Review of Mvelopes Budget App

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I will review the budgeting app and website Mvelopes.  This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of budget apps.

Mvelopes is a budgeting website and app.  It has been a around for a while -- long enough that the most recent iteration is called Mvelopes 5.  It allows you to link your financial accounts to the software to pull in transactions.  It is not free -- there is a free trial period, but after that, you'll need to choose from one of their three price points -- $6 per month gets you essentially just access to the budgeting software, $10 per month gets you more learning and debt management tools, and $19 per month comes with a quarterly meeting with a financial coach.

I've used a variety of budgeting apps over my adulthood.  Most recently, I've switched over from using Mint for many years to YNAB.  That said, I'm always open to checking out other budgeting apps that may work better for me, for my financial mentoring clients, or for my subscribers.  One caveat is that I've only been trying Mvelopes out for a couple of weeks, so my comments will reflect that -- all interfaces get easier once you've been using them for a while.  Okay -- first let's talk about the

Set-up Process

I had some issues setting up.  I was trying to do it entirely through my phone, but it kept freezing on a certain screen, so I ended up having to go through the website to complete the process.  Obviously, this is just a one time thing, but it was annoying enough that if I hadn't been determined, it could have lost them a customer.  I really only wanted to put my credit card account in as my linked account, but Mvelopes requires a bank account with a positive balance before it will let you go forward.  This is the only software I've come across that has required that.  That shouldn't be a problem for most people; however, some folks would rather enter some accounts in manually (meaning not linked) and it won't let you do that either.  The account HAS to be linked so that Mvelopes can automatically download transactions.  The set up process seems to funnel you directly into funding your budget categories, which weren't the right ones for my needs.  I would have preferred an opportunity to set up budget categories that work better for my household before hitting the funding process, but I was able to escape out of that.

Now that I've gone through the set up process, let's talk a little about the Mvelopes

Interface

There are lots of budget apps that are fashioned after the old money in physical envelopes system that people used to use to control their spending.  EveryDollar and YNAB are both basically envelope systems.  But Mvelopes makes this metaphor the most explicit (as you can see by the name) and as a result, I think they make it easier to understand the budgeting concepts.  If you want to see your budget, you click on Envelopes and each budget line item has a little envelope icon next to it.  This helps you to understand that you are putting cash into envelopes in the app.    I also really like the way that Mvelopes deals with imported transactions that haven't been approved or categorized yet.  It holds them in an Inbox.  If you are using the app on your phone, this is the first screen that you see.  This is great since budgeters spend the majority of their time on the app categorizing transactions.  Other apps make you click through a variety of screens to get to this OR, even worse, they don't separate those new transactions from others, so you have to go through all of them to weed out the ones that need categories.  The inbox makes this simple and easy.  The home screen shows you how much money you still have to put into envelopes -- they call that your Unallocated Money, your most recent transactions, the balance of your linked accounts, and your envelopes -- which is what they call your budget view.  So, let's talk about how they set up your budget.  First, 

Budget line items

As I said before -- these are called envelopes.  I set this all up using the website view, but it's a little easier using the phone app.  Changing and creating new budget items is kind of annoying.  The process for editing one of their existing envelope details takes something like 8 clicks to get to the right place.  It also takes 7 clicks to delete an envelope.  Theoretically, once you get these all set up, you don't have interact with this process much, but it is tedious.  I have to say, I don't love the way the envelopes are displayed.  There is no drag and drop to sort manually -- envelopes are sorted alphabetically -- period.  On the phone app, you can sort by name or by balance amount, but there is no way to sort manually.  I have my budget items sorted in a specific way based loosely on frequency of use, so this would bug me.  In addition, Mvelopes doesn't allow you to use symbols in the envelope name, which I usually use to help me sort things to the top or bottom of lists.  Next let's talk about

Budget Groups

Mvelopes allows you to put your envelopes into groups, which you can collapse or expand.  The only problem is that they don't provide a group sum in the heading, so as far as I'm concerned, there's not much point of having a group.  In addition, there are several groups that cannot be altered -- you have to keep the default groups or Debt and System Envelopes.  Groups are also sorted alphabetically with no other options, so even though I don't want Debt at the top of my budget groups -- unless I name my budget group something that occurs earlier in the alphabet, that is what I will see first.  Okay -- once I got my budget items/envelopes and groups set up, the next step is to

Fund My Envelopes

There are two ways to fund or put money in your envelopes.  The first is to manually enter the amounts for each envelope -- Mvelopes calls this Funding on the Fly or Manual Fund.  The other way is to Fund based on a previously saved profile -- or a Monthly Funding Plan.  I like this feature.  If you want to decrease the money in an envelope, you can't do it through this funding view -- that is considered a transfer between envelopes, but there is a way to do this pretty easily.  I also like the Sweep Envelope feature, which seems to be only available on the website, but it allows you to take each envelope down to a zero balance.  Unfortunately, ,I couldn't get this to work for a single budget item on the website, but I think it would be really useful since I do this at the end of every month for about half of my budget items.  Now, let's talk about Mvelopes'

Budget Reports

The main budget report is the Envelopes screen.  I have to say -- I don't love this screen.  As I said, I have issues with the way Mvelopes sorts these, but beyond that, it gives you pretty limited information -- you just get the balance in the envelope, how much was funded and how much was spent that month.   There is no subtotal for the budget group and there doesn't appear to be a way to go back to previous months.  On the website, you can't click through to see any of the transactions for that budget line, but you can on the mobile app.  There are other reports on the website, but not on the app.  On the website, there is a report that only gives envelope balance, which you can total by group or just choose a single envelope.  Again, no way to see previous months.  There is a report that shows essentially the same budget info and you can change the date range and view by graph or by table.  And finally, there is a way to pull transactions by envelope, which as far as I can tell is the only way to do this on the website.  This report also allows you to export your transactions, which I think is key.  And finally, 

Categorizing Transactions

seems pretty straightforward with Mvelopes.  As I said, I love the inbox view with all of the transactions that need to be approved.  It is easy to choose an envelope to take the money out of and it handles split categories like when you buy both clothing and groceries at Target.  I like the ability to attach a receipt to the transaction and can't comment on whether the app guesses your budget category for you or remembers what you put in the last time.  It wasn't doing this for me, but I also didn't use the app for a long period of time, so it may do this once it learns your behavior.  I also like the ability to make changes to multiple transactions at one time.  By selecting them all, you can assign them all to an envelope, apply a tag to all of them, or delete them.

I found Mvelopes to be a full featured budgeting app.  It had some components that were very easy to understand and use and some that would drive me a little nuts.  Because of the envelope usage, I found it to be one of the more easy to understand platforms.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!