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What is your total outstanding debt? What is your bank balance? What proportion of your investment is in equities? It's unlikely you have a ready answer to these questions. Try again with the help of spreadsheets or your financial record.

You could still be floundering for the right response. Are your money management skills to be blamed? Not entirely. While it is possible to collate and remember certain financial details, it is difficult to integrate your records with the bank account to update every withdrawal. You cannot revise the value of your equity investments on a daily basis.

And it will take a savvy Microsoft Excel user to link investment values with a net worth calculator. Keeping track of your finances might seem like an exercise in futility, but is not. It is, however, an arduous task, one that has been made easy by the launch of several money management websites. Two such sites have been set up in the past few months, and some of the popular portals are intuitmoneymanager. com, myvault.in and arthamoney.com.

These sites organise, analyse and record everything connected to your money. Besides, you don't have to worry about spending hours on the laptop as these sites don't require daily involvement. The best part: Many sites are offering free services, at least for now.

Why Do I Need This Service?
Apart from tracking your expenses, loans, investments, credit cards, insurance cover, etc, you should know what the big picture looks like. These websites help you do both- take care of minute details as well as your financial plan.You can use the site as an aggregator of information, including income, expenses, investments, loans, insurance policies and bank accounts. You can integrate these with your bank accounts so that any withdrawal or ECS is automatically updated in your cash flow.

The sites also act as portfolio trackers and update not only the market value of your equity investments, but also factor in market action like bonus declaration for a stock. You have the option of integrating the portals with your online brokerage too. A very useful feature is the basic financial analysis, such as expense management, asset allocation and net worth calculation. You cannot, however, make a bank transaction or buy and sell shares through these sites.

How Much Does it Cost?
Perfios.com and arthamoney.com offer this service for free. However, intuitmoneymanager.com charges Rs 365 a year. Myvault.in has different packages, with the most basic, Lite, costing Rs 299 annually. The standard and premium options cost Rs 599 and Rs 999, respectively. You can also download this service on a pen drive at a higher price. It's likely that free portals will start charging for this service after they are established in the market.

Is My Financial Data Safe?
These websites do not use a common security mechanism. Perfios claims it has a "highly secure data centre" which is accessible only to "authorised personnel". It also boasts a VeriSign security certificate. Intuit has a three-level security system, according to Umang Bedi, MD, Intuit India and Emerging Markets.

"On the product front, the website is secured by VeriSign and uses https security. At the partner level, the system ensures we don't know the identity of the user. Besides, all data communication happens over an online exchange that matches the Open Financial Exchange standard adopted by over 5,000 banks," he says.

Can I Customise the Service and My Interface?
Customising service is one of the most exciting options. Do you often overshoot your entertainment budget? Set a trigger that reminds you when you are dangerously close to exhausting the limit. Or modify your alert to know when your bank balance falls below a specific level. However, as the global portal mint.com says, there is much more potential for customisation, which can include suggestions for better credit cards, cash rebates and travel rewards.

As for customising the interface, while the users of arthamoney.com can tweak the default home page, alerts and expenses, perfios.com allows customers to "slice and dice" data using customised reports.

Will I Still Need an Adviser?
Despite the customising, the sites cannot compete with the services provided by a financial adviser, says Himanshu Kohli, Founder-Partner of Client Associates. "The standard formats may not allow you to find out, say, the beneficiary ratio or juxtapose short-term and long-term wealth," he says.

Moreover, the data is used for several computations, but the results are not interpreted. Nor do they help in selecting products. However, this doesn't take away from the service as it is not mandated to advise, only to crunch numbers. As Kohli says, it still performs 25-30 per cent of the work of a financial planner.

MONEY MANAGERS vs PORTFOLIO TRACKERS

• Most online money managers double up as portfolio trackers and provide more in-depth tracking.
• Online money managers score over portfolio trackers in the range of services they offer. Some portfolio trackers, like myiris.com, are closing the gap by recording every transaction via a cash-enabled account.
• A distinct disadvantage with money managers is that they do not provide advisory services. However, portfolio trackers conduct portfolio analysis and offer access to research reports and customised watch-lists for equity investments.
• One such portfolio tracker that provides comprehensive analysis is valueresearchonline.com. It classifies investments by sectors, asset-class balances and reviews the performance of your mutual funds in different time periods.
• Online money managers are ideal if you want consolidated information about your entire financial plan. Opt for portfolio trackers if you only want to keep tabs on your equity investments and need some guidance on it.