Ban on SMS till 30th September

Indian government has banned all bulk SMS and MMS services across India till September 30th 2010 in view of the impending verdict on Ayodhya.

The ban affects Trackspends’s services partially as the SMS Weekly reports can no longer be sent to our subscribers. However, trackspends can continue to receive SMS from its users and this part of the service is not affected. So, if you have been tracking your expenses using SMS, just continue to do so and we will send you the summary reports once the ban is lifted.

Also, registrations using mobile number alone are affected. We recommend that new users register online.

More information on the SMS ban can be found here

You do not need internet to use trackspends.com for tracking your expenses...

Now you do not have to have internet connection to use trackspends.com tool for tracking your expenses. Or come online to trackspends.com for expense tracking. All your expense tracking can be done completely on mobile here's how :

1. Registration on Mobile - For registration in trackspends.com send SMS "track" to our number 09901100022 . We will auto-register you and send you your username/password in SMS back to your number. Registration is Free.


2. Tracking on Mobile - Once you have registered with your mobile, keep sending SMS for any expenses to our number  09901100022 . For example "100 rs in lunch, 300rs in t-shirt" and we will track it in your account.Also now you can use mobile application - http://www.trackspends.com/blog/mobile-app-for-sending-expenses-do-not-need-gprs-connection/


3. Getting your expenses on Mobile - Every week we will update your expenses in SMS For example: "Weekly Report from Trackspends:- This Week-Expenses: 3041,July-Expenses:30400.SMS to 09901100022 for any expenses." As below:

So all you have to do is register and start tracking from your mobile . Keep tracking you expenses from anytime, anywhere , any place for free.

Note: Our Service is Free, User has to incur the usual Mobile number to Mobile number SMS costs based on his/her Service Provider and Mobile Plan.There may be some delay in your SMS message being updated in site based on SMS Gateway and Service Provider.

Mobile App for sending expenses DO NOT need GPRS connection .....

We have launched Mobile SMS application to simplify sending expenses from Mobile. All you have to do is open the application in mobile, type in your expenses and send it. Does NOT require GPRS connection on your mobile phone. For those who find SMS is too difficult can now start using this mobile application for tracking their expenses. It works in all the basic mobiles as well.

You can download it from : http://www.trackspends.com/m/ts.jad Or http://bit.ly/8Z469h

For first installation you have to download it to your PC/laptop, connect to your mobile to install the application. Or enable GPRS connection ONLY for first installation.

How to modify a category and add more keywords to it....

To modify an existing category and add keywords to it, please follow these steps:

1. Click on existing category that you want to modify:

2. Add new keyword to the category and click on "Add keyword" to add: (PLEASE NOTE: Sometimes it takes time for page to load so please wait for the page to load completely, till you see the below screen)



3. Added keyword will appear in the list of keywords as in the screen below:



For adding more keywords do the same as above and it will be updated in the list.

5. For removing any keywords from the category click on "remove" button for that keyword, as shown below:



Final list after adding "antibiotic" keyword and removing "dental" keyword is:



6. To save the category with this list, click on "Save Category" button:


Follow the same steps for adding new category and new list of keywords to the category.

Weekly SMS Summary Reports & Alerts

Weekly SMS summary reports & Alerts

• At the end of each week, Trackspends sends out a summary report by SMS that gives you a summary of expense amount, total expenses and the income amount in your account.


• The format of the daily summary report looks like this
  
  Weekly Report from Trackspends
  Expenses-Today: 700.00
  Expenses-Month: 7600.00
  Income Amount: 13000.00


• We are also coming soon with an alert system.

How to get started with Trackspends for managing group expenses?

Step#1: Get registered to Trackspends account - Free

• Visit www.trackspends.com and register for a FREE web account. You can also register free for the Web account by sending an SMS directly from your mobile number to +91-99011-00022 with the text "track".


• Trackspends sends you an account username and password to your mobile number - that is used for registration.


• Login to your Trackspends account. For tracking group expenses please read below.

You are now ready to start using the mobile edition of Trackspends.

Step#2: Add additional members to an account

• Once you have an account, you can add members with their mobile numbers to that account.


• Using SMS, simply send ADD <mobile number> to the Trackspends number: 91-99011-00022. Trackspends automatically adds the new mobile number as a member of that account. The added member can now send SMS and track expenses in your account and hence can track both the members account.

Step#4: Viewing the expenses member wise

• You can view the expenses member/mobile wise by selecting the member name in drop down list "Filter By Mobile" after login.

So now group of friends and family members can track their expenses together and later on use Trackspends for separating the transactions and doing hisaab (Managing group finances).

Trackspends rated as best tool for tracking expenses on go....

Here is the excerpt:

Trackspends.com: Back from a holiday you realize you have exceeded your budget. Since you were carrying some cash along, a sudden panic gripped you--did you really overspent or lost the money somewhere? But if you are registered with Trackspends.com, you won't have to go through such conflicting emotions. You would know exactly how much you spent, where and on what.

While on the trip, just an SMS on how much your dinner or the souvenir cost you would do the job for you. Once you are back, log on and find each detail sorted out.

Feed in your cellphone number on the website, which provides its own number where you can SMS. You have the option of registering more than one number. You can even update the details by logging in on the site.

To sort out your expenses, you can create categories, such as food and shopping, and can modify them as and when you need to do so.

The registration process is easy and the website is user-friendly. Also, the service comes free of cost. The process is safe and you need not divulge your personal details, such as bank account or credit card number.

Overall the experience can be termed satisfactory.

URL: http://mintmoney.livemint.com/featured/2010/06/money-life-in-mess-trust-technology/

http://mintmoney.livemint.com/featured/2010/06/money-life-in-mess-trust-technology/

We are not alone if we fail managing our personal finance....

We are not alone if we fail managing our personal finances, even the experts or finance gurus are like that

Excerpt from Standford Business Magazine: "The Los Angeles Times recently reported that several Nobel laureates in economics admit to having trouble managing their own money. One might think that a Stanford MBA—and certainly a Nobel Prize-winning economist—would be well versed in all the different strategies likely to build wealth, but most people who are busy raising families and advancing their careers simply don’t have time to fine-tune their own personal investment or finance plans. Add to that the common sentiment that anyone with an MBA should be able to manage his or her own retirement account, and you get a group of people who are afraid to ask for help. “Not everyone who gets an MBA is an investment guru,” Wilson notes. “But with the MBA comes this psychological feeling that you should be able to do it yourself.”"

So don't be too worried if you still haven't started or failing, its Never too late.

Killed in the long term by short term thinking

From what we know of evolution it’s clear that we are alive because of our inherited ability to think quickly and respond to change. The survival of living creatures, for most of the history of our planet, has been a short term game. Only if you can out-run your predators, and catch your prey, do you have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow.

It follows then that we tend to be better at worrying about and solving short term issues than long term issues. Even when we recognize an important long term issue that we need to plan for, say protecting natural resources or saving for retirement, we’re all too easily distracted away from those deep thoughts by immediate things like dinner or meetings (important things no doubt, but the driving needs in these pursuits, at least for this half of the species, are short term in nature). Once distracted, we rarely return to the long term issues we were drawn away from.

This is more so true in personal finance and hence need extra effort from our side to manage our finances, some of the tips that will generally help in doing or managing your finances / expenses are:

1. Keep at least an hour in a week for finance tracking/seeing the bills/checking your accounts and figuring out your expenses. Set a time in week sometime on Sunday morning is the best with family/spouse. One hour is not big time but it will save you lot of bugs in long run and you can do better planning.


2. Use good tools for managing your finances/expenses which you are conversant and comfortable with, (Send us your feedback on trackspends.com whether its helpful or not :) ). This will make your life similar while tracking or managing finances for you.


3. If you have good money hire a CA/Finance cosultants (Please check references) they are expensive but again they can increase your finance and also manage risks better than us since they are experts.


4. Try to plan for things ahead since it will help in overall finances and you can get really good discounts for anything starting from buying trip tickets to buying a TV etc.

So mitigate your short term thinking for finances with some of the pointers above, let me know your comments. And keeping tracking with trackspends.com.

Personal finance tips - Bad advice?

Again? You have got to be kidding personal finance tips yet again, I can see this reaction immediately. So whats the difference? here i want to reverse it and see how to screw your personal finances. Or what are the bad habits in personal finance, in the next set of articles we will see how it helps?

1. Never save anything for tomorrow, whats the use? Someone has said: kal kare so aaj kar aaj kare so ab, kal ka kya bharosha hai. Interpret: Why save for tomorrow ? Whats the use? Why not spend/enjoy everything today and live life to the fullest.

2. Dont invest!! Whats the use of investing and moreover its so boring and difficult -  how to invest? where to invest ? whether there will be any returns blah! blah!. So take it easy and chill out. I am too busy for it.

3. Always use credit card for expenses - Its cool, its fashionable, and shows off i dont really care about money and am rich, which is true right? dude i got platinum card from American express , What have you got golden card oh! so cheap.

4. Never track ur expenses - We should never ever track our expenses, firstly its of no use to us secondly its just waste of time, why do i care whether my expenses goes in dining out or buying movie tickets or buying cloths its all same for me. So lets just ignore it because i am not anyway going to do anything about it.

5. Always keep money any money left in savings account in bank - I am too lazy to do anything so whatever is left over money after the expense (If anything is left) let me just leave it in savings bank with 3-4 % interest.

6. No planning for future / No health/life insurance - Whats that? And why should i do it ? I am as healthy as an ox and will always be like that till I live. So no use wasting time/money on it.

So folks is this what we are ....... or we want to become ......let me know your comments.

Leaving your money in a bank is a bad idea?

Most Indian families have the bulk of their household savings and assets in a bank account. We believe that this is the worst thing that you could do for your money Not only are you not going to get rich like this, but you are actually losing money over the long run. Not to mention, the bank is taking advantage of your money to make money at your expense. Lets tell you more...

First of all, let us acknowledge that depositing money into a bank account is great because of the convenience and security that it offers us. Banks are a great mechanism to transmit money from your account to say your mobile phone company or your electricity provider or paying your children's tuition fees by cheque. You receive your monthly salary and that goes directly into your bank account. And this is where the problem begins.

If you want to know why this is a problem, its because of our inertia. Experience has shown that most Indian families don't do anything with their surplus money apart from leaving it in the bank account which is often because of a lack of financial awareness.

Also bank gives very low rate of interest, at  the least we can do is put our money in funds/FDs and get some more returns.

How does the financial markets impact our daily expenses ?

We may think that our day to day job that has nothing to do with financial markets. But there are enough reasons to track a handful of economic indicators because they will influence our life. It could either impact savings, spending, investment or even your future job prospects or hike in salaries.

For example, we would have seen at least 30% spurt in grocery bills for the past few months. It’s an impact of food inflation, which rose to an 11-year high of 19.95%, for the week ended December 5, 2009.

Most of our monthly financial decisions such as providing home loan EMI, child’s education or something as basic as daily consumption of milk are largely determined by these economic parameters. So, its always benefits if we keep tracking our expenses and these finance indicators so that we can manage it easily.

Conversation between three friends while writing their month end hisaab

Amit: I have paid 90 rs in auto for all of us.

Tanmaye: What about the movie tickets i paid last to last week dont you guys remember it was 300 rs per head.

Vick: Hey but i dont remember any of these, infact i had paid for maid/dhobi and other household things ?

Just think how difficult it is to manage the above scenario,  moreover if you have bigger group of friends.

trackspends can help here all you have to do is send sms whenever you incur any expense and trackspends will account it. Also it provides single account to track for all your friends so its simple and easy to manage.

For more details check this presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/callshubhan/group-finance-trackspends

Whats get measured gets managed...

While the above statement is generally said for a company, i feel that its also true for individuals.

Why measuring works:

There are several reasons why what gets measured gets managed:

1. When you measure something, you bring your attention to it

This is the first benefit you get by measuring. How can you manage if we don’t even pay attention to it? By measuring you direct your attention to it.

2. When you measure something, you know where you are

Sometimes we don’t realize the severity of a problem we have until we see the facts. That’s why measuring something is important. It helps you see the truth of where you actually are. In personal finance, for instance, it’s easy to think that you already live wisely. Only after you see your income and expenses by numbers might you realize that you have problem. This realization in turn gives you the motivation to do something about it.

3. When you measure something, you see your progress

Not only can measuring help you know where you are, it also helps you see your progress. You will see whether or not you have done the right thing and – if you do – whether or not you have done enough. Seeing how far you’ve gone also motivates you to keep moving forward.

How should we measure:

I think the biggest factor here is keeping it simple, we as a person cannot do complicated measurement for long. That’s why you need to keep it as simple as possible. The simpler it is, the more likely you will stick with it in the long term.

So keep it simple, and keep measuring your expenses.

What do you think? Do you have thoughts or ideas about managing personal finance?

Are you bold enough to share your expenses with friends....

Help us integrate trackspends with your favourite social sites .......

These are the first of blogs which we want to float for figuring what/how we can integrate trackspends with any of the existing social sites like twitter/facebook/orkut etc.

So how do we integrate trackspends with twitter ? Here are couple of options and their pros and cons :

1) Use twitter direct messages to allow users to update their expenses - Badly failed - Not even single user did Twitter Direct messages even though we have implemented and released it? See the details here and you feel the idea is right but not implemented properly write us

2) Allow users to update their expenses sent to trackspends to twitter feeds, so whenever you sent trackspends a message the message will be updated in your twitter feeds so that your friends and followers can view it. Whats the benefit of it ? to be frank i dont see any real benefits apart from just doing a comparison or informing friends / followers about day to day expenses which may lead to heated conversations and discussions. ? But again whats your thoughts on this ? Do you approve it ?

Also let us know any other ideas for integrating with twitter, or you just feel that its better to be off twitter add comments here?

What do you think is the best way to track your expenses

[SURVEYS 1]

Now use Twitter Direct Messages to track your expenses...

Now you can also track your expenses from Twitter. Add your twitter username in Trackspends account and  follow trackspends in twitter (www.twitter.com/trackspends) and send direct messages to trackspends as :

d trackspends 100 rs in lunch, 30 rs in parking

Your account will be updated with the above expenses just like SMS based updation. For more details visit: Twitter How it works .

Let us know your feedback here Feedback

Use categories/keywords to track expenses project wise with screenshots

Trackspends can be used to manage and track expenses , project or item wise, for example tracking expenses on Home interiors.

Here is how it simplify tracking and managing project wise finance.

1) Login to your account and create new category, for example:

New category = "Home Interiors"

2) Add all the keywords that you feel is necessary for tracking interiors - Keywords can be added later on also:

Keywords for "Home Interiors" : kitchen tiles, laminates, glass doors,granite,apparels,fevicol, carpenter, ply .....

See a Sample:

[caption id="attachment_54" align="aligncenter" width="987" caption="Add category and keywords for corresponding category"][/caption]

3) Now send SMS with any of the above keywords, example "2000 sky blue laminates" and trackspends will consolidate it in under the category "Home Interiors" hence making it easy for us to track and view how much we have spent.

Now your expenses will be categorized in as:

[caption id="attachment_55" align="aligncenter" width="796" caption="Expense in Home Interior"][/caption]

In very similar way it can be used for specific projects or items For example Tracking holiday trip expenses by creating a new category ("Coorg trip") and corresponding keywords to track it.

Also subsequently plan to provide a budget wise tracking. Do let us know  your thoughts on it?

New number for trackspends....

Now we have new number for trackspends.com for sending SMS: 09901100022 . More reliable with infrastructure level changes to support and improve quality of SMS processing for our Users.

Now add Categories and modify existing Categories to make your personal finance tracking simple and easy.

Track Spends Now add Categories and modify existing Categories to make your personal finance tracking simple and easy. How it works: Each messages is assigned to a category based on a key word in the message, For example: "70 rs in dinner" will be assigned to "Entertainment & Dining" category as "dinner" word falls under that category. View the list of existing Default Categories and corresponding Keywords. View list of existing categories and words assigned to them. Modify existing Categories, add your own Keywords to customize based on your needs. Default categories are by no means complete and some of the Keywords will be best defined by you, For example add "readers digest" word to Education Category. Or Remove some of the Keywords from existing Categories. Add more Categories with Keywords to separate at more detailed level. You may want to separate Entertainment & Dining to different Categories with different Keywords. Or Create a new Category for tracking specific items For example "Interiors of Apartment" with specific keywords.

Trackspends article in bhopal nav bharat...

http://www.trackspends.com/images/News001.jpg

Save nature, save greenery and save paper use trackspends

Saving paper leads to saving trees, nature and overall greenery. Now we already know saving nature is becoming crucial day by day so i will not dwell into it.

In context of trackspends.com how does this fit, simple by using this tool instead of writing down your daily expenses on Paper or Diary will help in small way in saving papers.

So apart from managing your personal finance and saving money / time, you will be saving Papers and hence saving nature :)

What do you think?

Spend less than you make

There is a saying in hindi:

jitni chadar hai utna hi paav pasarna chaiye

Meaning:

"Spend less than your make". And too many people try to make more than they spend, which is a never ending battle.

To be true this is very difficult tasks to accomplish specially if you are living in cities, eating out, movies, party etc so many things and if this is not complete, gadgets , cloths and holiday or weekend trips etc will put holes in your pocket.

The funda here is to understand where you are spending more, and prioritize some of the expenses for example not every weekend you want to eat out and buy an expensive gadget. Supplement some of the expensive items with less costly ones or less costly places to eat out etc.

Also make sure you have some amount automatically deducted from your salary account, since it will not be their in your bank account you cannot spend it.

And do not use credit card!!! You never know how much money is spend while using credit card!!

Will keep adding more tips.......

Keep tracking with www.trackspends.com

-Shubh

Wonders of SMS....

SMS has created such a trend in today's media that any TV Realty show's success or failure depends on SMS be it Big Boss, Dance/Music Program or any of the big reality shows. As people we do not think how much time and money goes in sending these SMS, and why not since it gives us a sense of involvement in these shows. Similarly other media Radio, Newspaper etc now use SMS as major communication and public involvement tool. Overall SMS has become a huge success, and people have started using SMS on daily basis. Why ? Because its simple, its cheap and can be used from anywhere, anytime , anyplace, hence it is one of the biggest communication channel.

Now think how we can use SMS for our personal benefit, save money, manage our finances and fulfil our financial goals . Welcome to trackspends.com, it is a simple and elegant tool for tracking your spends via SMS.

One of the biggest problem in managing finance and saving money is to track or record all your day to day expenses. Everyone (Including House wives, professionals and students etc) try to either write daily expenses in dairy or in computer but never succeeds. Personally I tried writing it down many times but never able to continue it. After sometime we either forget or are too tired to write it and slowly we stop it.

This is where www.trackspends.com helps you, Register once in website (It's Free of cost). Now whenever you do any expenditure like Shopping or Having lunch or Filled petrol etc anywhere, anytime just send SMS to Mobile Number: 09916364091 . For example send SMS: "100 rs in petrol" to 09916364091 and it will record your expenses in your account. Also you can enter your expenses directly in the website. Login to trackspends.com with your account and see all your expenditures (Date/Month wise) Simple!!!. What's more it also sends weekly and monthly records of your expenses to you.

So now tracking expenditure and saving money is just a SMS away, keep tracking and keep saving. And make Year-2010 your most prosperous Year.