ALERT BASED PERSONAL FINANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Techniques for credential free, alert based personal finance management are disclosed herein. An embodiment of a credential free, alert based method comprises receiving from a financial institution a transaction message indicating a transaction that occurs a short time period ago; recognizing the transaction message and translating the transaction message into an alert in a predetermined uniform format; transmitting the alert to a user's device and prompting a user to tag the transaction with at least one category; and receiving from the user's device a response indicating the category that the user tagged.
1 . A credential free, alert based method for managing personal finances, the method comprising:
receiving from a financial institution a transaction message that is response to, and indicative of, occurrence of a financial transaction involving a user;
recognizing the transaction message and, in response thereto, generating an alert in a predetermined uniform format;
transmitting the alert to a device associated with the user, the alert for prompting a user to tag the transaction with at least one category; and
receiving from the user's device a response indicating a category that the user tagged.
2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
transmitting to the user's device a personal finance summary.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the transaction message does not contain any credential information.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the transaction message is an email message.
5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the alert is an SMS message or an email message.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the alert is transmitted in near real-time or a short time period after the transaction has occurred.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the device associated with the user is a mobile phone.
8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
recording the response indicating the category that the user tagged into a database.
9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein recognizing the transaction message comprises recognizing the transaction message by using an intelligent parsing algorithm.
10 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
causing the device associated with the user to provide a default choice when prompting a user to tag the transaction with at least one category, wherein the default choice is based on categories of past transactions.
11 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
automatically tagging the transaction based on user-specified categories of past transactions.
12 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
generating a file containing a personal finance summary.
13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the alert in the predetermined uniform format comprises a time stamp, a transaction amount, and a merchant ID.
14 . A credential free, alert based personal finance management system, the system comprising:
a database;
a message receiving module to receive from a financial institution a transaction message that is response to, and indicative of, occurrence of a financial transaction involving a user;
a processing module to recognize the transaction message and, in response thereto, generate an alert in a predetermined uniform format;
a transmission module to transmit the alert to a device associated with the user, the alert for prompting a user to tag the transaction with at least one category; and
a recording module to receive from the user's device a response indicating a category that the user tagged and record the response into the database.
15 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the transmission module is further configured to transmit to the user's device a personal finance summary.
16 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the transaction message does not contain any credential information.
17 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the transaction message is an email message.
18 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the alert is an SMS message or an email message.
19 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the alert is transmitted near real-time or a short time period after the transaction occurring.
20 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the user's device is a mobile phone.
21 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the processing module recognizes the transaction message using an intelligent parsing algorithm.
22 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the alert prompts the user to tag the transaction with a default category choice based on categories of past transactions.
23 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the processing module is further configured to automatically tag the transaction based on categories of past transactions.
24 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the processing module is further configured to generate a file containing a personal finance summary.
25 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the alert in the predetermined uniform format comprises a time stamp, a transaction amount, and a merchant ID.
26 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the transaction message is received at an email address accessible by the system.
27 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the transaction message is received at an email address maintained by the system.
28 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the system is a standalone service system.
29 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the system is a add-on service of a financial institution.
30 . The system of claim 14 , wherein the financial institution is a bank, a credit union, a credit card company, a loan company or other organization providing financial information to the user.