Personal financial management

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Personal financial management refers to "ways" or "methods" of managing ones own personal finances. It is also known by its acronym, PFM, which refers to the type of software used for personal finance apps. Simply put, PFM refers to software that helps users manage their money. PFM often lets users categorize transactions and add accounts from multiple institutions into a single view. PFM also typically includes data visualizations such as spending trends, budgets and net worth.

History

PFM started in 1983 with the founding of Intuit. Scott Cook and Tom Proulx, the company’s founders, witnessed the rise of the personal computer and saw an opportunity to develop personal financial software. [1] Their flagship product, Quicken, became a standard for many households and was eventually followed by QuickBooks, which helped small businesses manage their finances. [2]

Around the same time, a similar competing product introduced by MECA Software, conceived by MECA President Gerald Rubin, and designed by author Andrew Tobias called Managing-Your-Money (MYM) came out, [3] first running on the Apple-II, and later the IBM-PC. [4] Later in 1990 Microsoft released their own PFM platform called Microsoft Money.

Microsoft worked with Intuit and CheckFree in 1997 to create Open Financial Exchange (OFX), which allowed financial institutions to exchange data with web users, paving the way for online PFM software. [5] Yodlee was founded in 1999. Originally a site that let users view email, banking, news, travel, and shopping in one place, [6] it soon pivoted to focusing exclusively on banking, allowing users to view their financial accounts from different institutions all at once.

A wave of online PFM tools launched around 2006, with Wesabe and Mint at the forefront. Mint was acquired by Intuit in 2009 for $170 million, [7] and Wesabe went under in 2010. Wesabe’s CEO cited the fact that Mint automatically aggregated accounts and transactions as a key reason that Wesabe lost market share to Mint. [8] Since 2008, PFM has expanded in scope. Financial advisory companies such as LearnVest, Personal Capital and Credit Karma integrate PFM into their software. [9]

Nowadays, there are also other companies providing personal financial management platform products for banks and fintech companies, such as Meniga, Moneythor, MX, Strands, Coinscrap Finance and Tink among others. [10]

Related Research Articles

Quicken Interchange Format (QIF) is an open specification for reading and writing financial data to media.

Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a data-stream format for exchanging financial information that evolved from Microsoft's Open Financial Connectivity (OFC) and Intuit's Open Exchange file formats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intuit</span> American financial software company

Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Money</span> Personal finance management software program

Microsoft Money is a discontinued personal finance management software program by Microsoft. It has capabilities for viewing bank account balances, creating budgets, and tracking expenses, among other features. Designed for computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system, versions for Windows Mobile were also released. From its inception in 1991 until 2009, Microsoft Money was commercial software; in 2010, Microsoft Money Plus Sunset was released as a free replacement which allows users to open and edit Money data files but lacks any online features or support.

Quicken is a personal finance management application originally developed and offered by Intuit, Inc. Intuit sold Quicken to H.I.G. Capital in 2016, and H.I.G. sold Quicken to Aquiline Capital Partners in 2021.

QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1992, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.

Intuit India is a fully owned subsidiary(Branch) of Intuit Inc. USA. Located in the southern city of Bangalore, the India office was started in April 2005. Currently it has around more than 500 employees. It is one of the two development centers of Intuit outside the USA, along with Intuit Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KMyMoney</span> Accounting software

KMyMoney is a cross-platform double-entry bookkeeping system for personal finance management built on KDE technologies. Its operation is similar to Microsoft Money and Quicken. It supports different account types, categorization of expenses and incomes, reconciliation of bank accounts and import/export to the “QIF” file format. Through plugins, direct download using the OFX and HBCI formats is also possible. CSV imports and exports are also possible via plugins.

You Need a Budget (YNAB) (pronounced ) is an American multi-platform personal budgeting program based on the envelope system. It is available via desktop computer or mobile app. The software was developed in 2004 by Jesse Mecham, while he was in college pursuing his master's degree in accounting after an experience where he and his wife had no money and needed to improve their budgeting. It evolved from a spreadsheet that he created for the budgeting process.

Mint, also known as Intuit Mint and formerly known as Mint.com, is a personal financial management website and mobile app for the US and Canada produced by Intuit, Inc..

Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007. It has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. The company operates in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Patzer</span> American businessman

Aaron Patzer is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mint.com, a financial management tool which was acquired by Intuit and had over 10 million users as of mid-2012.

FinanceWorks is a financial management software tool that was developed by the financial technology company Digital Insight. The software was designed to help consumers and small businesses manage their finances by providing a comprehensive platform that enables users to track their spending, create budgets, monitor investments, and manage bills and other expenses.

WorkingPoint is a web-based application providing a suite of small business management tools. It is designed to offer a single point-of-access for all business management needs while offering a user-friendly interface. WorkingPoint’s functionalities include double-entry bookkeeping, contact management, inventory management, invoicing and bill & expense management.

Wesabe was a personal finance management website established in December 2005 that analyzed a user's financial data to provide appropriate advice on how to save money. The site went live in November 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outright</span> Accounting software application

Outright was an accounting and bookkeeping software application that assists small businesses and sole proprietors with managing their business's income and expenses. In May 2022, GoDaddy announced the software would be discontinued on June 18, 2022.

Money Dashboard is a free online personal financial management service in the United Kingdom. It provides users with the ability to view all of their online financial accounts in one place and categorises and analyses all of their transactions so they can understand how they use money. The app aims to help consumers make better financial decisions and budget for the future.

Personal Capital is an online financial advisor and personal wealth management company headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA with offices in San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO, Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA.

Qapital is a personal finance mobile application (app) for the iOS and Android operating systems, developed by Qapital, LLC. The app is designed to motivate users to save money through a gamification of their spending behavior. It moves money from a user's checking account to a separate Qapital account, when certain rules are triggered. Its database is used by psychology professor Dan Ariely to study consumer behavior. Qapital was released in Sweden in 2013, then in the US in early 2015. The application was later withdrawn from the Swedish market in April 2015, in order to focus on the US market.

References

  1. ↑ Hopkins, Michael. "America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs: Scott Cook" . Retrieved 10 March 2014.
  2. ↑ Lacy, Sarah (5 September 2005). "How To Face Off Against Microsoft". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on June 30, 2012. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  3. ↑ "Andrew Tobia$ Managing Your Money (Apple II, 3 1/2" Disk and 5 1/4" Disk) MECA Ventures - 1988 USA, Canada Release - Eli's Software Encyclopedia". www.elisoftware.org.
  4. ↑ Lewis, Peter H. (29 August 1989). "Personal Computers; Managing Your Money". The New York Times– via www.nytimes.com.
  5. ↑ "History of OFX". Archived from the original on 25 February 2009. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Kamath, A. "Yodleeing Their Way to the Top" . Retrieved 10 March 2014.
  7. ↑ Guest Author (14 September 2009). "The Value of TechCrunch50: Mint Acquired by Intuit for $170m Two Years After Winning TC40" . Retrieved 10 March 2014.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  8. ↑ Hedlund, Marc. "Why Wesabe Lost to Mint" . Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  9. ↑ Merino, Faith (2 April 2013). "Credit Karma raises $30M for personal finance tools" . Retrieved 16 March 2014.
  10. ↑ "Top PFM (personal financial management) companies | VentureRadar". www.ventureradar.com. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
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