Tim April 10th, 2007

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The web market for budgeting software online is crowded to say the least. We’ve covered MoneyTrackin’ before and other big players like Wesabe and Billster are doing many things right in this space. So it’s commendable to see a new startup take on the task of helping the common user budget their money.

Plan2Spend focuses on this task, money in and money out, find out where it’s going and help manage that flow. It’s a simple idea but one that requires great execution to compete in this marketplace. I’m giving their service a trial today to see if they live up to the promise to “Say goodbye to overdraft.”

1. Staring into the river on the homepage I’m immediately at ease. I can control my expenses. Plan2Spend can help. Drink the kool-aid. But I never judge a book by its cover so we’ll need to get our feet wet to really see what the service has to offer.

2. The first step in the signup process is a fairly lengthy EULA. It’s rare that I encounter these and I have to wonder if it really needs to exist. I understand the need to protect your company but do they really expect anyone to read all this legal garbage to use the service? It could potentially scare away users. Nevertheless I do the right thing and skip right over it and agree to whatever it says.

3. In contrast to a lengthy terms of service, the actual signup form is short and sweet. Username, email, and password is all it takes to get started.

4. After signing up I’m taken to a landing page with my goals split up into 3 steps, Enter my deposits, enter my bills, and enter my expenses. I’m not too sure how an expense is different from a bill but I’m sure we’ll get to that in a minute. So I click through to the first step.

5. The first page will let me add any deposits to my account. Whether it be one-time gifts of bi-monthly salary payments all incoming money goes here. The interface is clean and organized and I appreciated the bit of ajaxy pop-in for adding deposits. So far it seems like they’ve left out all the extra cruft and really focused on the basics for their forms.

6. Once I’ve put in the deposit amount and chosen the category it’s updated on the main deposit page. Fairly simple stuff so far so I head over to start adding my bills.

7. Adding bills and other recurring expenses is pretty straightforward with the same interface as adding deposits. My only problem here was the lack of ability to add new categories. For example, with my mortgage, the only category that applied was “Household” but I would have liked to see the ability to tag much like Wesabe offers so specific categories could be chosen (and perhaps more than one).

8. In the last step we record our expenses. It seems that unlike recurring bills, daily expenses are considered one-time things. A new lawnmower, a weed eater (can you tell I’m in the process of buying landscaping equipment at the moment?). The only confusion is that the “Add a Bill” section allowed for one-time payments. It seems these two sections could be combined. I do really enjoy the fact that they go ahead and factor in recurring deposits and payments all the way up to the end of the following month. This really allows you to see the total picture of expenditures and see where you stand now and where you’re going next month based on your bills.

9. The budget area is where everything comes together. You will see a horizontal bar graph showing where your money is going based on the different categories. You can also choose to set a budgeted amount for each category and see how that relates to the average user. Currently this only shows the active month and no previous or coming months. It would be helpful to allow that, as well as the ability to export graphs and things of that nature. This is the area people will use the most to help monitor their expenses and I think it’s where Plan2Spend needs to focus the most.

10. After logon each time I am brought back to a landing page that lets me know where I currently stand moneywise. Helpful things like when my next payments are coming and when I’m getting paid are also great additions. Overall I get a general picture of what my account looks like and how I can start editing things.

Plan2Spend has made a worthy product in this playing field. Although the service could use quite a bit of extra features, the ones that are currently enabled shine. They take the simple idea of inputing your expenses and deposits and budgeting where they go and they’ve made it work in a clean way. However, the competition is fierce and already offers much more in terms of uploading Quicken files, tagging all payments and deposits, and exporting reports of your budget. While Plan2Spend is a great beta, it will need much more refinement to become a contender in this market.

Averaged Scores

• Design: 7.0
  Features/Content: 3.7
  Usability: 3.3
  Accessibility: 7.3
  Overall Rating: 8.7
  

• plan2spend , review