Today I came across the Buxfer website and liked the product. The name could definitely use some work, since it doesn’t pass the simple tell test (Say the name and someone hearing you shouldn’t have to ask you to spell it.), but I liked the clean graphics.
Most of all, I liked the idea of making your money visible, and had the following thoughts:
- Buxfer looks to me like a personal cashflow manager. The team behind the product don’t call it anything, so I’m calling it a personal cashflow manager, which is a brilliant idea. I want one!
- I wonder what the pay-to-play-more version will look like? What kind of pricing will it feature? (About $15 / month seems about right to me, though you could also have tiers at $9, $20 and $40 for graduated features.)
- What they should do is make this a small business cashflow manager. I know from experience that it’s hard to manage the cashflow of a small business. There’s a huge market opportunity available for someone who does it right. I’ll pay for it! Cashflow management at the moment is a DIY Excel proposition that works but is far from elegant.
- Why can’t my bank do this for me? They already have me logging into their website to manage my accounts. They already have all the incoming and outgoing account management functions. Why don’t they offer an added software service to manage my account in a more relevant and valuable way? In fact, that would open a huge host of services they could offer. And I’m not talking about unlimited ATM withdrawals.
- I’m going to try to change something with this idea.
What do you think? Any love for Buxfer or suggestions for cashflow management tools?
Update: I ought to mention that there are some options available apart form simple DIY Excel spreadsheets cooked from scratch or from templates. Freshbooks is hinting at providing additional (un)accounting functionality to go with their leading invoice management software. But until they do, the industry standard is Quickbooks from Intuit, although their online edition is only available for Windows users on Internet Exploder (boo!).
