EZ Money Manager

CUSTOMER REVIEW



I know a lot of people want to know Mint vs Easy Money and I hope this helps you understand more of the differences.



BACKGROUND:

I purchased Easy Money right after I got my first Android phone in late 2010. I was never a good money tracker, and depended more on my memory and ATM balance receipts to keep my bank account balanced. This got me into trouble too often, and I felt it was time to make a change. I looked around at stand alone apps and web apps (including Mint). I had attempted Quicken Online before, and didn't feel anymore comfortable with Mint having access to everything. My desire was to have a way to track things in more than one place, and online was a nice draw, but so was a sync with Quicken (which I was going to buy as well). In the end, I couldn't find something that synced well, and I felt uncomfortable with Mint so I went with Easy Money.



USING EASY MONEY

I get paid once a month, so I really enjoyed being able to pre-plan. Easy Money's bill reminder allows me to put in my cyclical bills or even a single future purchase (I'm preordering something in 2 months, make it a reminder). I input all my monthly bills the day I get paid, even if the auto payment isn't for a few weeks. This allows me to proactively make sure I know what my available balance is (so I'm not trying to figure out half-way through the month how to find more money cause I over spent).



All categories are user editable, so you don't have to keep their predetermined ones, you can color code them with and RGB value if you want to really make it easy to see them. Parent Categories (the highest level) can have multiple subcategories- but currently they only go one level deep- I'd like multiple levels and hope that gets added. I haven't contacted the Dev about it yet though, so I don't feel slighted that in the last year and half it hasn't been added.



Every transaction must be entered either manually or through an import. This means your initial setup is going to be hefty. But when you use it regularly, this isn't any different than balancing a check book (which I sucked at, but this I do religiously). You also have to manually update a transactions status as it becomes cleared at the bank. I wish I had the ability to mark that date separately from the transaction date (the date I bought something, and the date it cleared the bank). Manually doing this can get tiresome after a lot of small purchases, but if you are good about doing it, it keeps you in-tune with your accounts.



MY RETURN TO MINT

I got married late 2011, and I wanted a way for my wife and I to jointly track our money. She had to always ask me how much we really had, and let me know when she purchased something (made gift buying for Christmas interesting). Since Easy Money is a standalone application, and doesn't sync, even with other phones with the app, I went back to cloud based- and that meant Mint. I tried Mint for 2 weeks, added all my accounts (more than I had in Easy Money) and post fixed all the categories. I then started using it to keep track of money, excited we could share it on phones and web.



Note: If you use Mint or Easy Money, you should always be putting in your transactions manually AS YOU MAKE THEM. Waiting for the bank to show the transaction is just asking for trouble, as you don't know how much you really have. Mint doesn't get all these pending transactions unless you put them in.



AND BACK TO EASY MONEY

I couldn't do Mint. Here are my big reasons why:

1) The big killer: How it handles Pending Charges. Mint gets the available balance from your bank, but doesn't get the pending transactions that make that balance, so if you have properly entered your transactions as you made them, you show a balance that doesn't match up - it's double charged. If this happens over the weekend, you can have days of not knowing your true balance without going to the bank website and manually calculating (which is what Mint is supposed to make you not have to do).



2) Manually entered transactions - cant adjust the value in App. When you enter a transaction, you have to make sure you don't typo the amount, as that field is the only part of a transaction that you cannot edit from within the app. Every other piece is editable.



3)Manual entry takes longer than in Easy Money.



4)Actual vs Available. Easy Money won a big one here: when you start the application your Available Balance shows your calculated available balance from all the future transactions you put in. Mint however shows you your current balance and you have to drill down into your accounts separately to find your available balance (and hope its not wrong due to pending transactions)



5)Split transactions. In Easy Money, split transactions are handled as a whole unit with Splits upon drill down. In Mint, a split transaction is split into new transactions for each dollar amount, that makes tracking the original purchase as a whole unit hard to do.



6) Cloud storage. You might get hacked not because someone wants you specifically, but is targeting a large group of people.



CLOSING:

Mint isn't all bad, here were the big draws for it:

Links more accounts easily

Available Online and one multiple devices synced together

Hybrid Manual/Auto entry (transactions auto Clear)



And Easy Money isn't perfect:

Widget force closes too often (I stopped using it)

Limited to one device

100% Manual Entry (transactions have to be manually reconciled)



I wanted to like Mint, especially as it would make married bank handling a communal effort (I don't feel a need to keep finances from my wife, in opposite I want her fully involved).



Now if Easy Money could just sync between phones.