MoneyBrilliant

I've used a lot of budgeting tools and MoneyBrilliant is good. It's good because it's flexible, it doesn't lock you down and the matching tends to do a good job of learning. I have had very few issues with the syncs from multiple banks. The budgeting is good, just a lot of clicking to get to the point of editing, especially on mobile. This said, there are lots of ways I don't find it great. Their savings approach is confusing and would be better if it worked in an envelope budgeting kind of way. The UI is adequate but not exciting. You can't categorise pending transactions and having contacted their support, I still don't see a valid reason not to. Recurring bills for different categories from the same biller get confused every month i.e. Optus mobile and Optus internet. Hiding a category or transaction from budget doesn't seem to update other graphs like cashflow which is annoying when you have work expenses you don't include in your personal cashflow. Like I said, it's good, just not great.

What I love about this app is there’s finally a money app that can automate to my credit card, where I make 85% of my transactions, not just my bank account. In fact this app can link up to my super, a little investment app called Acorns etc, so the automation is second to none. However the rest of the app is frustrating. They give you ready made categories, but if for instance you don’t want your mortgage lumped in to the same category as your car loan, well tough, there’s nothing you can do about it. They claim you can create categories on the desktop version, but this is in fact not true. You can only create “sub categories” that still have to get plonked in to one of their chosen categories. So if like me you want car loan to be it’s own category. Well you can’t. This also means their reports are pointless. As I have no interest in knowing what my percentage spend on mortgage & car loan combined is, as an overview of my total spending. So automating to just about every financial institution is second to none. However the functionality of the app itself is very limited.

1. I spent hours setting up my budget and then today I load the app and almost every number has been changed! I did nothing and yet it adjusted my figures without my consent. This is soooo frustrating 2. If you click support to send an email from iPhone, the Send button is greyed out. So I can't even provide feedback from the app (so I'm writing it here instead) 3. The program doesn't have an ipad version unfortunately 4. On the desktop I selected Save All and Remember for a Category which shared the same first 15 or so letters with 102 other transactions but matched exactly only 30 or so. So I assumed it would only change the 30, but it changed all 102. This took me hours to fix. If it says match a transaction it should match exactly not just check the first 15 or so letters. With most bank transfers it is the final 4 letters that differentiate transactions!

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This app could be really great but as it stands, it is has far too many glitches for it to be worthwhile. Especially considering it isn’t free. “Pending” transactions take far too long to be categorised (up to a week in some cases), despite the transaction being complete within the relevant bank account and the inability to categorise them yourself is incredibly frustrating. This completely throws out my projected budget and safe spending, defeating the whole purpose of the app. If I am unable to get an accurate, up to date view of my finances, what is the point of this app? Furthermore, I repeatedly have to recategorise transactions that I have already categorised. For example, yesterday I categorised my pay as “income.” It worked and my budget adjusted. Today I log on and the transaction has reverted to “pending” and thrown out my entire budget. It’s incredibly frustrating having to constantly recategorise transactions just to get an accurate budget overview. I’ll see this app out until the end of the free trial, but if these problems don’t improve, I won’t be paying for such an inaccurate app.

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I was so excited to see this app which I thought would replace all of my manual financial tracking tools however, after taking the time to set it up and refer to the help topics as needed, I am plain confused by how it works, or should I say, doesn’t work. The app is glitchy - account balances, budgets, and safe spend amounts change frequently and without any identifiable reason. Connected accounts disconnect spontaneously. The banking advice contradicts itself - I followed one piece of advice around my account setup, only to login the next day and receive a notification instructing me that the exact opposite action may be best for me? Within an hour my safe spend went from around $100 to $1 to $1900, with no new transactions? Ultimately, it’s impossible to rely on the data presented and that’s what’s informed my rating. I feel somewhat fearful leaving this review as, in reading the reviews of others, the developer responses are dismissive and in some cases quite rude. But, I actually hope that they can sort these issues out as, once optimal, I would gladly return to MoneyBrilliant.