Calendar boys make budget breakthrough

James Wigglesworth, Francois Bondiguel and Jason Leong are not native to Dunedin but they appear to have been inspired by the southern city's Scottish heritage in the creation of their start-up venture, Pocketsmith.

Scots, by legend, are said to retain a tight control of their purse-strings, a quality that the Pocketsmith trio have enshrined in their online budgeting tool.

"It's really a financial management system," Bondiguel says, that, according to the Pocketsmith website, makes budgeting "fun, simple and compelling".

The idea for Pocketsmith had its genesis in a clunky manual system used by Leong to manage his own finances, which consisted mainly of writing cash flow information on a calendar. And the calendar still forms the core of the Pocketsmith system although the clunkiness has been eradicated, Bondiguel says.

"Online budgeting tools tend to consist of rows of form elements to be filled out, pie charts, mortgage calculators, percentages' and a spill of data that is just unpleasant to work with," the firm's website claims. "Unless you're a financial geek, the process tends to be tedious and uninspiring at best."

Bondiguel says by linking the calendar to real-time financial information, individuals can immediately relate their own experience to the inescapable maths of money management.

"Most people don't do budgeting because they see it as too hard... we want to break that barrier," he says.

The Pocketsmith barrier-breaking begins with a standard budget forecasting exercise - albeit within the calendar format. From this initial information, the system can represent the forecasts in a number of different formats as well as export key income and payment dates to most common computer calendar programs.

But Pocketsmith departs from the norm in its ability to import real financial transaction data from multiple bank accounts, which can then be used to track actual expenditure and income versus the original forecast.

From there the program also allows clients to create goals - such as the purchase of a new car - and monitor their progress on a daily basis. The developers are also working on a debt repayment and savings planner tool.

According to Bondiguel, the whole process is intuitive, relatively quick to set up and easy to update. The three young business owners (Bondiguel, Leong and Wigglesworth are all in their mid to late 20s) are patently excited about the potential of Pocketsmith to revolutionise the budgeting habits of New Zealanders but they are also plotting world domination.

Bondiguel says over 900 users, based in New Zealand and offshore, have been trialing the software since the three founders began developing the product in 2008 with at least one big financial institution showing interest already.

The Pocketsmith tool is just about to emerge out of its beta-testing chrysalis with a commercial release set down for early May. Over the last few weeks the team has been gathering feedback from the pilot users ahead of the official launch.

Bondiguel says the user survey will help determine any flaws in the system as well as identify other potential additional tools.

"We'll talk to them about the price too."

He says Pocketsmith has been built for a range of different clients from individuals and families to large companies and can be easily adapted to suit specific needs. And Bondiguel says the system could be particularly attractive to those who advise people on money matters such as budget advisers, accountants and financial planners.

"This is a great tool to help advisers work with their clients to achieve financial goals," he says.

Bondiguel also says advisers could use Pocketsmith to analyse the spending and savings habits of their entire client base.

"You can aggregate data across users. Say an adviser had 50 clients, he could see if one was doing better or worse than others," he says.

The Pocketsmith founders have worked hard to turn their budgeting dream into a fledgling business and against a backdrop of economic uncertainty the timing could be perfect.

All they need now is the luck of the Scottish.

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