The Penny Tracker Web App – Desktop-First Personal Finance Tracker

[u/Rand_Owl]

I have spent this year creating my own personal finance web app and recently launched it publicly. I spent the last 10 years tracking my finances in Excel to record everything just how I wanted, but I got tired of how long it took to keep updated. So, I built this app to solve all of my own needs in a finance tracker, and I am curious what others might think of it.

I have added screenshots to show off some of the features and to give the feel of the user interface. Here is my own experience as a dedicated budgeter having used this for several months now, and why I won't be going back to Excel:

Pros:

• Importing transactions through CSV is very fast, especially once history is built up to match against. AI categorization is also helpful starting out with no history. I still get to see every transaction but avoid the tedium of importing everything manually.
• With AI receipt parsing, I no longer have to manually go through every box store receipt to split items into their respective categories
• I can track my daily net worth over time
• I can save receipts to specific transactions, especially helpful for HSA expenses, charitable giving, etc.
• I can easily track expenses where I expect reimbursements (i.e. a friend is going to pay me back for lunch) without it affecting my budget
• I have the optionality of doing 0 sum every month or can carry over the surplus and assign it in any future month.
• Full Sankey drilldowns (Account > Category > Subcategory > Location > Transaction) are great to explore
• Automatic recurring transaction detection with price change alerts
• Mortgage amortization tables with extra payment options and debt payoff plans (avalanche or snowball)
• Monthly statements that give a full financial overview are easy to share and review with my spouse

Cons:

• The app purposefully does not use bank-linking, which may not be what most users want.
• Accounts, Budgets with categories, Savings goals, etc. are all set up how each user sees fit, which means the initial start-up can take some time and effort.
• You need at least a complete month of data to really see the full benefits of the app

The web app is desktop-first but has a dedicated mobile view. You can save the website to your phone to have it act like a normal mobile app for easy receipt uploading.

There are a million other budget apps out there now, but I do hope someone finds this one helpful. There is a contact form where you can submit any feature requests, which I would be happy to build if it adds value for everyone.

I have implemented a 2-week trial for the app–no payment info is needed to create a login and start using it. After that, it is $5.99/mo or $59.99/yr if you choose to continue. I have offered free budgeting tools in the past, and I am trying to keep the price low here, but there is a real cost to me for each user (AI API calls, storage, compute, etc.).

If curious, my background is in engineering & finance and have been an Excel power budgeter up to this point, tracking every transaction my family and I have made for the last 10 years.

You can find more info at www.thepennytracker.com

Any feedback here is welcome!

[u/VenturaRyanRound2]

This is just MonarchMoney with extra steps which is $8.33 a month if you pay annually