Whether you dump all your receipts in shoeboxes scattered around the house, or you’re so organized you have whole calendars dedicated to which bills are due when, Pageonce – Money & Bills could improve your life.
This app automatically tracks your cashflow and bills, as well as organizes all your finances in one place, so you can see your checking accounts, savings accounts, investments, credit cards and bills at a glance. Touting some impressive security measures, Pageonce is safe and easy to use. Click the More button below and I’ll show you some of its features.
Setting Up Security
When you first start Pageonce – Money & Bills, the app will prompt you to sign up for a free Pageonce account, which requires your email, a password and your zip code — that’s it. Pageonce has been designed to work without your name, address, social security number, account numbers or PIN to minimize the possibility of security breaches and keep your anonymity.
Pageonce prompts you to set a passcode so that all your info is protected.
Additionally, you’ll be prompted to complete a security setup, requiring you to answer a security question, set a passcode lock and also verify your email address. After your passcode is set, any time you open the app, you will be asked to re-enter the passcode — even if your iPhone goes to sleep while you were using the app.
Want to know more about the app’s security? Pageonce says it meets the toughest requirements set by the most reputable security organizations out there, such as Trust-e, Verisign and McAfee. Read more about Pageonce’s “bank-level security” on its website.
Adding Accounts
Now you’re ready to add things like accounts and bills. The home screen, or overview screen, shows squares separating your banks, bills, investments and credit cards. There’s also an alert box, which can help you monitor financial transactions (and therefore potential fraudulent activity), bill due dates, deposits and more. The Offers box includes ads for financial services that Pageonce believes its users may benefit from, for example, credit score reports and credit card offers.
Adding accounts is as simple as searching for the institution and entering your login info.
To add an account, tap the “+ Add your Banks” square. This takes you to an Add Accounts screen displaying a long list of established banks. Scroll through to find your bank, or you can use the type field to search for it.
After you select your bank, Pageonce will ask you to enter your login information — the same username or email address and password you would use to sign in to your bank account online. The app then takes a moment to establish a secure connection, authenticate the account and retrieve your information. Adding accounts to Pageonce changes the squares on the Overview screen to respectively read Cash (bank accounts), Payments Due (bills), Investments and Credit card debt, along with the accompanying balances.
The Overview screen shows collective balances for all your accounts and bills.
Repeat that same process to add any investments and credit cards. You can also add accounts by tapping the plus sign in the top righthand corner of the screen and then selecting from the possible categories. Notice there is a tab called Manually. This option could be used for a bill or donation you pay each month to an individual or institution that is not listed. You can manually enter the bill’s name, category, amount, due date and recurrence. (Note, however, that in the free version of Pageonce, you can only add one bill manually; to add more, an upgrade is required.)
To see a list of all accounts you’ve added to Pageonce, tap the icon in the top lefthand corner of the screen — the one that looks like three horizontal bars.
Credit Cards & Bills
While tapping on Cash or Investments from the Overview screen will take you to details for each of those accounts, selecting Credit Card Debt or Payments Due will not only display account details, but also color-coded graphics.
The Credit Card Debt and Payments Due screens let you know which bills are coming up.
The Credit Card Summary shows a horizontal bar displaying the balance, available funds and minimum payment plus due date for each credit card. At the top of the summary page, Pageonce has included a graphic that combines the totals for all your credit cards — a useful tool for calculating combined minimum payments and balances. Regarding your bills, clicking Payments Due from the Overview screen will take you to a list of your upcoming bills, with the total payments due amount shown at the very top. The three tabs at the bottom of this screen enable you to toggle between formats: list, sorted by category and displayed on a calendar.
Reports
Clicking the pie chart icon at the top of the Pageonce screen will call up the Reports page. Here you can access informative visuals regarding your finances.
The Reports include graphics to show you how you're spending your money.
Click on “Where your money’s going” to see a pie chart breaking down your expenditures. Use the right and left arrows to scroll backward and forward through months, and tap the icon on the right with the three horizontal lines to see your bills in chart format instead. Back on the Reports screen, selecting “Your bills month-to-month” will reveal a list of your utilities accounts to choose from — pick any one to see a graphed month-to-month history of that bill for 12 months; and selecting “All your transactions” provides a convenient list of transactions across all the accounts you’ve entered into Pageonce.
Final Thoughts
It’s important to point out that under Settings (the wheel at the top of the screen), you’ll find advanced security options, the number of working accounts Pageonce has access to, the Help file and the ability to upgrade to Pageonce Pro, among other things.
The ability to only add one bill manually, as well as the ads displayed at the bottom of each screen, are obvious drawbacks to the free version of Pageonce. However, I didn’t find the ads particularly annoying or distracting; and for someone with relatively simple finances, the ability to only add one bill manually may work just fine. Overall, as far as graphics and ease of use are concerned, I think this app hits well above the mark and it’s clear to me why 3-plus million users have already jumped onboard the Pageonce train. In fact, it may not be long before I upgrade to take advantage of the full range of features.
Which apps do you use to keep track of your finances?
