Expensr is like a virtual personal accountant combined with a financial support group. With Expensr, you can import your bank data (or enter in transactions individually if you’d prefer). Where possible, Expensr will auto-categorize your expenses for you. Then, you can see how your spending breaks down. How much are you spending on food? How much are you spending on paying down debt?

With Expensr, this knowledge is right at your fingertips, in the form of attractive, colorful pie and bar graphs. There’s also a community aspect to the site. You can add tags to your profile that will tell Expensr what your current life situation is, and the site will help you compare your spending with that of other people like you.

For example, let’s say you are a 23 year old male. Do you spend more or less on beer than the average 23 year old? Expensr can tell you-and if your spending is way out of line, that might be just the motivation you need to get it under control. This is a cool concept, but there are several similar web apps out there, including Wesabe, Mint and  MoneyStrands, the new application being developed by the company that bought Expensr.

The user interface is attractive, but it takes a moment to figure out what function each of the drop-down menus on the Analysis screen is supposed to perform. The forecasting features are handy, as is the ability to create a budget. However, it would be more useful if Expensr were designed to send you an email or a text to alert you when you’ve hit your budget in a specific category.

One more thing-how do you know it’s safe to upload your bank info into Expensr? Expensr uses 256-bit SSL encryption to help keep you secure. Also, you import information from your bank account as .OFX files. Expensr will not keep your bank account information on file, but if you are concerned about it, you can open up the files with a text editor and take out your account number before you upload.

Our Rating of Expensr

Tags: Finance

Categories:web