Wesabe, the online personal finance site launched in 2005, will be closing down on July 31, 2010. Over the last few years it grew into a well-liked service helping users track their spending and share valuable financial information with others through the Wesabe online community. The company has stated they were experiencing financial constraints, leaving them unable to provide sufficient customer support and security staff. Unlike other online finance sites, Wesabe did not generate revenue through the use of ads, considering the practice not to be in the best interests of its customers.

Users will have until July 31 to download their data, after which time all data will be securely and permanently deleted. Users will be able to view their downloaded csv-format data in spreadsheet programs such as Excel and Google Spreadsheet. Wesabe are also working on an open source package allowing users to operate a version of the service on their own computers.

The popular Wesabe online forums which host discussions on personal finance topics and where users can exchange tips and advice on finances will remain online indefinitely.

Disappointed Wesabe fans may consider other free online personal finance alternatives such as Mint, Buxfer and Geezeo.

HelloWallet, which had its debut in March 2010, offers independent financial advice online to help users take control of their finances and achieve their financial goals.

One impact of the Great Recession is that consumers are now more aware that they need to closely monitor their personal finances to avoid getting into difficulty. That’s where HelloWallet comes in. It’s aimed at the estimated 80% of low to middle income American consumers who do not currently have access to financial advice resources.

HelloWallet  performs budgeting and money management functions such as offered by free online personal finance sites, but more importantly it provides independent and personalized financial advice.   HelloWallet is independent from financial institutions and does not receive any advertising revenue from them and so is in a better position to recommend savings products which may actually best benefits each individual user.

Key benefits include:

• Keeps track of all your finances in one place
• Monitors rates on credit cards, mortgages, loans and other products, and alerts you if they increase
• Searches over 130,000 different financial products (checking accounts, savings accounts, money market funds) and from a broader range of institutions compared to free sites, such as credit unions, community banks and national banks
• Creates personalized savings plans for important milestones such as tuition fees, buying a home, saving for retirement and reducing debt
• Identifies unproductive savings you may have – according to research, American families lose approximately $100 billion each year in preventable financial mistakes
• Helps estimate how much to save to buy a home using local home prices; forecasts your home’s potential worth in the future
• Gathers tuition information for most colleges and universities and helps estimate how much to save in time for enrollment
• Provides recommendations about financial gaps, such as missing emergency savings plans
• Proactively identifies financial health threats and savings opportunities

HelloWallet works with charitable foundations and was endorsed by the Clinton Global Initiative. It donates one free membership to a family in need for every five paying subscriptions, providing a free service to at least 300,000 low-income families over the next five years.

A HelloWallet subscription costs around $4 per month, with a 60 day free trial offered. We’d love to hear from users as to how helpful they find the service.

Bill.com, launched in 2008, follows the Software as a Service (SaaS) model to manage your Accounts Payable process online. The service can save small and mid-size business owners time and money – reducing AP costs by up to 50%.  Invoices from vendors are simply scanned and emailed or faxed to Bill.com for processing. The service provides the following benefits:

• Automates the internal payment approval process, sends reminders, tracks notes and comments
• Pays vendors by check or electronically with ePayment (payments only 49c -  less than most banks)
• Easily digitizes invoices and other financial documents (unlimited file storage available)
• Documents scanned using OCR are indexed and easily searchable
• Provides to-do list and online calendar for payment scheduling
• Maintains a detailed audit trail of all transactions
• Provides advanced check fraud protection
• Integrates with accounting programs such as QuickBooks and Intacct, eliminating duplicate data entry
• Provides access to client documents online
• Benefit from a truly paperless office

All information is encrypted and protected with 256-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, the same as used by banks.

There’s a free 30-day trial. Charges are $24.99 per month per user. Up to 10 additional users cost $9.99 each per month. Any additional users after that cost $4.99 each per month. Also includes 5 free check payments per month (additional checks 99c each).

Update: New subscribers can save 20% if they sign up before the end of April 2010. For more information, visit the Bill.com website.

The long-awaited new version of Quicken Mac – Quicken Essentials for Mac – was released today. I say ‘long-awaited’ as there was first mention of it being released as far back as 2008 under the name of Quicken Financial Life for Mac. A few proposed release dates later and it is finally here.

Quicken Essentials for Mac (QEM) has been completely redesigned and redeveloped specifically for Macs and now has the familiar Mac look and feel. Its streamlined, attractive interface makes it easy to get set up, easy to use and navigate but it does have less features than the previous Quicken Mac 2007 version, which may not be an issue for most people. In general QEM is best suited to Mac users who are new to personal finance software and those users with more straightforward money management needs.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of the new version:

• Great conversion tool quickly transfers your data from all supported Quicken Windows & Quicken Mac programs as well as Microsoft Money
• Connects with more banks and financial institutions than ever before – over 12,000 at the moment with plans to increase to 16,000 in the next few months
• Overview screen shows money coming in and out in a clean and modern, Mint-like interface
• Improved transaction categorization saves time – the software accepts user recommendations during use thereby continually improving categorization accuracy
• Analyzes spending habits to help users develop budgets as well as tracking progress against goals

Those users needing more in-depth investment management tools, a bill pay feature and direct TurboTax integration would be better using the previous Quicken Mac 2007 version or using virtualization software to run Quicken for Windows on their Mac. There are plans for a further release in 2011 which will incorporate some of the features not included this time round such as investment tracking tools and bill pay.

Consumers wishing to take advantage of Intuit’s Quicken credit card offer can obtain $30 cashback when they purchase Quicken Essentials for Mac at the Intuit website. Alternatively, Amazon are currently offering a $10 discount on Quicken Essentials for Mac.

Outright.com is a free web-based bookkeeping service ideal for the self-employed, sole proprietors and very small businesses that want to manage their bookkeeping online.  It was created by former Intuit employees in 2008 and is simple to use with a very user-friendly interface.

All the usual accounting tasks can be performed, such as tracking income and expenses, capturing business deductions, and monitoring business performance with reports (e.g. Profit and Loss, Income by Customer, Expenses by Vendor, 1099 ) .

What differentiates Outright the most from other online accounting software is that it calculates estimated quarterly taxes owed and helps meet tax deadlines with the use of timely reminders.  Users can thus avoid tax penalties and also budget ahead of time, knowing how much they’ll need to pay for taxes.

Outright conveniently integrates with other applications and services in the following ways:

• Freshbooks (online invoicing & time tracking service):  imports customer invoices, payment information and expenses
• Shoeboxed.com (mail-in paper receipt scanning service):  converts scanned receipts into business deductions right into your Outright account
• eBay and PayPal:  imports transactions
• Xpenser (mobile expense tracking & management): imports cash expenditures

Outright also provides an easy online 1099 filing solution.   It can automatically track down W-9 information (users need to provide contractor contact information), prepare IRS form 1099-MISC, and file it with the IRS.  Tax deadline: 1099s must be sent to contractors by 1 February  2010.  We can currently offer 50% off the price of the Outright efiling service with our coupon code.

The creators of Outright have recently launched RightTaxesNow.com, a website providing tax advice and information about IRS rules, as well as a platform for people to get involved in the tax legislation process. Online petitions are set up to urge the passing of pending tax relief legislation for small businesses.

Outright online bookkeeping keeps your financial information secure; all data is encrypted and backed up on an hourly basis.  The service remains free to users, with plans to add extra paid services in the future.

Makers of Moneydance, The Infinite Kind, have just released Moneydance 2010, an important update from their 2008 version.

New features include:

• Enhanced user interface with improved navigation.
• Sidebar now displays account status.
• Automatic transaction downloading runs in the background. (You can set this to run daily or every few hour).
• Improved categorization of downloaded transactions.
• Improved scheduled reminders & transactions feature.
• New quick search function.
• New reports and graphs available, such as capital gains report.
• Improved graphical view of your budget; flexible graph and report filtering.

This new Moneydance 2010 version remains at the same price as the previous version, $39.99. Consumers who bought Moneydance 2008 are eligible for a free upgrade and those who bought a previous version can get an upgrade for only $19.99. There’s also a free trial available which allows users to manually input up to 100 transactions (but automatic transaction download not provided). There is also an iPhone app on the way shortly. Moneydance runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

The new YNAB 3 release includes a great many improvements to this popular budgeting software. The main new feature of this version is that it now runs on Adobe AIR which allows users to run the software on Windows 7, XP, Vista, Mac or Linux. This is sure to please many Mac users who have been waiting for a simple yet effective budgeting software program to use.

Other new features of YNAB 3 include:

• Improved interface and design, new icons, more customization options
• New Search function – search for specific transactions by payee, category, date, etc; search by multiple parameters
• Tracks non-budget accounts as well (e.g. tracks mortgages or loans).
• Account balances can now include amounts that haven’t cleared the bank.
• Enhanced reporting capabilities, including more customization options. Now view your financial data in graph as well as corresponding table format. Drill down in graphs to view associated underlying data.
• More customization for your budget categories e.g. re-order categories, add notes etc.
• More flexibility in dealing with over or under spending in budget categories.
• View more than 2 months of your budget at a time (depending on screen size).

The new version of YNAB retails at $59.95. Users wishing to upgrade from YNAB Pro can expect to pay only $34.95 if they bought before 1 Jan 2009, $29.95 if they bought between 01/01/09 to 4/30/2009 and $24.95 if they bought between 5/1/09 and 7/31/2009. Anyone who bought YNAB Pro after 31 July 2009 can upgrade for free. Users wishing to upgrade from YNAB Basic will pay $34.95.

Anyone wanting to try out the software before they buy can take advantage of YNAB’s free 7 day trial.

The new tax season is starting in a few weeks and TurboTax and H&R Block have just released their new tax preparation software programs. The biggest change for 2010 is that H&R Block have rebranded their TaxCut programs, which will now be known as H&R Block At Home. This decision is taken partly to increase consumer awareness that the tax programs are produced by H&R Block, the trusted and popular US tax preparation company.

H&R Block have also simplified their program selection. Last year each desktop version came either with or without state returns, now state returns will automatically be included. Also, each program will now be tailored to different types of filers (rather than tailored to different levels of tax assistance required), with a new Deluxe version offered.

Intuit’s TurboTax has been the do-it-yourself tax preparation software market leader for a few years now. Users enjoy the clean interface and user friendliness of the programs. We look forward to seeing how H&R Block At Home performs this tax season with its new redesigned programs.

Intuit has decided to phase out its web-based personal finance program Quicken Online, after its recent acquisition of competitor Mint.com. Plans are to suspend Quicken Online in the next six to nine months. The decision was made by Mint founder and CEO, Aaron Patzer, who now heads up Intuit’s Personal Finance Group.

This move is not surprising, as there is really not much point in continuing to run two separate online personal finance management sites. It makes more sense for Intuit to concentrate on the more popular Mint.com service, which currently has 1.7 million users, most of which use it every month. Quicken Online has a similar number of users but these are currently much less frequently using the service.

Quicken Online customers will see their data migrated over to Mint.com. A few useful features from Quicken Online will be incorporated into Mint such as the ability to enter cash transactions and record checks that have not yet cleared. Customers will also soon benefit from tax preparation features in Mint.com, such as is provided by Quicken software. For example, business expense transactions can be marked as tax deductible throughout the year, making tax preparation quicker and easier.

Customers can look forward to an improved product incorporating the best features of both Mint and Quicken Online.

Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be selling its Office Accounting software after 16 November  2009. As was mentioned here at News & Reviews earlier this year, Microsoft has discontinued a number of software and web services such as Microsoft Money Plus personal finance software.

The reason given by Microsoft for the decision is that their free Office templates (for invoices, expenses, timesheets and budgets) used along with Excel is a better choice for small businesses, as well as their Dynamics products for mid range businesses. But since their launch of Office Accounting in early 2005, they have been unable to break into a market dominated by QuickBooks in the US and Sage in the UK. Most people will prefer to use a full accounting package and will perhaps now consider moving to QuickBooks (check our website for QuickBooks special offers).

Microsoft have stated that existing customers will receive five more years of product support. Meanwhile, some services such as  eBay online sales, Equifax credit profiles, payroll and ePayment will discontinue after 15 December 2009. However, customers will still be able to pay emailed invoices through PayPal; and credit card processing  and checks & forms ordering will still be available.

Customers who have recently purchased the software and now wish for a refund can obtain one – return policy is 30 days from time of purchase.