Strands Blog

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been one year since we launched our free personal finance management software! A lot has been accomplished during the past year and we wanted to take a moment to review some of the highlights we’re proud of:

• Expensr Merger
  
  As you may know, in 2008 we acquired Expensr, a popular web-based personal finance application. After the acquisition we worked on incorporating the best features of Expensr with our own personal finance management site. In July 2009 we successfully did this and merged Expensr users into moneyStrands.

• Manual Accounts
  
  With the merger of Expensr we added the capability of creating manual accounts. The new feature allows users to take advantage of our free personal finance software, even if their bank is not supported through our automatic aggregation. We do this by enabling you to upload your financial transactions via a CSV, QFX or OFX file.

• iPhone App
  
  Shortly after our official launch, we announced our free iPhone app. Since launch we’ve done a number of updates including the ability to add transactions to manual accounts, edit budget goals and manually update accounts from within the app. We also made the app available in 77 countries including the UK and Canada!

• Currency Support
  
  moneyStrands added support for 44 currencies, which allows people from all over the globe to take advantage of our free money management software.

• More Cash Flow Features
  
  Since our initial launch, we’ve added several new features to help you better control your cash flow. These new features include split transactions, custom rules, budget goal hints and pending transactions.

• Partnerships
  
  MoneyStrands announced its partnership with Savings.com making it the first online personal finance solution to offer new ways to save by providing personalized online coupons to its customers.

  We also announced a partnership with SouthPointe Digital Technologies to power My Money Manager, a personal finance management service that is now available to all MyPersonalVault users.

• 100K registered users
  
  In seven short months we surpassed 100,000 registered users! This makes us one of the fastest-growing, independent online personal finance management services on the market.

• Strands Personal Finance
  
  In addition to these incredible milestones for moneyStrands, our B2B solution, Strands Personal Finance has also experienced significant growth. Over the past year, two of the world’s largest banks have been busy implementing customized solutions for their online customers powered by Strands Personal Finance technology. In Spain, BBVA launched their Tu Cuentas program, while ING of Netherlands completed a private beta of their PFM offering.

We could not have accomplished all of this without our users. Your feedback, suggestions and requests have helped us grow into one of the leading PFM tools on the market. Thank you all and keep the suggestions coming!

We have much more in store for our second year, so be sure to subscribe to our blog, follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for the latest updates.

Upon the announcement of Mint’s pending acquisition by Intuit, we had a number of inquiries from people disappointed in the news and wanting to learn more about alternatives to Mint.  It seems a growing number of former Quicken users who have steered away from the tool looking for a free alternative all of a sudden feel that they are being forced to return.

Well, don’t fret because you have other options.

If you are looking for a free personal finance tool as your Mint alternative, moneyStrands has a number of great features to offer including:

Adding Accounts

• Support for more than 8,000 financial institutions, so you can keep refreshing your data automatically with the ability to link your checking, savings, loan and credit card accounts.
• The choice to create manual accounts you can maintain by importing your own data files (CSV, QFX, OFX). This allows you to aggregate all your accounts even if your financial institutions is not on the list.
• The ability to manually key in transactions once you add a manual account.

Insightful Analysis & Comparison

• Widgets that let you know where your money goes, your spending trends and whether or not you are living within your means month-to-month.
• Ability to create custom reports and export data to a CSV file.

Budgeting & Alerts

• Ability to set monthly and annual budgets.
• Ability to configure customizable alerts that let you know of balances running low, large purchases or deposits, budget goals approaching your limit and the like.

Highly Customizable Interface

• A highly customizable widget-based user interface where you can design your own page layout with the personal finance widgets most important to you.
• News feeds from the most popular personal finance portals and blogs.

Security & Privacy

• 256-bit encryption and industry standard security infrastructure. Read more.

Multi-lingual, Multi-Currency

• English and Spanish version of the website.
• Support for 44 currencies.

Mobile Access

• A free iPhone app with unmatched visual drill down spending analysis. Read more.
• A mobile web version for quick access to your balances and more, available at m.money.strands.com

Signing up is easy

1. You can sign up for moneyStrands with any valid email address here.
2. Add your financial accounts with daily automatic feeds and you’re in business.

Bring in your Mint archive, too

Adding your financial accounts gets you going quickly, but if you would also like to transfer your transaction history data from Mint follow these steps:

1. Export your data from Mint.com by logging into your account and visiting the “Transactions” tab. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see the “Export all transactions” link in the bottom right hand corner. Click on this link and hit “Save”.
2. Login to your moneyStrands account or click here to create one.
3. Visit the “Accounts” tab and click on the “Add account” button. Look to the bottom of the pop up box and click on the link that says, “Try our manual file uploader.”
4. After you click on this link an account box will appear. Here is where you can name your account, identify the type of account, the initial balance and the currency.
5. Once you click OK, you’ll be taken back to the Account overview tab of your moneyStrands profile. Here you should see the manual account you created. In the lower right hand corner of this box you’ll see the “Import” button and this is where you can manually import your CSV file.
6. After you click Import, the uploader box will appear. You can browse for your CSV file and easily upload your data in seconds.

For more information, check out our how-to video on creating manual accounts:

Note: Those who plan to auto link accounts in moneyStrands AND import archived data should be aware that there may be some overlap in transactions since your auto linked account will pull part of your transaction history too. This will only occur the first time you import the data and duplicate transactions can easily be deleted from within the “Details” tab.

As always, please let us know how we’re doing and in what other ways moneyStrands can help you improve you financial well being.

With the addition of our manual upload feature, we’ve received requests to make our iPhone app available on the UK and Canada app stores. We’re happy to announce today that the moneyStrands app is now available on these app stores.

To download the app, click here or search “moneyStrands” in your iTunes application.

To learn more about our iPhone app, check out our recent blog post on v2.5 of the app.

Next week the app will also be added to the Australian and New Zealand App stores. If you are an international user and would like to see the moneyStrands iPhone app on your App store, please contact us.

For optimal viewing, view in full screen mode.

For all our global fans out there, moneyStrands is pleased to announce the addition of 33 new currencies to our personal finance management tool. With these additions, moneyStrands now supports 44 currencies! (see our full list below) This enables people from all over the world to take control of their finances and save money with moneyStrands’ innovative, easy-to-use platform.

Along with additional currencies, we’ve added the ability to view your financial analysis and overview in your specified currency.

Setting your account to your native currency is simple. Just click on the settings icon in the top right hand corner of your profile. This will open up the setting panel, where you’ll see an option to set your currency. Choose your currency of choice and click on the save changes button to complete the process.

Please note that currency exchange rates vary by day as they are calculated by the most current exchange rate. Here is a complete list of all 44 currencies we now support:

If you’re a fan of the moneyStrands iPhone app, be sure to update your current version to the newly released version 2.5. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you’re missing out! We’ve launched a slew of new features that make our app even more user-friendly and convenient for managing your finances on the go. Here’s what’s new:

• The ability to update your bank account data from within the application. This new feature can be found in the upper left hand corner of the My Accounts page. Just look for the curved arrow icon. You can now bring your account data up to date without you having to access the web site.
• A newly designed analysis page allows you to see the total amount of your income or expenses in the pie chart. Click on each color-coded category to see the total amount for those individual categories.
• The new Analysis page also features various time range options you can select. These are located along the top of the page. Scroll through them by sliding your finger across e.g. this month, last month etc.
• A newly designed budget tab allows you to see the total amount spent for all your budget allocations. You can also choose to view monthly or annual budget allocations by selecting the appropriate tab at the top of the page.
• We’ve added new support for our Spanish version

Check it out by downloading the moneyStrands v2.5 app on iTunes.

As you know BBVA and Strands teamed to launch Tú Cuentas in July of last year to provide a valuable personalized finance management tool for BBVA’s 4.1 million online users. Within one week there were 100,000 users of  Tú Cuentas; 300,000 by the end of June 2009; and the number continues to grow today. In recent past it has received high praise from Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, and today BBVA Tú Cuentas is celebrating!

This week Tú Cuentas was awarded by Actualidad Económica, the Spanish business magazine, as one of the “100 best ideas of the year.”

But our joy does not end here. Our personal finance project has been recognized twice recently:

First, we are tremendously honored by the Actualidad Económica Award of the 100 best ideas of 2008. This is just another endorsement of the enormous value that we believe the tool has and the awesome potential it has to complete the ideas that we plan to develop with BBVA.

The second milestone is the publication by Forrester Research, of a case study monograph. In it, under the title “BBVA’s Tú Cuentas Shows What Next-Generation Online Banking Will Look Like,” Forrester places BBVA and it’s Department for Innovation as a benchmark for innovation in the global financial world, providing detailed information and explaining how Tú Cuentas is better than similar tools in the market. Undoubtedly, something that makes us extremely proud.

With this, we see how the path we started next to a year ago is generating encouraging results and will continue to encourage us to come up with new ideas as we team with BBVA. According to Manuel Castro, director of Innovation and Development of BBVA, “the goal of innovation in the Group is to generate products and services that are useful to people. In that sense, Tú Cuentas is really an example of how to develop innovation in BBVA.”

In the end, the key to success are the users of Tú Cuentas, for using it, for giving us feedback, conveying their ideas, and, above all for positioning the tool as a project made by all and that is enjoyed by everyone.

Therefore: Thanks to all and thanks to you!

(To read the Spanish version of this blog post please visit the BBVA Tú Cuentas blog)

Two of the largest banks in the world are already using Strandsʼ technology to offer their customers a better overview of their personal finances.

Financial services companies that offer personal finance solutions increase their customer retention by up to four times.  This proves the importance of relying on this technology to build customer loyalty. In Spain, BBVA was the first to implement Strands’ technology last November and to launch the Tú Cuentas service.  A month after it’s launch, more that a 130,000 users had already tried the tool and to this day, more than 250,000 customers have already improved their personal finance management.

Now, Strands is proud to announce that ING has launched TIM for their customers in the Netherlands. The Dutch bank has chosen Strands technology to offer new services to their customers that allow them to better manage their expenses and income.

For the moment, TIM has been launched in the Dutch market in a private beta and only for a limited number of customers who have applied to participate in this pilot phase.  In the future, ING will offer the service to the bank’s online customers in the Netherlands.

The main goal of the new tool is to allow users to have a clear and complete overview of their financial situation.  Some of the innovative functionalities of the new tool include:

Automatic categorization of information:  The application automatically categorizes the users’ information into a set of predefined categories that make it easier to manage (for example, food, household…).

Analysis of a customers’ finances:  Based on the categorization, the information is presented to the user in a graphical way, enabling him to analyze his financial situation to better understand what his money is spent on.  The customer can see the evolution of his income and expenses in time and print pre-defined reports to consult at any time.  The information is displayed on the screen in an simple way that can be easily interpreted at first glance.

Comparisons with other users:  The service also allows users to compare themselves anonymously with other community members of his choice.  This helps customers better understand their financial situation and compare it to other collectives which can be useful to him or her.

Budgets and alerts:  The service allows the user to define his own budgets for different expense categories and set up alerts on their evolution by email or SMS

To learn more about Strands Personal Finance Technology, download the PDF brochure and discover why hundreds of thousands of people are using it to manage their personal finances.