Mint.com's PFM

The most popular iPad app in the Finance category of the Apple App Store in late November was Mint.com Personal Finance, which was released October 26. Mint has 6.5 million registered users, which explains the popularity and the 4,924 ratings the app had in late November. This is a "universal" app that runs on the iPad and the iPhone.

The app has a pleasing graphical interface. A donut-shaped chart shows the customer's spending by category (e.g. home, education, food and dining). Bill reminders alert the user of upcoming payments due. Alerts also tell the customer when they're over budget on a category or have spent more than usual in a category. A bar chart shows the customer their monthly spending pattern for the year.

Mint says its app for the Pad, which is small enough to pass around, but large enough to be viewed by more than one person at once, is uniquely suited to making personal finance intimately social. In other words, members of a household may find it easier to discuss financial issues while looking at current account information on an iPad. Phones are too personal and hard to share, and PCs don't lend themselves to being passed back and forth among people.

Among mostly positive reviews in the app store, a few users complained that the app couldn't be connected to their bank accounts. Mint, however, says it takes only five minutes to add a bank account to the iPad app and that it has relationships with all the major banks. It presents itself as an advertising platform for banks.

Some users complained about the categorization of purchases. "Still cannot edit the categories. Half of those presets do not apply to me. Still cannot split transactions," one customer wrote. But more common were comments like, "I like it better than the web app, in spite of the smaller screen. Very high quality, polished through and through."

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