What Do Budgeting Tools Offer?

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What Do Budgeting Tools Offer?

Budgeting tools make budgeting easy. They are designed to take data and turn it into a story about your financial life. This data inputting can be manual or it can be automatically downloaded through an Internet connection to your financial institution; it depends on the tool. Different tools offer different features.

If you’ve started referring to budgets as "the B word," then perhaps it’s time to look at how easy these tools have become in the past few years. Here is a list of features that are available in general:

• Tracking of income and expenses. This is accomplished with templates in which either you input your income and expenses or the program does it for you automatically.
• Categorization of expenses and income. Rent, entertainment, medical expenses, clothing--all these and more are categorized so you can easily see how much you are spending each month on them.
• Setup of budget. You can set up how much you’d like to allocate each month to each category of expense.
• Reports. Reports tally up data and provide you with a total picture of your money. You can get daily, weekly, monthly and yearly summaries of your income and expenses, summaries of certain types of expenses (such as your car payments) and income, reports of your total assets and liabilities, transaction reports for income and expenses, checks you’ve written, and more.
• Balance calculation. The reports can provide your current balance as soon as the needed information comes in.
• Security. Security prevents your account from being hacked by others.
• Basic vs. advanced. There are different levels of service provided, based on the product. Some are very basic, while others allow complex calculations and analysis.
• Tracking of bills. The program can keep track of bills that you owe.
• Connecting with credit and debit card and savings/checking accounts. In order to give you a fuller picture of your finances, budgeting programs can link to your various accounts and import data from them.
• Alerts. You can choose to have alerts sent by email, Tweet, or text whenever a certain event happens, such as falling to a certain balance or making certain transactions. You can also have periodic summaries sent to you in these ways.
• Forums. Some online budgeting software has forums in which you can share ideas, celebrate your success, or hold your friends accountable for their budgeting.
• Planning. Some budget software provides applications that analyze your data and plan your finances into the future.
• Business applications (statements, forecasting). Programs for businesses are more complex than programs for individuals because businesses need to do accounting and analysis.
• Service for more than one person. Most software lets several users set up accounts.
• Financial education. There may be articles, tutorials, calculators, and videos on how to understand money and finance.
• Apps. Budgeting software can provide separate applications for smartphones and other devices.
• Other features. Retirement account tracking, net worth tracking, debt repayment tracking, and lists of messages received are some of the other available features of budget software.