Barclays is adding new functionality to its online banking to help customers understand their spending, manage budgets and set savings goals.
Barclays Money Tools is currently available to Premier Banking customers, but will roll out to all Barclays online banking customers towards the end of the month. When available to you, it can be activated from the Feature Store.
According to Barclays, Money Tools has the following aims:
- To give the customer detailed information about their spending habits
- To give the customer access to their historical income and spending breakdown over the last 13 months
- To allow the customer to take control of their spending by setting budgets
- To help customers plan for the future by setting savings goals
As with other PFM (personal finance management) tools, your spending and income are automatically categorised, and you get a graphical view of the breakdown:
You can also compare your money in versus money out by month, up to the previous 13 months, showing you the difference between what you’re earning and spending:
To help with budgeting, you can keep track of how much you’ve spent in each category, to see if you need to cut back in certain areas during the current month:
And to aid saving, you can set up savings goals and track your progress towards those goals:
Here’s a video of Barclays Money Tools in action:
It’s worth mentioning that there is no aggregation of non-Barclays accounts here, it’s purely data from your Barclays accounts which you’ll see in Money Tools, so it won’t give you the full view of your finances.
That said, the features it provides look useful, and previous experience of Barclays has given the impression that it is one of the most innovative banks when it comes to online banking, and these tools should help it continue to improve its online banking experience.