Pageonce Review

How much help do you need managing your money? If the answer is "only a little, just the big picture, I don't want to get hung up on the details," then Pageonce (free) may be a useful tool to add to your money-management arsenal. While this review focuses on Pageonce's website, where you can manage your free Pageonce account, there is also a Pageonce iPhone app and Pageonce Android app, which I personally find more valuable than the online version. Why? Because the kind of information Pageonce provides becomes truly valuable if you're on the go and need to make a sudden correction to your finances to stay in the clear, such as paying a bill that's due imminently. When you're in front of a full computer, it seems silly to rely on Pageonce when you can just log directly into your bank account or bill provider's website and take care of the problem there.

When it comes to managing money, I'd rather have an app that gives me more than I need rather than shortchanging me, a big reason Mint (free, 5 stars)  is our Editors' Choice and not Pageonce. Mint shows line-item details of all your purchases and transactions, and automatically categorizes them for you to show your overall spending habits, while also providing excellent controls should you want to override the automation. It also looks at the interest rates on your accounts and suggests other financial houses that can give you a better deal. Pageonce doesn't have any of these value-adding services.

For centralized bill pay, you could also use Doxo (free, 3.5 stars), which not only gives you tools to management payments to dozens of utility and service providers, but also saves copies of your previous bills. Doxo's other features make it more of an online filing cabinet than a money-management system, because it provides additional storage for saving other important household documents in one place. Pageonce, on the other hand, focuses only on account balances and bill payment.

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Pageonce Layout and Features
When you set up a free Pageonce account—and note that while some features previous were locked behind a $4.99 per month Gold membership, all of Pageonce is now free—the site prompts you to connect your financial accounts. That's the first step in most money-management apps, particularly when they're cloud-based, as Pageonce, Mint, and Mvelopes (free to $9.95 per month, 2 stars) are. If you'd prefer to work entirely offline, YNAB ($60, 3 stars), which stands for You Need a Budget, gives you that option, although the desktop software can hook into your bank accounts electronically if you choose—but it's not required.

Pageonce supports all major financial institutions, and I had no problem connecting to any of my checking, savings, retirement, and credit card accounts. I also linked my ISP (Time Warner) to get information about my internet bill, and browsed the list of other service providers, which include insurance companies, utility providers, and lenders such as Sallie Mae and ACS – Education. It's a well-rounded selection, with "travel" being the oddball category. Yes, you can connect you travel loyalty programs to see at a glance how many points you have with various companies.

If you want to connect to a Paypal, however, you have to have a Paypal Business account. If you have funds hanging out in a personal Paypal account set aside for spending, Pageonce can't count that money.

Once you have your accounts connected, you'll see an overview pane at the left of the screen that shows how much cash you have. Below that line are Payments Due, Credit Cards Debt, and Investments. Like I said, it's a quick and dirty and balance sheet, not a full register of all your transactions. Clicking on any of those selections shows to the right of it one more level of detail, but it's still pretty well zoomed out. For example, my tab for Credit Cards Debt lists each line of credit I have on file and shows in a bar graph how much I owe against how much credit I have by provider. It also lists out by provider the next minimum amount due and date, and the APR. The very top of this section shows a credit card summary: total minimum payments due across all cards, total current balance, and total available credit.

Moving further into the site, you can exit the overview page and dive into your accounts, alerts, and a bill pay section. In the accounts area, you can see some recent line item transactions, but they're not qualified by tags or other information as they are in Mint. My checking and savings accounts showed transactions dating from before I set up my Pageonce account, while my credit cards only delivered the most recent transactions since the last billing cycle. Pageonce doesn't give you any tools to customize how many line items you see or from when (e.g., calendar month only, year to date, etc.).

Alerts, by default, flag when an upcoming payment is due, and you can't customize these either. You can, however, customize the "notifications" you get by email, but that's in your Settings under a tab called Notifications.

The Bill Pay section gives you one central place to pay all your connected credit card bills, which may be a resounding reason to use the Pageonce website. Mint has reminders for upcoming credit card bills but does not connect to other kinds of bills. In practice, for me this was a moot point, as nearly all my bills are set up to automatically charge a credit card. I almost never initiate payments anymore. It's more important for me to see that a payment is scheduled (which my bill service companies all do via email).

Just to give it a whirl, though, I tried to pay off an upcoming credit card balance with one of my synced checking accounts. I immediately hit a screen asking for my full checking account number and routing number, which are the same steps I'd go through the first time I set up automatic bill pay right on the credit card website. I didn't see much of an added convenience of doing it on Pageonce.

Security
Pageonce has good security measures in place to keep your finances secure. You can't transfer money using Pageonce, so no one else can move your money through this service either. All your account info is kept secure. The site logs you out automatically if you leave the computer idle for a few minutes. And the site is VeriSign Secured (i.e., tested and approved by Norton) and TrustE approved.

Black or Red
The level of detail any one person wants or needs regarding their personal finance is largely a matter of preference. The "right" financial app for you depends on your total net worth, the way you budget your money, level of debt, spending habits, and history of paying bills on time and in full. While Pageonce isn't capable of doing very much, it does show exactly—and no more than—what some people need: account balances, upcoming due dates for bills, net worth.

My hunch, however, is that most people need more guidance and insight into where they spend their money day in and day out. If all you want is the big picture of your financial situation and the ability to pay bills in a pinch, Pageonce works as advertised, although it has more valuable as a mobile app. For everyone else, Mint has more answers about what to actually do with your money and debt.