I have been using Mint.com for a couple of weeks now and have found one very bad annoyance on a particular feature and this annoyance might just motivate me to look elsewhere.
I posted on Mint’s support forum about an issue I was having with the auto renaming and categorizing feature. After posting, I noticed others are having the exact same problem.
The Feature
Mint.com has a feature to rename transactions to something more memorable and help auto categorize transactions for you – which should translate to less work. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Renaming
It makes sense to rename a complicated string that probably contains extra information to something more simple.
For example, take the following transaction name
CHECKCARD 12/06 FRY' S ELECTRONICS # IRVING TX
In my case, I want it to simply read “Fry’s Electronics” without checkcard, date, etc.
Or this one
VICTORIA' S SECR430 12/06 #034050574020 PURCHASE 3652 IRVING MALL IRVING TX
In my case, I want it to simply read “Victoria’s Secret” without location and transaction number.
Mint.com renames transactions as a MINT NAME, then you can set a rule to rename the MINT NAME as YOUR NAME.
MINT NAME and YOUR NAME
Auto Categorizing
The next logical step after you rename is to automatically put the transaction into the correct category. Victoria’s Secret is most likely going to be clothing (for my wife, not for me) and Fry’s Electronics is probably something to plug in or possibly a cd or dvd.
Since budgeting is all about setting a budget amount for a category, its nice if the finance software can mostly automatically put items in the correct category with few exceptions to the rule. If I shop at Walmart, it may be necessary to change the category for an item I purchase at Walmart depending on what I bought. You can not expect everything to be automatic. If I shop at the cafe located inside of Fry’s Electronics, I may need to change the category manually. These are reasonable expectations. I however, do expect my software to always remember that Victoria’s Secret is clothing – and never get it wrong unless I say a transaction is something else.
The Problem
As stated before, Mint.com renames transactions as a MINT NAME, then you can set a rule to rename the MINT NAME as YOUR NAME.
Both Victoria’s Secret and Fry’s Electronics have the MINT NAME of “Irving”, the city in Texas in which I live. There is also a feature to always rename Irving as Something Else and always categorize as Something.
Not thinking, I checked this box. As a result, when I attempted to set a rule for either Fry’s or Victoria’s Secret, it changed the other.
As a workaround, I set the rule to change MINT NAME (Irving) to YOUR NAME of “Frys Electronics or Victorias Secret”. This seemed to be a weird but sorta workable solution for 15 minutes until I noticed that a 3rd place “Argentina Bakery” was also named the MINT NAME of Irving.
The worse part of this is that it has also changed the Categories the transactions fell into. So now my budget is inaccurate in several categories. Since I noticed the Argentina Bakery also had the MINT NAME of Irving, the list of transactions to fix is growing.
Other bad MINT NAMES on my list so far include Five, Four Season, Gateway, and Michael. Mint incorrectly guessed Gateway computers instead of Gateway Church and thought Michael was the craft store instead of the credit repair company I use. Four Seasons it thought was the hotel chain instead of the donut shop we frequent.
Mint.com Transaction naming
The Solution
My request is to change how mint determines the MINT NAME. There should never be MINT NAME that is too general to apply to many different businesses. There should never be a MINT NAME like Irving.
Another solution is to keep the MINT NAME the same, but give users a choice if they want to use the MINT NAME or the transaction name to determine the YOUR NAME. For about half of them, I would probably use the MINT NAME and the other half I would use my own user defined logic. Allow users to use wild cards (*) for better control.
CHECKCARD 12/06 FRY' S ELECTRONICS # IRVING TX
[*FRY*ELECT*] would always be [Fry’s Electronics]
VICTORIA' S SECR430 12/06 #034050574020 PURCHASE 3652 IRVING MALL IRVING TX
[*VICTOR*SEC*] would always be [Victoria’s Secret]
Final Thought
After finding this issue with Mint.com, I can not recommend it any longer. It is a disappointment that I found others with the same issue on their forums and the issue dates back over 11 months ago!
After only 2 weeks, is it already time to look elsewhere for finance software?
Jared