Simple Banking

So I have been using Simple.com for a few months now, and as much as I love it. There are things that I want to see changed, before I convert to it to manage my finances exclusively. For those that don’t know what Simple is, here is the video I saw that got me intrigued enough to check it out.

Minus the hipster vibe in the videos, this sounded like a cool idea. But here are some of my top things I would like to see improved or added to Simple.com

Shared Accounts

Right now the service is personal account only. The only way I can get my wife to use Simple and have converted our entire banking over is if we both can access our Shared Account and transfer in and out of our Personal Accounts.

Tips/Online Purchases

I am lumping these 2 into one because, the data is there. It just needs to be presented in a better way. Each transaction where a tip is customary, Simple plans on you tipping 20%. Neat feature I think. But after the transaction has been processed and the Tip has been accounted for. It would be a nice way to ask “ How much did I tip in the last year?” love that it shows me where I have tipped and how much I did. But I can’t do a search for “How much did I tip last month?”

Simple saves geo information for all purchases. But when I make a purchase online that appears on the map as it was made in Europe, when I live in the States. Simple should have a way to differentiate online and physical location purchases.

Faster Transfers

I understand this may be an issue with Automated Clearing House (ACH) banking in general. But it takes about 5 business days to make any transfer. So no matter what day you start a transfer, you will get it next week. I feel after a few reliable transfers, it could be handled that up to a limit we will make that transfer very fast.

Update: Simple just announce “Instant Simple to Simple Transfers”. While it is not exactly what I wanted… It is a start!

Update #2: Simple just announce “Faster ACH Transfers”. Which is exactly what I was hoping for!

Breakout Transactions/Receipt Scan

If I buy a coffee at a coffee shop. Simple knows that and can categories it accordingly. But if I buy a few items at Target like Cloths, a Blu-Ray, a Video Game, and some food. That all gets lumped into the same Category. I would like to be able to make line item splits. A service that I think could be a great team up would be OneReceipt this already has a great collection a receipts and stores to easily categories each item.

Recurring Goals

Goals is one of the main reasons I tried the service out. But after using the feature for a few months and having my Netflix Goal get reset every month it became a chore. One thing I have always wanted was the ability to have recurring Goals. I mainly want to use it for monthly/yearly subscriptions. They do have a Bill Payments option that can set up a recurring Goal, but this results in Simple sending an actual check, which is a neat feature and something I might use in the future. But most bills today have auto payments or auto withdrawals. I would love to flag a past bill and say make this a recurring goal, so I can plan for it in the future.

Final Thoughts

While I love this service and hope to see it evolve and include any of the ideas I mentioned above, or even new ones I didn’t think of. I can’t move my family permanently over to it just yet. I have implemented some of its goals and Safe to Spend thinking into my our family budgeting. But I would recommend people give it a try and choose for themselves. If you wish to try, I have a link below that will get you past the waiting period.