Review: 3 online services that track your spending

NEW YORK (AP) - My approach to tracking my spending has traditionally been to wait for credit card bills to come, then (hopefully) pay them off. Three new online services promise to help you do a better job of tracking as you buy.

All three services scan electronic receipts you get by email for details such as products, merchant and price. Two of them even handle paper receipts sent in by camera phone.

Once the receipts are in the system, you can visit the service’s website and pull details on a particular purchase. Copies of email and paper receipts are kept, so you can chuck the originals. In some cases, you can filter purchases, so you can choose to see only the ones from Best Buy or fast-food restaurants, for instance.

Each service has good features, but none of them offer a complete solution. Which one is right for you? That will depend on your shopping habits and your needs.

_ Slice

This free service automatically sifts through your Gmail or Yahoo account and looks for email receipts. It’s familiar with those from more than 1,000 merchants. It’ll tell you whether an item has been delivered yet, and it’ll give you a link to that merchant’s return policy. In some cases, it’ll even tell you the last day you can return an item.

Slice tries to be complete by including digital downloads, phone apps and Netflix DVD shipments. But it failed to account for the use of a gift certificate and a free shipping promotion through Amazon. It also missed bus tickets, groceries and an order from Macy's.

If Slice misses something, you can forward email receipts for processing, though it doesn’t always know what to do.

Changes promised in the next month or so should address some of my gripes. Now, you have to forward a receipt to your Gmail or Yahoo account first, then forward it to Slice from there. Not only is that awkward, it also means you need a Gmail or Yahoo account. Slice will soon let you forward from any account.

If you bought something at a physical store, you’re out of luck. There’s no way to manually add items or scan paper receipts.

Once everything’s in Slice, you can review what you bought at a glance. By clicking on boxes to the left, you can filter your purchases based on attributes such as where you bought it or whether you’ve returned it. You can use that to find out what movie tickets you bought through Fandango and how much you spent on them. By typing “Harry Potter” into a search box, you get all the Harry Potter books, DVDs, movie tickets and digital downloads regardless of the merchant.

Coming soon will be the ability to edit price and other details.

Slice also finds tracking numbers in your email and checks FedEx and other websites to tell you when to expect your package. For merchants with price guarantees, Slice will also alert you to price drops so you can make a claim. Slice is alone among the three services I tested in offering this.

Slice is a record of your digital commerce and is a good option if you rarely buy things in person.

_ Lemon

Story Continues →

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.