Like you, we were surprised to hear that Xero Personal will be winding down in November 2014. While this does mean one less competitor in the PFM (Personal Financial Manager) space, it's never nice to hear of a global Kiwi product taken off the shelves.
Regardless, it is this ability make difficult decisions that will see Xero's continued growth in the years to come, and as Xero users ourselves we agree that their core focus should stay where it is.
In the meantime, we thought we'd let you know that we intend to be there for current Xero Personal customers, providing an easy migration, usability and features you are used to and some bonus extras that come from us being specialists in the area.
PocketSmith is an NZ-made personal finance application, founded in Dunedin, New Zealand in June 2008. We are focussed mainly overseas, with 70% of our customers residing in the US, and the rest spread out over 180 countries. Most of our US customers have migrated from the free Mint.com, which is dominant in the USA, as they find that our paid product offering has more advanced features that they need.
We are also licensed by America's biggest employee assistance provider, Workplace Options LLC to provide a PFM for their end users.
We aggregate accounts from over 12,000 financial institutions worldwide (and growing) and support all major banks in New Zealand including BNZ (we worked on that one).
We are a slightly geekier variant of Xero Personal, and we are working towards simplifying things so that the powerful features are there, but are also easy to use.
We let you store, categorise and find your transactions; we let you make budgets; we help you keep your finances on-track. The ace up our sleeve is that we also forecast your daily future bank balances, up to 30 years ahead (cashflow projection). This gives you the understanding of where you'll be financially at any point in the future, so you have the ability to make the best decisions today.
We also let you schedule your upcoming financial activity in a calendar mode, which lets you interact with your money in a more natural manner.
From a feature perspective, our focus and our goal is to be the premier personal financial management tool, and the logical next step up from Mint.com, and now Xero Personal.
We're not there right now, but we have been working towards a simple landing for Xero Personal and Mint.com customers for most of this year. We also have many exciting features in development that we know you'll love. PocketSmith is nearing its 3rd major iteration now, and our constant upgrades have been in direct response to user feedback.
So please don't despair. The guys and girls at Xero do care about you, and we'll also work hard to ensure a seamless transition and great customer support. In the meantime, we'll be focusing on the necessary renovations to ensure that you'll feel at home.
In the meantime, come and check us out! If you'd like to test migrate your data, we have a step-by-step guide for you. We'll be making this better over the coming weeks as we better understand how to make the process more efficient. In the meantime, we'll keep you posted as to our progress, so check this page and we'll tell you when we are ready.
Talk soon,
The Team at PocketSmith
This is the best, most complete and most intuitive tool I've ever tried in the finance category. For me, the calendar was the mind blowing feature that changed my perception and minimum feature to expect.
Hugo Vitorino, Portugal
THE CALENDAR! OH MY GLOB! THE CALENDAR! Mint, Quicken, Excel - none give you the similar ability to prevent cash flow problems in the future in such an easy, graphic way. Money software is useless if it can't help you plan the future. I have already recommended it and continue to do so.
Amy Naha, United States
So far this program has been a game changer for me. I'm finally able to budget they way I'd always hoped. I love looking into the future and seeing what money I will have left over.
Casey Casburn, United States
I've tried quite a few of these budgeting applications, but this has been the best experience, supporting the most bank accounts and international currencies.
Nicholas Steenson, New Zealand
We're constantly updating PocketSmith to make it better for you.
| Xero Personal | PocketSmith | |
|---|---|---|
| Bank account aggregation | ||
| Multi-currency (currency for each account) | ||
| Currency conversion | ||
| View sets of accounts together | ||
| Live bank feeds | ||
| Live feed auto-categorisation | ||
| Mortgage, loan and investment accounts | ||
| Transaction management | ||
| Notes | ||
| Labels and tagging | ||
| Saved searches | ||
| Multi-criteria rules (by merchant, partial text match, amount, date, and more) | ||
| Categorize and track spending | ||
| Split expenses into different categories | ||
| Customisable main and sub-categories | ||
| Budgeting | ||
| Flexible budgets (e.g. daily, weekly, quarterly, yearly) | ||
| Net worth | ||
| Integrates live feed accounts | ||
| Multiple loan accounts for an asset | ||
| Send expenses to Xero | ||
| Cash flow reporting | ||
| Cash flow projection | ||
| Daily projected future bank balances | ||
| What-if scenario modelling | ||
| Calendar | ||
| Schedule future budgets | ||
| Daily historic and future closing balances |
