMoney up and running fast.

PocketMoney is full-featured and allows you high-level management of your personal finances. You can track an unlimited number of accounts (checking, credit cards, savings) and other financial information (assets, liabilities, etc.). Pocket Money: Individual account screenFor individual accounts, you can create repeating transactions (auto-enter your salary every other Friday); e-mail new transactions to your spouse to keep each other updated; split transactions and make withdrawals, deposits, and transfers; auto-complete transaction based on the payee; turn on multiple currency support if you are a frequent traveler; post transactions from MPG, CheckPlease, and other iReceipt compatible apps; and more. You can even create budgets and monitor them via custom reports and charts. It imports/exports data to desktop versions of Quicken or MS Money.

PocketMoney's main screen (left) displays all of your account balances. The individual account screen (right) displays a clear and concise summary of account activity.

You can also password protect your financial data and backup and restore data over a local Wi-Fi network. This last feature requires that you have a copy of SyncDocs installed on your desktop computer (free, catamount.com/blog/?p=315). This Web page also describes how to perform a backup, restore, import, and export of data. I tested the import/export features with the now-discontinued MS Money app. The process was easy, and there was no data corruption or duplication going in either direction.

About the only downside with PocketMoney is that you cannot use the app to connect with online banking websites—you must manually enter each transaction into your phone.

Subtitle: 
Whether you want to check your balance, see what is due, or make a payment, Pageonce Personal Finance and Pocket Money can make it happen for you
Issue: 
NovDec2010_BuyersGuide
Department/Section: 
Apps
TOC Weight: 
38