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A Quick Update on Envelope Budgeting Software
By DaveM | December 8, 2006
Back on the financial front for a moment… The subject of budgeting came up today at work (don’t ask me how) and I was telling a coworker about the way I currently budget using the envelope system. As I was sitting here this evening reflecting on the whole conversation, it seemed like a great opportunity to provide a quick update here since I previously posted a review of envelope-style budgeting software roughly 10 months ago.
Back then, I gave my “top pick” to Mvelopes, and runner up choice went to You Need A Budget (YNAB). Now, 10 months later with some solid Mvelopes experience under my belt, I might be flip-flopping on that recommendation. Here’s why…
As I explained in my original review, I decided on Mvelopes because it’s pretty much fully automated and pulls my transactions from all the various places I do business with such as banks, brokerages, credit cards, loan companies, PayPal, etc. YNAB, on the other hand, was Excel-based and requires manual entry of all transactions. Since I’m inherently lazy, and I don’t like entering my transactions by hand, the scale was tipped in Mvelopes’ favor.
Just so you don’t think this is a Mvelopes bashing party, here are a few other things I really love about Mvelopes:
- The Net Worth screen. I can see exactly what I’m worth, in real time, at the click of a button — and that makes me feel important.
- The way it handles credit card transactions by automatically moving money from my spending envelope(s) to my “Money for Credit Card X” envelope so the bill is ready to pay off when it arrives. Now that’s the correct way to handle credit cards!
- The ability to simply drag and drop transactions into my various envelopes (categories).
But there’s a one slight problem… Mvelopes, while it is a great system and I wholeheartedly endorse their budgeting methodology, has a few issues.
Most times when I log in, there are a bunch of yellow exclamation points next to my accounts because Mvelopes was unable to pull my transactions for whatever reason. I’ve called support, re-entered my usernames and passwords for each account, updated my browser, updated my JAVA software, stood on my head while humming the national anthem, and a dozen other things. Nothing seems to permanently resolve the problems.
Sometimes it pulls my transactions, and sometimes it doesn’t. Still other times, it will download a whole batch of duplicate transactions and then I have to spend a bunch of extra time sifting and sorting through everything to figure out what has already cleared and what I can safely delete. Every time I’ve contacted support, they do seem to resolve the issue for that one time. But I just don’t have time to be opening a support incident with them every other time I use the system.
The other problem is performance. Mvelopes is a bit slow and clunky, presumably because it is 100% web-based and runs only through a browser (ie. Internet Explorer). The interface is pretty neat, and they have made some decent improvements since I first signed up, but it’s just not where it needs to be yet. As I understand it, they used to have a client application that you installed on your PC which then synchronized with the main site. Maybe they need to bring that back.
So now, let’s talk about YNAB for a minute… I have loved the YNAB system from day one, and I learned a great deal about budgeting from using the program. Which is why I’m extremely happy to report that YNAB now has a non-Excel based offering!
Over the past few months, I was fortunate enough to be selected as a beta tester for the new YNAB Pro Software. Right out of the gate, with the very first beta release, I was flat-out impressed!
YNAB Pro is one SLICK budgeting program!
YNAB Pro was developed totally from the ground up, but still operates based on Jesse Mecham’s 4 Rules of Budgeting that originally spawned the Excel-based YNAB. You can even import your old YNAB spreadsheet into Pro so you don’t lose any of your past work.
By the way, Jesse is the original creator of YNAB, and an all around super nice guy too!
YNAB Pro has an almost “Outlook-like” interface and is very simple to use. The register and budget screens are very streamlined, uncluttered, and provide lots of cool features to speed up the entire data entry and budgeting process. Also, the scheduler is now built in (not a separate add-on purchase) so you can automate the entry of all your recurring transactions.
I’m still not keen on having to enter all my receipts manually into YNAB Pro (remember, I’m lazy), but I’m willing to make the trade off for everything else YNAB brings to the table. I’d rather spend a little extra time on my budgeting process each month, than to deal with the frustration every time Mvelopes decides to flake out on me. And honestly, I also like the idea of keeping all my financial information locally on my own PC where I can safeguard the data myself. I’m not saying Mvelopes isn’t secure, but who knows what’s happening over on their servers. Heck, come to think of it, I don’t even know where their servers are!
Since we’re already well into December, and Jesse recommends starting with YNAB at the beginning of a new month, I’m planning to make the switch on January 1, 2007. But this time it will be from Mvelopes back to YNAB (Pro).
Keep in mind, YNAB Pro is just in it’s infancy, and if I know Jesse…there are LOTS of great new features on the YNAB horizon! Maybe someday soon it will download my transactions automatically so I can go back to being lazy again.
Hey Jesse! I do business with Key Bank and CitiCards. (hint, hint)
So head over to the You Need a Budget website and learn all about Jesse’s 4 secrets for removing financial stress from your life. They really will improve your financial situation in a BIG way!
UPDATE 4/2007: As of March 2007, YNAB Pro now imports transactions from any bank using a variety of industry standard formats! Thanks Jesse!!!
December 8th, 2006 at 8:43 am
I’d like to find budgeting software that works like Turbotax, where I’d be prompted to enter various items through an interview-type process. Then at the end a nicely formatted budget would pop out (similar to the way a nice tax return pops out of Turbotax).
December 8th, 2006 at 9:02 am
In my travels, I haven’t found any budgeting packages that really have an interview-type setup as you described. Personally, I think budgeting is much more of an active and ongoing process anyway, rather than a one-time, answer-a-bunch-of-questions-and-it’s-done task.
Every week you should be going back to your budget to enter/verify transactions and check on where you stand (ie. envelope balances). Then on a monthly basis, you’d be creating a new budget or at least checking your monthly spending plan to make sure everything is still allocated appropriately.
It’s during the monthly “true up” that you see how you did last month. If you went over budget in certain areas, you can cut back for the next month, or cover the over-spending with funds that might be left over in a different category (envelope).
Make sense?
January 31st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I personally look after my family budget and all spending items need to be accounted for so that at any point in time you know where you are. Requires discipline but that’s the only way.
To help you with budgeting I’d recommend a personal finance software by Australian business Parcus Group.
Easy to use program with features including budgeting, financial planning, real estate analysis, shares valuation, life insurance…
Costs $29 so it’s not a huge investment but a good value for money.
You can get it on http://www.parcusgroup.com/index.html
or
http://www.parcusgroup.com/index.html
Regards
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
[…] plan on being without it again. I blogged about this decision and my reasons back in December. A Quick Update on Envelope Budgeting Software | Mauder’s Money Matters Recently, I checked out Wesabe.com, but ultimately decided to stick with YNAB because of the pure […]
May 26th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Thank you for this post and sharing your Mvelopes (and “Envelopesâ€) experience!
I’m currently in the middle of several yellow (or blue, or red) exclamation marks on my Mvelopes accounts (mid-way into a 2-yr subscription), and I’m getting pretty frustrated. It’s difficult to stuff envelopes when paycheck transactions don’t show up!!
Glad to learn about YNAB. Might have to give it a try. I’ve alternately been considering developing my own “envelope†system of some kind (other than paper and cash–although it may come to that!!).
Thanks again.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
just got an invitaiton from www.spendview.com..the site looks solid…the best part!!! it categorizes the transactions for you!!…which is pretty awesome i thought for lazy people like me. Now i just log in look at my dashboard and i m done!!!gives me pretty good insight on where i m spending…you guys might want to check them out!!!