Mobile Ministry Magazine

This application is one of my rant 'n' rave items.

SplashMoney is yet another component of SplashWallet from SplashData, and is aimed at being a mobile financial manager. And boy, does it deliver...

Just like its sister app SplashID, it comes in a dual package: a handheld utility and a syncable desktop companion. Both are full-fledged and combine to give the user the ability to manage financial matters on the go.

To start, SplashMoney serves as a secure, password-protected repository of your sensitive data. Each account you have can be entered by type and account number. In this sense, it is the complete financial ledger; you can input financial transactions as they occur. Instead of carrying a check register, you can do it electronically on your smartphone, as this is a complete check Register.

Now, what really sets SplashMoney apart is its online capabilities. SplashMoney, on both the desktop and the handheld (with online access), has the ability to go online and retrieve complete banking information from some major banks. This is a very useful feature for a few reasons. If you bank with an institution on the list, you can set up the account automatically over-the air if you know your weblogin information. Also, with the view transactions feature, you can balance every transaction from these banks, and check them against entries you made yourself. To expand a bit, I seamlessly converted all my banking information to the electonic sheet, and I was good to go in minutes.

When I say complete, I do mean complete. The Budget feature allows you to create and maintain your budget within the device. The budget utility is integrated with the transactions, so you can easily keep track of your overall financial picture. The Reports feature allows you to summarize all the info in easy-to-understand textual information or pie charts (I really loved this). These reports and color-coordinated pie-charts can be printed.

Syncing the handheld with the desktop is independent of the Blackberry Desktop Manager.

I'd love to see the list of online banks increase, even though the list does arguably include every major bank there is. The ability to share databases in a seamless manner between, say, a couple would be a nice enhancement.

All in all, despite my experience with this software on another platform, I was just as impressed. I am an unabashed fan. The features can be expanded beyond just personal finance; I used it to create a mock ministry budget that I could have with me at all times.

SplashMoney is available on every major mobile platform (and for Windows ) at the SplashWallet site. Of course, there is a 30-day trial and a 60-day money back guarantee.

Labels: BlackBerry, review, software, SplashData

I was just over at Palm Addict and saw that SplashNews has been released. It is a free RSS reader program (ad supported). Looks kinda neat and you can download right to your device by going to http://splashdata.com/splashnews/

Being that I am on the road a lot lately, RSS is proving to be a really neat way for me to get news and other info. What would be a nice implementation of RSS though would be an RSS feed of my church's newsletter. I think that would be a really simple way for people to get on board with RSS on any mobile device, and then also have a simple means to share in what is going on. Sure, the number of people who read RSS feeds versus the total number of people online is small; but this is a case where the tech can be usable and simply so.

Labels: mobile, SplashData, usability