If we want to know, once and for all, how much money we have in order to hold control over our future, at least in a financial sense, we need first to aggregate all our data. Aggregating our financial data is the key to a successful management of our money. When we see the whole picture we always make the better and informed financial decisions.

Manual aggregation

Usually, financial data aggregation is done by periodically gathering all the different data sources we have, such as bills paid, bank statements, credit cards statements, investment portfolios values, loans and insurance. This process can be extremely tedious as it takes long to do it manually or even with the help of a spreadsheet app. For most of us this is an excuse for not aggregating at all and so leading us to inaccurate or even wrong financial decisions.

Online aggregation services

As of 2016 a few personal financial aggregators exist in the market. They prove helpful for many to understand better their money. Normally the aggregator takes care of connecting to the financial institution over the internet to fetch the data. This data is then displayed via a friendly user interface like a website or app. For many of us, one main restriction these aggregators have is that they can only aggregate data from a limited amount of financial institutions. Normally these institutions are the mainstream institutions in a few countries such as USA and Canada, leaving the rest of the world and users of smaller financial institutions without the aggregation service.

Another existing concern with most aggregators relates to privacy. Many people report that they are afraid of handing their financial institutions credentials and data to be used and stored by the aggregation company, or by a subcontractor of the company. This continues to be the case even when most aggregation companies promise high data security standards.

Build your own aggregator

An alternative, a more flexible and private solution is to have our personal aggregator running in our own computer whenever we need. As of 2016, Geltbox Money is the only personal financial software that allows people in any country to create a financial downloader for all their financial websites. This way the aggregation process is created and automated in the user's own computer a thing never possible before. As opposed to online aggregation services with Geltbox we can not only be in control of our financial data but also of our online connections and credentials, since we can decide if we want to store or where in our computer.

For those of us who prefer to import data manually, Geltbox Money allows file import of many types and even manual data entering. The software requires a password to encrypt and protect the data which can be stored in the hard drive or in a usb memory stick.

The word “Geltbox” means money box, so once all our data is in it we can clearly see spending to cut and income trends, set budgets and analyse investments and loans. Customized reports can be printed or sent to persons we trust.