There are plenty of apps out there that promise to help you get a handle on your finances. Pocketsmith is unique in that it lets you plot your budget out on a calender. If you’ve never lived paycheck to paycheck, this might not matter to you. If you are living paycheck-to-paycheck, this will be a major advantage.

With Pocketsmith, instead of just entering how much you expect to earn and how much you expect to spend in different categories, you plot out different “events” on a calender-like getting your paycheck or paying your electric bill. Events can be one-time or they can be set to repeat automatically at specific intervals. Pocketsmith then keeps track of what your expected balance is for each day of the month.

Additionally, it’ll also track savings and interest, and let you know when you’ll reach specific savings goals or pay off debts. Finally,  you can also break down your budget by categories to make sure you are staying within the limits.

Since Pocketsmith is web-based, you can also access your balance from anywhere you have an internet connection-including your mobile phone, if you have an internet plan.

I love the concept of Pocketsmith-unfortunately there were a few areas where I felt they botched the execution.  For example, when I attempted to upload my transactions for this month, Pocketsmith added a couple of zeros to the end of each dollar amount-making it look like I ‘m actually making millions of dollars working from home, and blowing through it just as quickly.

Even more annoying was the process of deleting said transactions-the only way to do that turned out to be deleting the entire account.  Grrr!

I’m not sure what went wrong with the upload, but I could see using Pocketsmith anyway if there were an easy way to add purchases on the go.  Fortunately, you can add transactions via Twitter and text messages-but when I tried, I experienced an error connecting my Twitter account to my Pocketsmith account.

Customer service is good-I emailed the Pocketsmith team about my issues and had a response in just a few hours.

Pocketsmith offers a free plan, but it doesn’t let you create enough calenders or schedule enough events to be truly useful.  Paid plans are $5.00 and $12.00 per month, depending on how many features you need.

What do you think of Pocketsmith? Is it worth it paying for, or would you rather use something free, like Mint or Wesabe?

Our Rating of Pocketsmith

Tags: Accounting

Categories:web