US-based gobal business and financial management solutions for consumers and small and mid-sized businesses Intuit, has launched its first software product developed specifically for consumers in India.
Intuit Money Manager is a Web-based personal finance tool that promises to help users plan, track, manage and grow their money through a single window; it consolidates personal finances from multiple bank accounts and investments, tracks and categorizes expenses, prepares and calculates taxes and provides insights into the health of the customer’s personal finances.
The product comes five years after the $ 3.2 billion company set up a Bangalore-based development centre – and used this resource to build key elements of its portfolio of products, including the flagship US tax planner TurboTax, the stand-alone QuickBooks Customer Manager and the Quicken series of personal and small-biz accounting tools.
To beef up the resources of Money Manager, Intuit has chosen to leverage the live investment information at leading Indian financial services portal Moneycontrol.com. The product can be downloaded for a free 90-day trial period from the portal which opens with an Intuit promo these days – or direct from http://www.intuitmoneymanager.com/ . After this period, those who chose to continue using the money manager are required to pay approximately Rs 1 a day -- but there is an introductive offer of Rs 245 a year.
Unveiling the product, Umang Bedi, Managing Director, Intuit India – Global Business Division, said, “ People spend less tnan 1 percent of the time they spend on earning their money, to manage it. We aim to help users, manage their money, more easily, efficiently by showing them all their relevant information in just one place, leading them to better decisions and saving significant time. Users can also track their spending trends, showing them how they can save more money. Products like this can help people save more money, and stimulate the economy by leading to more informed spending decisions.”
Mr. Vittal Anandkumar, Head – Marketing, Intuit India who demonstrated the product added:, “Intuit Money Manager assists salaried individuals who want to know how and where they spend their money. Their entire financial picture appears on just one screen, eliminating the need to log onto multiple Web sites. And it helps them set goals, create budgets and monitor investments, all in one place.”
The product has been localized for Indian users – by including drop down menus of all leading Indian banks, Mutual Fund players, credit card agencies etc – and by integrating it tightly with Indian Income Tax forms and rules.
Our take: Intuit Money Manager is intuitive, reasonably comprehensive with regard to banks and standard credit, loan and investment players and easy to use. We believe it will be best appreciated by salaried Indian families, who juggle 2-3 credit cards, 2-3 bank accounts, multiple tax saving instruments like provident fund, fixed deposits, mutual funds; pay rent or own property – and who pay Rs 30,000 or more in income tax. If the bulk of your spending is in cash and you don’t have multiple accounts to manage, then the tool will involve manual entry that may not be worth the effort – and clearly Money Manager does not address this end of the consumer space. The menus seem angled at individual consumers and households – and we think it is not very suitable in its present form for businesses. Intuit probably has an offering for SMEs in India in the works.