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Jeeves

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#171729 29-Apr-2015 12:10
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So the other day I was using Heaps! to do some budgeting and see how our expenses were tracking. I was pleased to see that we appeared to be doing quite well the past few fortnights with saving some money etc. 
Then I noticed that heaps was saying we saved money this past fortnight, but I thought nah that's impossible because we had a huge dentist bill and had to buy new baby gear which would have put us into debt for the fortnight. I did some digging and saw that out of the 24 transactions we did for the previous fortnight, heaps! had only included 15 of them.

So I went back further and further and heaps was not including a huge amount of the transactions we do, and so it turns out our saving record for the past little while was a lot worse than I thought.

I emailed heaps support and they say that there has been a problem with transactions missing...I asked how long this problem had been going on for because it seems to have been happening for a while (months...), and have yet to receive a reply.

To be honest, I honestly feel like Kiwibank has forgotten about heaps ever since they bought it. It hasn't been updated at all, no new features, little support. Their social media accounts haven't been touched in 4 years. 

C'mon Kiwibank, what are you doing with heaps! ? I cancelled my pocketsmith account when I moved to Kiwibank because of heaps, and now I'm regretting it big time.

Ps. Just to be clear, I'm not blaming heaps for my poor money management as I should have been more aware of our spending. I'm just dissappointed that Kiwibank isn't doing anything with the software. 

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xontech
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  #1293469 29-Apr-2015 12:24
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I had a play with Heaps! for a while when it first became aligned with Kiwibank and found similar to you in that it couldn't quite be trusted.
At the time I was (and still am) looking for a replacement for good ol' MS Money, but yet to find something that isn't subscription based and costs more than I'm willing to pay.



xcubed
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  #1293534 29-Apr-2015 13:17
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A couple of years ago, I was experiencing similar issues with Heaps, and they'd even let their ZenDesk subscription expire so their support ticket system was down.
I eventually managed to get hold of them and they told me they were working on the issue, but it took several weeks for the missing transactions to appear.

At one point some years ago, I had suggested a couple of minor improvements that they could make (such as recognising automatic payments based on the BP#123456 in the description), but was informed that they didn't have the resources to action them.

alasta
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  #1293550 29-Apr-2015 13:29
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Does this product support bank reconciliations? If so then you would identify anomalies like this. If not then it's clearly deficient.

I strongly recommend You Need a Budget.



solival
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  #1293625 29-Apr-2015 14:52
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I tried Heaps, but then moved to gnucash. There no automatic transactions import, so I have to do it manually, but anyway it helps me more to track my expenses and budgeting than heaps did.




Geek originally from Ukraine :)

KrazyKid
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  #1293690 29-Apr-2015 16:09
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I also used Heaps for about a year, but have moved away due to missing transactions and double ups.

 

I recommend Pocketsmith - an NZ company that has a free version that will get you started, and a paid version with more if you like it.

 

 

They have automatic imports from all major banks including kiwibank.

Deamo
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  #1293738 29-Apr-2015 16:49
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alasta: I strongly recommend You Need a Budget.


I agree. I've found that really useful for tracking where my money was going.

 
 
 
 

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andrewNZ
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  #1293788 29-Apr-2015 17:53
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I have found pocketsmith quite good. They're NZ based.

When Xero were shutting down the personal service a while back, they were recommending it to all their soon to be ex customers.

k14

k14
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  #1293819 29-Apr-2015 19:00
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andrewNZ: I have found pocketsmith quite good. They're NZ based.

When Xero were shutting down the personal service a while back, they were recommending it to all their soon to be ex customers.

+1 on this. Pocketsmith is great, fully automated feeds from most banks (afaik) and is a kiwi company to boot. Well worth the small cost for the usability.

xontech
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  #1293888 29-Apr-2015 21:41
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k14: Pocketsmith is great, fully automated feeds from most banks


Is anyone using Pocketsmith with Kiwibank?

andrewNZ
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  #1293915 29-Apr-2015 22:10
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I am, it gets all accounts including mortgages with no problem.

I also have it collecting Westpac data.

Jeeves

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  #1294008 30-Apr-2015 08:36
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I know about pocketsmith - I said so in my original post :) 
Guess I'll have to fire up the subscription again, as obviously Kiwibank have given up on heaps.

 
 
 
 

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jonathan18
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  #1294147 30-Apr-2015 11:35
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This post has got me interested in trying out Pocketsmith, but am I correct in that there's no fully-featured trial version (ie, one with the automatic importing of bank data)? I'd rather trial it based on what I'd need it to do, which includes the automatic data importing - I guess the answer is to pay for the first month of the 'premium' model...

Also, does Pocketsmith have tablet/phone apps and/or cloud-based syncing of data? I see youneedabudget has this, which would be really useful in that it gives the ability to not only access information anywhere but also ensure it's kept synced across the devices.

alasta
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  #1294276 30-Apr-2015 13:02
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I'm pretty sure YNAB has a fully featured trial. It doesn't interface directly with your bank - I can't imagine how you'd do that without security risks - but it's very easy to export data from your bank and import it to YNAB.

I use the iPhone and iPad apps for YNAB and they work perfectly.

pctek
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  #1294515 30-Apr-2015 19:35
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What is wrong with Excel?

 

I keep track that way, enter what was spent, enter what was earned.
Simple.

jonathan18
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  #1294550 30-Apr-2015 20:49
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pctek: What is wrong with Excel?
I keep track that way, enter what was spent, enter what was earned.
Simple.


Yeah, that's what I use at the moment and it works fine, but I would like the advantage of automatic scraping data from online banking. Also, it would be interesting to see if the products can play a role in actively assisting in finding possible additional savings, as we're already tracking all our spending in full.

I'm not sure if any of these programmes will offer the flexibility I'm used to in being able to make Excel do exactly what I want, but I'll give them a trial. Pocketsmith have sent me a link for a trial of the premium product so I'll start with that.

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