Just The Facts, Please.

What does it do?

PiggyPal's mission is to track all your expenses, right down to that cup of coffee you bought yesterday morning.

Getting an accurate view of your spending patterns can be a time-consuming task. It's easy to throw down a piece of plastic 5 or 10 times a day without realizing how much money you're actually spending.

The checkbook has become an antiquated notion, and while we live in a digital world, it's still time-consuming to enter every single transaction into our budget software.

PiggyPal's job is to ease this burden, giving you an intuitive window into your spending patterns, without requiring you to enter every transaction manually.

How does it do it?

PiggyPal leverages a common file format called CSV, which is supported by most online bank websites.

The idea is this:

1. You log into your bank's website and download your transactions as a CSV file. Banks usually label this function as Export Transactions or Copy to Accounting Software.
2. You then log into PiggyPal and upload the same CSV file here. PiggyPal reads in the transaction data and stores it on our server.
3. You train PiggyPal to categorize your transactions by creating rules that link transaction descriptions to categories. The more rules you create, the easier it is to categorize more transactions in the future.
4. PiggyPal aggregates this data and displays it back to you. You can see your spending habits from a birds-eye view, or you can drill down into specific categories.

Is it hard to use?

No! The very purpose of this software is to ease the budgeting process, so our number one requirement is ease-of-use.

PiggyPal is designed to learn how to categorize your transactions. Over time, the import process will become quicker and quicker -- the more rules you create, the less you have to manually categorize your transactions.

The first couple times you import transactions may be slow-going, but once rules are setup, you can expect an import to take no more than a few minutes of your time.

Will it help me?

Everybody is different. PiggyPal is intended for regular people who just need a simple platform to report their spending habits, but don't want to put a lot of extra time into keeping it up to date.

It's not designed to handle the needs of a small business, and it's not designed to be a full-fledged accounting application. If you need something more than simple reporting, then you would be better served by a full-featured accounting application.

How much does it cost?

PiggyPal is currently free to use. This may change in the future.