Radenkovich’s P(a)lace

For the last several months I’ve been trying to find apropriate solution to track my money incomes and expenses, together with budgeting… I’ve been tested several solution but if they were good enough there were not free, otherwise they have lack of functionality… I’ve spend some times on some spreadsheet documents I was able to download and try to adjust them to my needs… Even I made them suit my needs, it was only for the limited time due to lack of spreadsheet design and logic… I have had difficulties to reconcile with fact in case when I borrowing money to my friends, I’m the one who should record this transaction and later remind them to pay me back… And I’m not making any profit in that! It was too much… Then I’ve decided to look for some online solution and on third attempt I’ve discovered Buxfer!

I’m very impressed with Google’s online services like Gmail, Calendar, Document… They were all very functional and easy to use. First thing I’ve noticed on Buxfer is similarity to Google design: look and fill is the same together with price - it’s completely free of charge. You can register yourself with Google account.

If you ask your “money borrowing friends” to register them self with this service, they will never forget money they owe you, nor you will forget they settlement. Entered transaction which include Buxfer users on both sides automatically show up to related user. You can with just one click remind friends on amounts they overdue.

I dont know for you, but I will never again lend some money to frends which does not have Buxfer account.

Here comes the overview of Buxfer features:

• Automatically download transactions from your bank or credit card (mainly for USA)
• Analyze and visualize where you spend your money (basic but effective)
• Control your spending with budgets and mobile alerts (great)
• Track shared expenses and I-O-Us (e.g., rent, groceries with room-mates) (strong suits of the service)
• Transfer money online and settle your debts
• Access specialized iPhone / Blackberry interfaces “on-the-go” from your mobile device

Buxfer miss:

• Multi currency support (it support only one currency, but I hope this will be solved soon)
• Investment Accounts (every money spending is expense)

Buxfer released a bunch of tools for their users to improve understanding of their expenses, and drill down into transactions to see where exactly money is being spent:

1. Expense Categorization - Look at how much you spent across different keywords, or within different groups. A nice looking pie chart helps you quickly summarize what you are spending most on. Very helpful for getting a quick feel of where the money is going out of your wallet. You can then drill down further into transactions within a particular category.
2. Compare trends in your spending pattern - View daily and monthly trends in the way you spend money. Our innovative technology lets you easily visualize the days and months where you had an irregular spending pattern. Look out for spikes and anomalies in the graph, and simply click on the graph to see which transactions cost you the most.