The below are some basic to advanced questions about PocketSmith you may be asking. If you have any questions that you believe are unanswered, please click the ‘Request Help’ button on the far left of your screen, and we’ll get on it.
How do I adjust my calendar forecast balance?
If you need to reset the balance for a Forecast Calendar, just click on the ‘running balance’ for that day – this will bring up a reset balance form. More details can be found here: http://www.pocketsmith.com/help/forecast-calendars/editing-your-calendar-forecast-balance/
I get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month, is there a setting to repeat an event on a specific day each month?
If you set an event to repeat “Every month” then it will occur on the same day every month – this is the 5th option on the drop-down list in the Event Window. So if you set up your Rent forecast event for the 1st of April for example, it will occur on the first of each month subsequently.
In terms of your salary, the best option is to set up two salary events – one for the 15th and one for the 30th. If these have the same name, they will be seen by PocketSmith as being the same financial event – meaning your budgets for these would work as you would expect.
I used to be able to see previous months in my calendar but all I can see now is the previous month – what happened to my data?
The PocketSmith forecast calendar is a rolling one-year window, which means that it will always span from the first day of the previous month to the last day six months in the future (or twelve months, depending on the plan).This window continues to move with your forecast. The reason for this is that the Forecast Calendar is always set to look a year ahead, and in order to keep the application running optimally for you, we keep a limit on this window.
Unlike traditional calendars, PocketSmith has to calculate running balances, which means that if the window were to grow, the load on calculations would increase for our users with each passing month. Consequently, a challenge most new users will have is that their transactions will at the most match up to their events only for a month. This improves as time goes on, so keep uploading your transactions once you’ve set up the matches and you’ll start accumulating meaningful data!
My forecast events have vanished from my calendar, do I have to enter all that again?
Don’t worry, your events aren’t missing! Please try the following:
- Check in the right-hand side ‘Calendars’ widget to ensure that you’ve ticked the calendars that you want active. Active calendars will have their events displayed and running balances consolidated at the bottom of each day as well as up in the graph.
- Check the ‘Complete Event List’ under the ‘Forecast’ menu – it’s a complete list of all of your forecast events! Link: https://my.pocketsmith.com/events.
- Check that your account hasn’t been automatically downgraded from Premium to Free by clicking on the ‘Account’ link in the upper menu. It is possible that the credit card registered against your account has expired, or was declined. A Free account displays only 8 forecast events in the calendar.
For the record, we do not delete your data unless you explicitly delete your account. Additionally, we back-up religiously so your data is safe and secure.
The graph at the top of the page doesn’t display income for some months, is this normal?
In order to remain readable, the top graph only plots your running balance at the start of each individual week. This means that your monthly income may be occurring mid-way through a week, and the balance reflected in the top graph is the balance the following Monday – after some forecast expenses have passed. This means you may not see the full ‘spike’ of the income coming into your account!
I’m trying to upload my CSV export file into PocketSmith but I get a ‘Sorry, date detection failed.’ – can you help me out?
Sure we can! The date detection issue is often because all of the transactions in the file fall on one date. What this means is that PocketSmith can’t compare two different dates and work out what the format is – e.g. dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy – we automatically detect this so that you don’t have to select what date format your bank’s file is.
The reason for this is that the date formats aren’t included with the file uploads, and we have to do the best we can with what the banks provide us. Furthermore, CSV and OFX files from one bank generally differ to another (no adherence to standards!), which makes this an ongoing challenge for us!
The upload is still not working, what should I do?
If your bank provides OFX and QIF, please try those – they tend to be more accurate than CSV. If that doesn’t work and if you’re comfortable sending us the problematic file to ascertain why it doesn’t work, we can then troubleshoot it from here. Just a single transaction line may be enough for us to see what the export rows look like, and we don’t mind if you replace the values on that line.
Please note that we would keep your data absolutely secure, and once we have patched the application, we would destroy the file that you send through.
Is PocketSmith smart enough to detect duplicate transactions when I’m doing an upload?
Yes it is! If you are to upload a file which overlaps dates for transactions that already exists for that account, you won’t have any issues – it will simply over-write transactions on dates that already exist. PocketSmith overwrites your bank information by date – so for example, if you conduct two uploads:
1. May 01 – May 05
2. May 03 – May 07
Upon the second upload, PocketSmith will overwrite transactions from May 03 to May 05 in the first upload and replace it with the second. In any case, if you’re consistently uploading from one account and the dates either match or overlap, PocketSmith will eliminate duplicates.
How do I categorize my transactions?
In PocketSmith, a ‘category’ is a Forecast Event. In order to categorise your transactions, you’ll need first create Forecast Events. These tend to be recurring expense events such as Food, Vehicle and Rent. Don’t worry about assigning values to them if you’re not sure how much you spend – you can leave these at $0.00 to begin with. All you need to estimate is the recurrence (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly).
When this is done, you can assign merchants (e.g., the places where you shop) from your bank accounts to your forecast event at the Budget Builder. Once you have trained PocketSmith to recognise a merchant, it will remember it for subsequent uploads.
Why do I categorize my transactions?
The Budget Builder will begin to tell you an average of how much you spend in these Forecast Events as you continue to make the merchant assignments. When you’re done, you can simply click a button to populate the Forecast Event with the average. Later, you can adjust the value of the Event in your Forecast Calendar to adjust your forecast. The challenge from here is to keep your spending within the limits you have set in your Events (e.g. keeping your Food expenditure to the weekly $200 that you’ve set).
As you continue to upload your transactions, PocketSmith will tell you how you are performing against your budget, and also allow you to see how much you spent in total for each category (for example, you could set up a ‘Groceries’ forecast event which is repeated weekly, and then match transactions against this event to get an overview of how you are doing against your budget).
More information can be found here: http://www.pocketsmith.com/help/compares/matching-transactions-overview/.
Can I delete individual transaction out of the system?
At the moment, PocketSmith doesn’t allow you to delete individual transactions out of the system unless they are manual (cash) transactions.
How do I adjust the balances of my transaction accounts?
You can adjust the current balance of your account as of today – to represent your changed limit, by clicking on the balance value of the account in https://my.pocketsmith.com/transaction_accounts. You can see more details on this here under point 3a: http://www.pocketsmith.com/help/accounts-transactions/transaction-account-box-overview/.
Most bank files do not contain your balance, which is why you need to enter it manually – however you should only need to do this once. PocketSmith saves value against the date you entered it, and calculates your bank account’s the daily amounts from there.
How does PocketSmith handle transfers between accounts?
PocketSmith attempts to automatically detect transfers between your bank accounts by looking for identical sums that come out of one account, and go in to another. Transfers are excluded from the total of how much you earned and how much you spent, in order to present you with a more accurate picture of your money.
Is there a way to set up the days of the weekly reporting range?
The weekly budgets / Current Budgets should start on the day that your Forecast Event starts on. So if your forecast event is set to repeat on each Wednesday, then the Current Budgets will show from Wednesday to Tuesday!
Can I adjust the amount of the average given by the budget builder?
The frequency is determined by the repeat duration of the events themselves – so if ‘Lifestyle’ is a monthly event, then the average will be calculated monthly. This allows the user to then modify the amount that correlates directly to the event.
How do I attach a goal to my forecast calendar?
Attaching a goal is simple, just choose the calendar you want to attach the goal to by clicking on the calendar text in the goal box – it’s located under the ‘Buffer’. I think we need to make it more obvious that the calendar is selectable.
Can I delete my data and start again?
This is easily doable within the Preferences section – they can rapidly delete all events, transactions and matches to return the account to its original, empty state.
How do I reset my password?
You can reset your password here: https://my.pocketsmith.com/account/forgot, or by clicking on the “Forgotten your Password?” link on https://my.pocketsmith.com/login. Enter your email address, and PocketSmith should send you a link with which you may reset your password.
Does PocketSmith support multiple currencies?
PocketSmith allows you to change the currency used in PocketSmith in your preferences page (”Preferences” on the top menu) – it’s also possible for you to insert any currency symbols (e.g. USD, EUR CHF, BGN, HUF,…). Note that the currency is more for localisation and display purposes as opposed to a full currency conversion. You are able to change the currency that your account displays in under the user details preferences area of the application – https://my.pocketsmith.com/preferences/user_details.
While we don’t support multiple currency at this stage, we will be looking at this a bit more closely as our user base is international and demand for this is increasing (http://pocketsmith.uservoice.com/forums/14860-general/suggestions/178917-enable-different-currencies?ref=title).
How do I change my PocketSmith plan?
You can upgrade / downgrade your plan from the Account area – on the right hand menu, click on ‘Change Plan’, which is the second item on the list. Please note that you can also delete your account from the same area – simply click on ‘Delete Account’ on the right hand menu.
Can I link my calendar to existing calendar applications such as iCal / Google Calendar / Outlook?
Yes! PocketSmith’s date-based approach to money also allows it to make your personal finances more relevant to your every day life. It is the only personal finance application that lets you subscribe to your future financial events directly from your electronic calendars, including Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and CalDAV on the iPhone.
We use the open webcal format to connect to your electronic calendars – subscribe to your PocketSmith calendar with any web or offline application that accepts a webcal link. This means that updates to events in your PocketSmith calendar are immediately reflected in your regular calendar. Head to https://my.pocketsmith.com/ical to get started!
Can I use PocketSmith to put in reminders to pay my bills?
Yes! You can get PocketSmith to send you a weekly email with your upcoming events and running balances for the coming week. You can opt-in for our weekly reminders from the Email Settings page:
Can I view my forecast calendar on my phone?
Yes! The first cut of the mobile / iPhone version of PocketSmith is up and running with a web interface for simple manual expense addition. You can access the mobile interface by pointing your iPhone’s browser to https://my.pocketsmith.com. Also, if you have an iPhone running 3.0 you can use CalDAV to subscribe live your PocketSmith calendar directly from the iPhone’s calendar! More info on the PocketSmith Mobile alpha can be found here: http://www.pocketsmith.com/blog/2009/09/11/introducing-the-pocketsmith-mobile-alpha-for-iphone-and-opera-mini/. Please note that this is a first step down the road to having a full mobile application. We are working on extending this soon – as always, we welcome your feedback on this.
How can I add manual transactions on-the-go?
You can send transactions via Twitter which means you can also text-message your manual transactions in as well – see http://www.pocketsmith.com/blog/2009/09/14/add-transactions-to-pocketsmith-on-the-go-with-twitter-and-text-messages/ for more information!
I love what you guys are doing, what can I do to help out?
You’re awesome! Please become a Fan on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and share the love by clicking on the ‘Invite a friend’ link at top!
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