I run my own personal business and have a day job. So I have double the fun when it comes to monitoring my checking and savings accounts. On top of that I have credit cards for myself and my business, an auto loan, and a student loan. Managing all of that can be pretty hectic. Fortunately, I’ve discovered an awesome free web 2.0 service called Geezeo and all I can say is this thing frickin rocks!
Here’s what I did in 15 minutes:
- Add my credit card accounts
- Add my personal checking/savings
- Add my business checking/savings
- Add my auto loan
- Categorized (via tagging) all of my expenses for the last 30 days
- Set monthly goals for coffee, food, transportation, and entertainment expenses
- Saw how much I was within or overshot them this month.
That’s a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. The best part is the legwork is done now. The account and transaction data auto update. And Geezeo remembers places you shopped at for auto tagging. So if you are like me and you purchase everything on plastic all of your expenses are logged and categorized. Well, except for the occasional unique purchase that confuses Geezeo! And that means I can just log in anytime and in less than a minute I can see how much over or under budget I am this month for any particular type of spending. This is absolutely incredible stuff. I highly recommend trying it if you aren’t using any sort of tool already. Geezeo makes managing your finances fun and easy.
Well less of fun and more entertaining / fascinating / cartoony / and interesting. Good deal!
Chuck Reynolds Says:
12:45 amNov 27This is all to familiar as I’ve been using Mint.com for over a month now. I’d like to checkout the differences between the two; the budgeting thing might be an addition to what Mint.com has currently but I know they have huge VC cash and have made a big ripple in the blogosphere and have generated a lot of sign-ups thus far so I can only expect more from them soon.
Also the security issue is raised when putting all this login information into one area. There’s been many posts about Mint’s security and they’ve proven it very safe so I’m so far comfortable letting them manage what I’ve got. Idk about these guys yet tho.
Good sighting though - I’ll check it out.
Sunny Says:
12:56 amNov 27I too have been using Mint.com for a good while now. I’m going to check this service out as well just to figure out what would be a better fit for me. I find your target for transportation kinda funny though, $60 is like one tank of gas nowadays.
Chuck Reynolds Says:
12:59 amNov 27Two quick things; one I like and one I don’t.
When I add my wellsfargo bank account to either Mint or Geezeo it pulls down my 6 accounts in there, some are personal some are business. Mint won’t allow me to remove the business ones so I can just track my personal stuff whereas Geezeo will allow me to remove each one individually after they’ve been added.
The problem with Geezeo however is that I have two credit cards with Citibank… Once I’ve added the first one, I can’t add the second as it says I’ve alredy added that account - so they have an issue there because Mint works well with all my accounts.
Just FYI since I’m playing with the site.
Peter Glyman Says:
5:52 amNov 27Hey Jim,
Thanks for checking out Geezeo! Glad to hear you’re digging it. We’ll actually be making some updates to the budgeting page tomorrow that will include a progress bar that will also allow you to correlate your spending with your income. Hope you like.
@chuck thanks for the feedback. Feel free to shoot me an email at pglyman[at]geezeo.com. More than happy to try and get that account working for you.
Thanks again guys!
Pete Glyman
Co-Founder, Geezeo
http://geezeo.com/profile/pglyman
Jim Says:
9:20 pmNov 27Chuck and Sunny - I haven’t tried Mint.com yet. You’ll have to let m know overall which one you think is worth sticking with.
Pete - Thanks for reading, I have a minor bug I’d like to report as well. Basically, a payment on my Citibank credit card account registers as an expense. This is counter intuitive though true. I’m not sure the best way to handle this but what happens is on my top 6 expenses I see my credit card payment (a positive value on a liability account) and then I see the expense again from my checking account.
I would assume that the checking account withdrawal should show up as the expense and that the positive payment on the credit account itself would not be viewed as an expense at all.
Oh and one more thing, if you guys need some beta testers to use their student loan accounts on Geezeo count me in!
Peter Glyman Says:
9:26 amDec 05Hey Jim, Yea we definitely need to fix the expense categories. We’re in the process of negating things like Payment, Transfer, Income, etc.
Feel free to shoot me an email. We just need to light up student loans. Should be live in a week or so.
Pete
Chuck Reynolds Says:
2:11 amDec 13Hey Him this article may be of interest to you as well. Basically talking about how the next killer app for Google apps could be an accounting app similar to the sites we’re talking about in this article.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_accounting_google_apps.php
RWW also links to a http://xero.com as a competitor to Mint and therefore Geezeo as well. I haven’t heard of this one but possibly worth checking out still.
I still have yet to take the time to sit down with the two sites and compare apples to oranges with all my work crunching before the holdays and year end, 3 site launches, and trying to get my own blog finalized… So when I do I’ll post back.
Also @Pete - I appreciate your extended hand to help me with the account. I will contact you when I get some time to use your guidance. And thanks again.
Chuck
Chuck Reynolds Says:
3:46 pmJan 08Intuit releases a new product today: Quicken Online, a web-based version of its popular personal finance software.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/01/08/an-introduction-to-quicken-online/
Bob MacLeod Says:
8:43 amJan 25I’m developing some handy financial management resources for our employees–especially the group that isn’t doing anything. For that reason, these simple products have caught my attention.
I haven’t checked out Geezeo yet, but I did check out Mint and Quicken Online this week. Both have features I like… and features I didn’t. Quicken Online is fast, and having used QuickBooks Online for several years, I have complete confidence in them.
What I’ve encountered, though, is what you give up for simplicity: For example, neither Mint nor Q-O allow you to track cash. When you get money from the ATM, you have to expense it immediately, even if it sits in your wallet for a week. So if I do $100 a week, that’s $5200 a year–and no idea how I spent it. (I realize that a lot of people don’t really use a lot of cash these days, but the principle applies either way–they force you to expense and categorize it in advance).
I haven’t tried Geezeo yet, but I do have one beef that both Mint and Q-O also had: They are short on the “this is what we offer” side. They want you to sign up and give your banking info before you know what it can do. For example, Geezeo offers no tutorial or sample. I have no idea if it will let me track cash or not… I have to sign up to find out. For Mint, I had to sign up only to discover my credit union–the largest in this metro area–isn’t on their list.
After two test-drives this week, I’m leery of giving out any more of my banking info until I know more. I encourage these companies to provide better overviews of their software in advance.
Jim Jeffers Says:
2:52 pmJan 25Great points Bob! Thanks for sharing your insight and experiences with these products.
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Logo Designers Says:
11:31 amMar 02I like the % to goal targets like 90% to coffee. Thats a great way of presenting mundane yet importnat information that ppl need to know…..I’d be a little weary of adding credit card info to a free site….
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