PocketGuard・Money&Bill Tracker Reviews

by Erin6363

I downloaded PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker and tried to connect my account but it said it had a error and to try again in two hours. I didn’t think of it much at first so I waited a few hours and tried again. Same problem. I was slightly annoyed but I understand sometimes things like this happen. I submitted a request to support. Got a generic message saying please detail the issue. I replied back but still haven’t got an answer. I’ve been trying every day now and it’s still giving me the same issue and still no answer from customer service. Not even someone messaging back saying “we are working on this” or “sorry about that this connection going to be down for a while. We will let you know when it’s up and running”.

PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker had great reviews when I originally looked to download PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker but the more recent ones have been bad.

Needless to say I’m going to delete PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker before I even got to use it. 😔

by CampingGuy18

This program is difficult to use. My wife and I both use it on our joint account, but our “in my pocket” amount rarely matches. It jumps around wildly over the course of the day as well so we literally never know how much we have. It’s difficult to figure out how to handle things like using your bonus from last month since finances reset every month. It’s also difficult to figure out how to handle periodic expenses.

Mint tells you how much you have left and how many days remain, so while it doesn’t give you a “daily number” you can easily divide cash remaining by days remaining. Mints balance matches for my wife and I and doesn’t have wild swings throughout the day. We feel much more confident using that program which just very simple math without any weird issues. It’s easy to see where money is and where it went.

I can not recommend this program.

by TimW.Evans

I love pocketguard, but too frequently there are errors that make it impossible to use. I get the same Error 940 "Puppetmaster" error all the time which prevents PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker from connecting with my bank. It will sometimes work for a day or two then be in error again for week or so after. Customer support didn't really even respond to my e-mail, just an automated response asking for more details when I literally sent them a screen shot, and it's their own error message. I was considering buying pro, because when it works it's awesome and has literally helped me prevent overdrafts and stick to a budget but it doesn't really work very often. Aside from the broken bits, my recommendation would be the ability to select a date and see how much will be needed for bills in that time frame. It currently only shows end of month, but I always end up needing to bust out paper and pencil and manually (navigating away from PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker logs out, so can't even use the calculator app at the same time) add figures to see what I need by next payday, as opposed to month.

by Jcbrcu

I like the concept of PocketGuard, but there are a few elements missing to really make it good- being able to split transactions into different categories (not all my grocery store trips are just for groceries), constant bank connecting issues, and you need to upgrade to categorize certain things (gas, coffee shops, etc). I also noticed I only got push notifications AFTER opening PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker - that kinda defeats the purpose of saying “hey you’re close to your budget on ____ don’t overspend”.

I do like that I could connect my main bank and see each account within in it including all of my different shares assigned to that account (checking, savings, trip savings, savings for Christmas, car loan, etc) and decide which to see every log in. PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is very esthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. I did google a few things to figure it how to do it.

by Canuck85

Coming from Level App I have spent a long time testing out various finance apps that could replace it.

PocketGuard is by far the best solution feature for feature however for whatever reasons my bank account needed to be reconnected but error’d our every time I tried to update. It also error’d out when I tried to delete the scout all together and re-ad. Finally I went to the website and update, which worked but error’d out on PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker when I tried refreshing.

As a last resort I deleted PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker and reinstalled and now it errors out when I try to sign in! I don’t see a way to submit feedback via the support tool on PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker so a review is the only place I can resort to. Please fix this so I can adjust my review appropriately! Thank you

by Juniesk

I reaallly want PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker to be my go to budgeting tool. It has the best UI/UX of any app I’ve ever tried, it’s so great to use. But unfortunately it just doesn’t sync up with your card transactions very well.

I have “pending transactions” from over a week ago that are definitely not pending anymore on my credit card. It also labels pending purchases with the incorrect vendor. I think PocketGuard has trouble with transactions that have tips? For example I went to a restaurant a week ago, but PocketGuard still says it’s pending and has the wrong merchant. It seems to mix up the merchant with previous purchases. Along with this, it’s missing some transactions from last week.

Mint doesn’t have this issue, all my transactions are there, none of them are incorrectly labeled as pending, and all the vendors are accurate.

There’s so many thing PocketGuard does right, but I can’t justify using it for budgeting when the transactions take forever to correct itself. I would gladly pay for a subscription if this wasn’t an issue. When it works, it works really well.

Maybe I’ll try again in a couple of months and see if anything improves. I really hope it does!!

by Lillyandmillie

I think PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is great overall. Compared to other budgeting tools this is the best one I’ve used. I would even consider upgrading to the subscription, but I have serious problems with how it connects to my bank. My bank requires MFA to connect and so I am constantly needing to re-authorize in order to link the account. First, the notifications are annoying because I’m reminded of the issue multiple times a day. Second, I never had this issue when I was using Mint or another app for budgeting. I don’t know if this is a bug, but this is very frustrating because I like PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker a lot in every other aspect. I think MFA is important, but I would rather have to do that to log into PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker , and not have that be the cause of not syncing between PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker and my bank.

by Urmez

As many people have said it that PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is very good. It logs for most parts of it accurately all the expenses better than other budgeting apps. However where it lags really behind is that they have not figured out a good partnership with the major banks and credit cards on how to get the synchronization perfected to be able to download the transactions seamlessly. I have problems with PNC and American Express. These are two bigger reputable institutions. I hope pocketguard really talks with those institutions and gets this fixed.

If they can get it fixed which I don’t see why they can’t I will surely give them 5 stars. It’s like the restaurant has a very good atmosphere but if the food is bad somebody may not want to go back. Similarly PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is super good however if the synchronization keeps failing time to time people are going to have to decide and leave because without the transactions being able to be downloaded PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is no good which is so good in other ways. Please please fix. I am counting on PoxketGuard to come through it. Thanks

by JonathanLuce

PocketGuard does what I need it to by bringing all my accounts into one place. The hashtag feature is great when I’m trying to track a specific thing that may be related to multiple budget categories like #VR stuff :)

The notifications are a hot mess though and there is very limited controls. Also, I’m paying for a subscription here, can you please disable the ad notifications for your find savings section? It’s not helpful and I get no value from it at this time.

What I’d like to see is individual control to enable and disable notifications as needed for bill reminders, late bills, large deposits (payday), going over budgets, etc.

by Agbs31

I’ve used mint and every dollar. Every dollar is very clean looking, PocketGuard takes some getting used to. BUT, I’ve got to tell you, after taking a few days or so to get my feet wet to truly understand PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker and learn how to navigate my way through it, I love it! My favorite features:
– upcoming bills. It’s a feature that I have sorely been missing,Knowing what bills are coming up and when is key for making sure I’ve got enough money in the bank to avoid overdraft payments. Super easy the way I have it set up, on the overview page I have a section that includes all my fixed costs for the month, easy to see and easy to categorize. Makes it super easy to budget what I have left over.
- hashtags.I love the hashtags, never been easier to see how much I spent on back to school stuff , on my recent vacation, etc.
-Love the easy comparison from one month to the next to see if I spent more than less than the previous month in a particular category.

There’s more, but suffice it to say that I found PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker that works for me.

My only qualm is that I wish you could customize the color scheme. I’d like a lighter color scheme.

by Claireh703

PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker has made it so easy to see where our money has gone and is going to go. My new husband and I decided to share accounts and we were struggling to relax into that after independently controlling our finances for so long… this has made it so much easier! I had to contact customer support one time and they were incredibly prompt and helpful. I knocked off a star because I wish it was able to do the following (but would have only knocked off only half a star if it was an option):

1) I wish you could choose to carry over unspent budgets to the next month. ie If I underspend this month on ‘home’, the budget is bigger the following month to purchase a more expensive item.

2) I wish it could learn and adapt. We pay two bills to Banfield Pet Plan each month that come up as BP. When we buy gas from BP, it goes into bills because it think it’s the same. So a couple of times a month, I have to manuallly change names and categories - sometimes I have to re-enter the banfield bills and then, when they are paid, they don’t register as the ones planned. This is a niche and minor issue but slightly annoying nonetheless.

3) I wish it was a little more prompt in identifying new transactions. Sometimes the banking app will detail transactions as no longer pending and it’ll take a day or two for them to appear on PocketGuard.

These are minor things that I’d like the developers to consider BUT overall I love PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker!

by Bootlegged

I needed an app that would allow me to setup budget categories and monitor my spending (based on accounts I linked to it). It does that and it does it fairly well. I do have to constantly go in everyday to update the category for which it falls in, but I’m just very particular in how I want my expenditures categorized. I may try using the hashtag feature to simplify things. I also like how it notifies you when you get close to hitting your limits. Moreover it’s all free! There’s a paid version to unlock more features, but for me those aren’t necessary.

The only downside I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t update or show your expenditures in real time. Meaning, I usually have to wait 2-3 days before an expense is posted which can be frustrating when needing to know where you stand at any given moment in terms of your budget... which is sort of the purpose of PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker right?

by Ajleuty87

PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is great if you want something very basic to track your expenses. Bank accounts sync flawlessly, and it is easy to make a custom budget and track purchases.

Where it needs work though is in the integration of the “Spending Limits” category into the rest of PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker . For some reason they have 2 separate categories for “Bills” and “Spending Limits.” I am sure most people, like me, primarily use the “Spending Limits” portion which is not really used for any data integration in the rest of PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker .

I would like to see “Spending Limits” integrated into the “Overview” tab and future monthly income accounted for in the “Overview” space. It would also be nice to see some changes made in the “Insights” tab. Ideally, “Spending Limits” would be broken into macro categories and these macro categories would comprise the pieces of the pie chart under “Insights.”

by Lavmarx

I really like the idea of having an app that tells you how much is safe to spend without endangering your bills money. It does a pretty good job of categorizing automatically, the need to re-categorize is minimal. However, it’s detecting one of my savings accounts as checking and I have found no way of changing that. Adding such function would be great. Also, maybe allowing us to add an expense for the future would be nice. I added money to the cash account, which was reserved for a transaction a few days into the future. It didn’t let me add anything for the future. So I’ll have to come into PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker when it happens in October and add it which doesn’t really make sense. Overall the apps is great, and it’s the closest I’ve found to what I want which is an app like Level Money which is now gone. There is still room for a few improvements.

by GonnaPartyLikeIts1999

It works really well. Occasionally he glitches but they seem very responsive about fixing it. Some banks transactions clear much much quicker than others. I wish the Pending transactions allowed you to go ahead and update the category as well as add hashtags. One of my banks takes several days for transactions to clear so I’m always a week behind on updating categories. The reports are great. As a former long time user of Quicken, I only hung on for the reports but I haven’t used it since I moved to PocketGuard. The one change I would make is to add income to the budget page so for those of us on variable incomes you have an better idea of if bills will be covered.

by Kimber-Hoy

Every transaction is placed into a specific category (in 9/10 cases it's accurate) so you have a great insight on how much you have spent on coffee shops and books, on clothing and sports etc. Having the full picture will help you to understand how do your spending habits look like now and how do you need to change them. To be honest, it was difficult to stay on budget even after a couple of months of using PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker . I was really shocked when having seen my 'in my pocket' negative a week before the next month starts. I couldn't believe I'd overspent with my credit card so much... PocketGuard won't change your life, only you can do it. But PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker is a great assistant which definitely makes this change go easier.

by I0WA4ever

Highly recommend PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker. It is amazing for keeping track of your money and how it’s spent. I liked it enough I took advantage of the 4th of July special for the upgraded version.

I have multiple sclerosis and my cognitive functions are sometimes impacted, so being able to see and track everything in one app is a great tool.

I had connection issues for one of my accounts, emailed support when it didn’t correct after some time and the customer service took a day or so after my email (I think?)

by Michelleccrandall

I was recommended to download PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker three months ago but decided to leave a review only now. I didn't like the that categories are not totally customized at first, but then technical support gave me several hints on how to use their hashtags system. I wasn't sure it will work for me... But it did! I was able to create multiple spending reports with distinct categories without merging everything into one (#lifestyle report contained Sporting Goods + Gym + Food + Massage). Moreover, you can add multiple hashtags to one transaction and it will make the insights deeper and all-encompassing. they also have additional features related to savings or lowering the bills. I am completely satisfied and definitely will use it in the future.

by Music_keeper

I absolutely love PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker! I used to use the prism app but they started to have system issues and when I tried to address them, I would be waiting over a month to get a response. So I tried this app called Pocket Guard. I read a bunch of reviews on a what everyone considered “The best finance apps”. This one stuck out to me the most. They really thought about the user interface and how the consumer would have to use PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker . I thoroughly enjoy discovering all the features and information PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker provides. I don’t need to use any other app once I set everything up. The customization of categories is such a great feature that I opted to pay the annual subscription rate. Great job Pocket Guard! 👍🏻⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

by MCardoso2019

Love the functionality of PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker itself. I love that I can characterize my transactions and track how much I’m spending in each category while creating budgets for areas I want to cut down in. I also love that this provides you an “In Pocket” number so I can be sure to not overspend by the end of the month. For reference I have the Pro version and it’s worth it!

Edited: I used to have some issues with bank connectivity that caused my budgeting to be off by +\- $100 which was frustrating. However the PocketGuard team fixed the issue and I’m enjoying PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker again with confidence my budgeting is accurate 🙂

by ..kayla..

From what I can tell, this is the only app out there that is designed around the exact way I like to budget. It takes the month’s income and subtracts all your bills, subscriptions, recurring payments, things like that. So the money you have left over is what’s available to spend on food, gas, incidentals, fun stuff, etc, and PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker keeps track of this number for you so you don’t have to worry about keeping track of it on your own. It’s exactly what I needed to help me stop unintentionally overspending! Very glad to have found PocketGuardMoneyBillTracker. Thanks!