CALABASAS, CALIF. -
Digital Insight will release Personal FinanceWorks this summer and Small Business FinanceWorks will hit the street in the fall. Intuit Director of Product Marketing Paul Rosenfeld said the new products represent a shift in thinking from competing with financial institutions to working within the organization, by providing an end-to-end financial tool for members. Many consumers use their online banking sites as a "glorified ATM" to check balances, but the hope Rosenfeld said, is that Personal FinanceWorks would serve as the hub for all their personal banking needs.
"Most of their needs are not being met," he said.
Instead of using billpay for certain bills and then visiting a business or vendor website to make a separate payment, with Personal FinanceWorks members will use their credit union's own website to make all of their payments plus managing their cash flow. Rosenfeld said CU members will be able to manage all of their bills in one place, see their cleared and actual account balances and use customized spending reports to learn where their money is going.
Simple pie charts illustrate spending trends and habits, helping consumers reduce spending, which Intuit officials say is one of the most common goals of online banking users. While millions of consumers are using online banking, most have a few bills paid online, but not all on the same site.
"Collectively, it's hard to manage. There's no way to bring it all together," he said.
In the fall, Small Business FinanceWorks will allow credit unions to provide small business owners a central place to track and understand cash flow, create professional invoices, receive payments from customers, accept credit card payments and manage payroll. Digital Insight estimates there are 22 million small businesses that are essentially "invisible" to financial institutions since they are underserved by present online banking capabilities. Rosenfeld said the Payroll function alone will help small business owners. Digital Insight and Intuit field research showed that business owners simply don't know how to do payroll.
"What we heard, is that it's a big stumbling block for them," Rosenfeld said.
The Payroll feature is powered by the same data drive as the TurboTax software and will easily create employee paychecks that show taxes for each pay period. Rosenfeld said that a typical small business could have only one employee, earns around $65,000 each year and the owner doesn't have the time, or the knowledge, to learn every aspect of a high software program, even Intuit's popular Quicken or QuickBooks products. Field research even showed many small business owners were tracking receipts, invoices and orders with pencil and paper and keeping all of it in a shoebox. The aim of Small Business FinanceWorks is to be the sole location to perform these tasks and allows a credit union to form a stronger bond with its members and business clients.
"They only have a few tasks to perform. The owner does it all themselves," Rosenfeld said.
The new solution also addresses one of the single biggest barriers to gaining a potential member's business: the difficulty of switching accounts from one institution to another. The "Account Switch" function allows a member to automatically move his business account from another financial institution to the credit union.
FOR MORE RESOURCES
For info on this story:
* Digital Insight, www.digitalinsight.com
* Intuit, www.intuit.com
