With Mint being bought by Intuit, and Intuit expressing interest in entering the Indian market and the plethora of personal finance software startups, personal finance solutions are becoming interesting area to watch out for in India. There are a whole bunch of online solutions available for consumers in US and Europe, but for India, the choices are very minimal. Mint, in particular has a pretty nice user interface, which is pretty much unmatched by the competition. Buxfer, even though it supports personal finance requirements, has way to go in making its UI better. In the indian space, TrackEveryCoin seems promising, but not launched yet. Personally, I have been searching for a personal finance solution which can suit my needs well. Here is a list of features which will get me to use one of the solutions.
Must have features:
- Automatically syncing all my bank and credit card account information
- Excellent portfolio support. A quick and intuitive way to show my net worth at a glance.
- Support for India stocks, mutual funds and insurance - Automatically fetch latest stock and NAV data and update my portfolio
- Provide ways to enter and track expenses
- Provide a desktop app for offline processing - But keep it in sync when online
- Provide a mobile client to enter expenses on the go
- Support for storing receipts - Click a snap from mobile and have it OCR-ed. Need a way to organize/browse through receipts as well
- Support for shared expenses
- Support for Income tax filing
- Allow me to work in multiple currencies
- Allow import/export of *all* data.
Nice to have features:
- Geo-tagging and analysis support
- Projecting expenses/incomes in intelligent ways
Irrespective of the number of features, usability will be the key here. Its easier said than done, though!
Interesting that after listing out the features wish list, you say that usability will be the key! :)
In fact, I agree that usability should be of much more focus and importance.
There are a number of features which may not be really solving a problem. They are good to have, look nice, but not essential. Would you agree?
I agree that a bunch of the features in my wish list are not essential - but I think its a thin line between what's essential and what's good to have. For me, anything that forces the user to manually enter a bunch of data is essential to be automated. For example, sync-ing with my bank account is essential, as I do not want to copy-paste my entries from my bank account into another tool. Similar is the difficulty with receipts as well - Why enter manually when I can just snap a pic! :)
add to that:
- Compare Income/Expenses w.r.t. others in similar demographics? :)
I heard Yes bank in India had launched some tool like that in Oct/Nov-08 together with Yodlee Money centre...
/V
I am using buxfer and it's working pretty well. The only thing I don't like is manually entering all transactions :(.
here is my wish list:
- Sync with indian banks!!
- Journal entries (and other accounting funda's)
- Mac app and portfolio support would be awesome!
I need to manage my all investment records like
Bank fix deposits,
National Saving Certificate,
Bank Fix with different bank,
RBI/GOI bonds,
LIC policies,
vehicle details and policies
Post office Fix deposits
Bank Accounts
Post office saving account
Gold jewellery
Precious stones
Many More things like stocks held etc
All these said records for all my family members and report generation for the individual family members.
How to do all these things.
Your response is appreciable.
Has anyone tried Yes bank's service or Yoodlee Money centre ?
does anyone know of what's the level of interest amongst Indian banks to roll-out Personal Finance management solution for their users ?
/V (vibhorj@hotmail.com)
Banks themselves providing this facility will probably not work out, as they have no incentive to allow sync-ing with bank accounts held with competing banks. Also this facility can only be used by the bank's account holders. So this should definitely be provided by a third party only.
I came across your blog while browsing for Personnel Financial tool for usuage in India, The though expressed by you is very good also i got few information about few tools.
Here i would like to inform you about one product MProfit which is newly launched software exclusively take care of Mutual fund, Equity and other investment.
You can try the trial version to check the usage.
It can be downloaded from http://www.mprofitindia.com/
Try this SW
Br
Ramhesh
Hi Krishna,
This looks exactly like our product features :-) (www.perfios.com )We cater to your exact needs (except for the desktop version and multiple currencies). Other than few of these features all the other 'Must have features' listed by you have been catered to! we have been in the market for more than a year now and have many users across the country. It's an invite only service and I would be happy to create account for interested folks here(simply send me an email).
Aditya
adi@perfios.com
Hi Paresh,
Perfios would be able to deal with all your requirements, to get yourself an invite, email me at adi@perfios.com
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We should get in touch. Are you an active user on top social networking sites like Digg, Facebook, or Stumble Upon? If so, what is your username so we can get in touch to share ideas.
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See www.perfios.com ; this portal has most of the features you listed out.
Try it !!!
Hands down, Apple's app store wins by a mile. It's a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I'm not sure I'd want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.
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