I have been checking online financial software and I am scandalized. How can a development team do such great work and then ruin with with one or two very retarded things?
All these sites are very slick-looking, using modern Web technology and smart interfaces that simplify entering data and navigating around. They have gadgets, widgets and their pages are highly configurable. Some of them have mobile software clients. The interface is intuitive and looks great. You have lots of ways for doing the same thing. The graphics are pretty polished. And then something really stupid comes along.
Mint.com and Quicken Online, for example, won't let you go ahead with the application unless you have managed to establish a connection with a financial institution. What if I don't want to do that and just want to enter transactions manually?
Buxfer.com is great, very light and intuitive looking. I even subscribed to a Pro membership because I thought I had everything I needed. Then... its financial projections don't go further than three months into the future! What the... ?
ClearCheckbook.com is also very slick, but won't take recurring transaction into account before they actually take place. So much for future projections!
But the top prize goes to Geezeo.com. It won't let you enter transactions manually, period. You need to use an export file from your financial institution, or delete the account.
The funny thing about recurring, future transactions is that they take no extra programming effort to create. They have a date, just like any other transaction, that has to be taken into account when generating reports with date ranges that include them, that is, reports about the future. The really stupid thing is that these development teams, all five of them, have gone to pains to prevent the software from doing this very important thing. Mind boggling.
Monday, March 30, 2009
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