There are 2 camps of personal finance products.

1. Those that connect directly to your online bank account and pull your financial information for you and attempt to automatically categorize your purchases.
2. Those that require manual input but are much more secure since they don’t touch your actual bank account.

CalendarBudget falls under camp #2. We feel that security these days is one of the most important aspects of online personal finance management. Since this model does not connect directly to your bank, there is some manual input required to get your data into CalendarBudget. Until now, that has meant checking what actually happened with your bank account and manually entering each transaction into CalendarBudget one at a time (reconciling). Admittedly, this was a tedious process. However, the act of seeing each transaction has a benefit – that is, you get to know your money habits much better than if everything is automated.

Recently, CalendarBudget introduced a Bank Reconciliation Assistant, which keeps this important benefit of understanding your spending habits while reducing the tediousness of reconciling between your online bank transaction history and CalendarBudget.

For ongoing reconciling, you can now export your account history to an OFX file (these are sometimes called MS Money or Quicken export files – depends on your bank/credit union) and then import this file into CalendarBudget. CalendarBudget then automatically picks out the transactions that are already in your budget and correct and marks the transactions that need to be added or merged, making the reconciling process MUCH easier and faster.

Here’s how it works.

1) Export your data to an OFX file. (This sample screenshot is taken from ScotiaBank’s online banking interface)
2) Login to CalendarBudget and select the Bank Import tab in the sidebar (its the new 3rd tab). Click the browser and select your OFX file from step 1. Then click the Load Transactions button.
3) You’ll now see the transactions that need to be added/merged in this list. If the date has a red X beside it, the balance for that day is not correct. This either means that the transactions below that are red need to be created or merged, or that there are entries in your budget plan on the calendar that did not actually happen on that day that should be deleted or moved into the future.
If the red transaction already exists in the calendar but just has the wrong amount, or is on the wrong date, simply drag this red transaction from the list onto the corresponding calendar entry. You’ll then be prompted to confirm the update of that calendar entry to move to the correct date and update the amount. The original transaction name and category will be preserved.
If the red transaction needs to be created (it doesn’t already exist in the calendar), simply drag it to any blank spot or day header on the calendar and you’ll be prompted to create that entry and optionally give it a more descriptive name and category.

After a few minutes of reconciling using this new Bank Reconciliation Assistant, even a budget that has been neglected for a few weeks is easily updated with no frustrating addition, subtraction and flipping between screens trying to compare balances on your budget and online banking transaction history.

This feature has been a long time coming for CalendarBudget. Already I’ve been using this and its a HUGE relief compared to the old way. I hope you find the same.

We’re happy to announce that the Business Advisory Center Durham (BACD) has partnered with CalendarBudget to provide our personal finance tool to new and growing entrepreneurs in the Durham region. CalendarBudget can help not only manage peoples personal finances, but can also be used as a forecasting tool to plan for small business expenses and incomes.

Embedded in the BACD web site as the BACD Money Manager, CalendarBudget will enhance the breadth of offerings the BACD makes available to help entrepreneurs succeed.? From the BACD website, click Helpful Links from the top menu and then click the BACD MOney Manager image to access it.

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Business Advisory Center Durham is a government organization which provides resources and coaching to entrepreneurs getting started or growing their business.

CalendarBudget is an online personal finance management tool that helps you organize your money and plan for your future.

Successful businesses plan spending budgets and income targets for the calendar year. Often this happens in January for the current year after they have been able to collect and digest the previous years financials. You and your family deserve nothing less that success also. Its time to get your finances in order for the year. Yes, plans will change and things will come up, but a plan is priceless in guiding financial decisions and planning needed savings.

Take some time now and map out some of the following: More…

What is a financial goal?

Typically these include things like:

• What is important to you financially?
• What age would you like to retire?
• What do you want to do when your retire and how much will it cost?
• How often would you like to vacation, and what will you do on vacations?

Then you can figure out, based on what your goals are and how much money will be needed to accomplish them, how much you’ll need to save or how much money you’ll need on hand.

There are many online calculators that can help with some of these calculations, but I recommend seeking out a financial adviser to help get a complete and clean results. My experience is, get a professional to help you set goals and understand their implications. It usually doesn’t cost any money for an evaluation, and the results of the analysis will require some action anyway – and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) can help you implement the plan.

The first step in planning your finances is to figure our where you really are today.

One of the best ways to get started is to complete a Net Worth analysis for yourself. A Net Worth analysis is a snapshot of how much you are worth financially right now. To do this, you should list all of your assets and liabilities with their associated, realistic values.

Assets are anything that when turned into cash gives you some money. Common items are: your home, vehicle, bank accounts, retirement savings (401K/RRSP), investments.

Liabilities are things that take money away from you (anything you owe). Common items are: mortgage, loan, credit card debt, spousal/child support. More…

I came across this diagram today, depicting the process of financial planning. Following these simple steps you can ensure that your current and future finances are and will be on a firm foundation.

Over the next 6 blog entries, I’ll go into detail for each point and discuss how we can plan for our future.

Feel free to add any insight you wish to the process.