With the start of the New Year just behind us, many people have made resolutions to curb their spending. Others just want to be able to track where all of their hard-earned money is going, so they can make more sense of their finances, especially with tax season coming up. Using an online money management website, like Wesabe, can help make you a better spender or saver. Wesabe is only one of the major money management websites available online (such as Mint.com or Quicken Online), but unlike many of them, this one supports the majority of Canadian banks as well. Not to mention, Wesabe is completely FREE!

The first step in using Wesabe is to add your bank(s) and import your transaction history from your financial institution. Most banks or credit unions allow you to download your transaction histories, via their online banking website, in the form of a single file (usually in one of the common financial industry file types such as OFX or QIF). In the case of my bank, I was able to download up to three months worth of history, however this will vary between financial institutions. Currently Wesabe officially* supports only financial institutions with deposit accounts (checking, savings) and credit accounts (credit line, credit card). In addition, you can set up an' account to track cash-based transactions.

Once you have downloaded this information, you can upload the file to your Wesabe account manually via their website upload tool, desktop application, or Firefox plug-in. Some banks also support automatic uploading to the Wesabe servers (without any manual downloading) however this method does require you to provide your financial institution's login information to Wesabe (though they state that this information is encrypted and stored separately from your transaction history). In addition, you can also add additional transactions, such as cash-based transactions, via email or through Twitter.

Once your data has been uploaded, you can view your transaction history from within Wesabe. The website will do its best to recognize where the transaction took place, and rename it accordingly, making the information easy to read. If the site is unable to identify the transaction, or it identifies it incorrectly, you can manually correct it as well. In my experience with the website, it automatically recognized my transactions about 60% of the time, while 35% of the time I had to enter the company manually (but it recognized it and auto-completed it for me). About 5% of my transactions had to be manually filled out and were not automatically recognized, however this was almost always things like small, privately owned stores, etc. Wesabe can also recognize transfers between accounts will automatically remove these transactions from being tracked as Spending or Earnings.

The next step is to 'tag' your transactions with keywords that you can later sort by, such as 'restaurant,' 'groceries' or 'paycheque.' Wesabe will even look where the transaction took place and suggest tags based on the location. These tags are completely flexible and you can have as many tags as you want. The site will also 'learn' how you tag certain things and can automatically tag transactions as they appear. For example, I've set up my Rogers Wireless account to always tag itself as 'cellphone.' You can then sort or search by these tags, or by businesses.

Wesabe also offers the ability to make additional notes on transactions, allowing you to provide more information for yourself about each transaction (such as 'Took out additional cash for movies') that will appear when you mouse-over the transaction. You also have the option of attaching additional files, allowing you to add things such as receipt scans for better tracking.

To help you manage your money goals, you can create monthly Spending and Saving targets for each of your 'tags'. Once you've entered these targets, Wesabe can show you how you are tracking to them in easy to read graphs. Because it is so simple to set up, you can set targets whenever you see you are overspending in a certain area, or you are saving up for something big.

If you have an iPhone, Wesabe also has an iPhone application that allows you to view, edit and even add transactions right from within the application. This lets you take the information on the go and, if you use the automatic uploading feature, allows you to track your current account balance. I did find however, that the app did not show me a list of tags I had used previously (as the website does), so I when editing a transaction, I had to remember what tags I had used before.

In addition to the Money Management tools, one of Wesabe's big features is that it offers its users the ability to join over 100 groups and participate in discussions. These groups range from 'Paying It Off ' to 'Entrepreneurship' to 'Eating On A Budget' and allow the users to request and share information between one another, get community input about spending decisions, preferred banks, etc. There is even a group dedicated to Canadian Wasabe users. This is great for people who like to discuss financial decisions and like to share their ideas with others.

As far as security and privacy goes, Wesabe has a comprehensive Privacy Policy and a Data Bill of Rights which states that all of your data on the site is your own, and you are free to export and/or delete the data whenever you want. They also promise industry-standard encryption and the removal of all personal identifiers from the data. If you are one who is nervous about giving your data to strangers, I suggest taking a look through it.

Overall, I've found Wesabe to be a great tool in helping me understand where I'm spending my money, and let me plan my future spending habits. I have not yet participated in the groups/discussions feature of the website, but I have browsed through them, and I'm impressed at the quality of the discussions going on. Best of all, the site is completely ad free!

It does have a few downsides however. I occasionally have stability issues with the site (information not updating properly when I try to filter) but this is usually solved by a quick log out and log back in again. Also, there were some additional filters and site functionality in previous iterations of the site (that I unfortunately did not get a chance to see, but have read about in other reviews of this site). I am hoping that some of this functionality is added back in over time. Overall, though, I definitely recommend checking this website out.

* Wesabe does have a 'Labs' section where they test out new functionality on an 'opt-in' basis, which currently allows you to add Investment accounts as well.

Tech Talk is always on the lookout for new and relevant tech-related articles to bring to you. If you have a suggestion for something you would like to see on this blog, please feel free to contact me at matt@entrepreneurialwoman.ca or by leaving a response in the comments below.

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