Here is a financial management tool that can help you stay on track.
WESABE
Wesabe is part money management tool, part community. Wesabe believe that one person’s good financial decision can be leveraged to an entire community. Experts call this collective intelligence. And Wesabe have a whole community of people reaping the rewards of it every day. Find solutions to your money problems… you’re not alone in wanting a better financial life.1
About the Firefox Uploader
The Firefox uploader plug-in lets you automatically upload any bank or credit card account by letting you ‘record’ the steps that you take to download your account information manually. Once you’ve created the ‘script’ you can automatically download your transactions from your bank and upload them to Wesabe by clicking a button in the Firefox toolbar.
Since Wesabe can automate any download this way, it means that, essentially, all banks are supported. (There are a couple of caveats to that, that involve files Wesabe can’t parse, and several situations where certain security configurations makes it so you never do the same thing twice on the site.)
The manual upload process also gets easier when you install the Firefox uploader. This is because it modifies the dialog that appears when you download your files from your bank, allowing you to send the file directly to Wesabe rather than having to save it to your hard drive and then log in to your Wesabe account and manually upload the file – that makes manual uploading much faster.
Installing and Removing the Firefox Uploader
Go to the Firefox Uploader page using Firefox 2.0 or later. You’ll see a link to install the Wesabe Uploader for Firefox, and full directions for installing the extension.
To remove the Firefox extension, be sure you’re in the Firefox application, then select Tools > Add-ons. This opens the Firefox Add-ons window, where you can select the Wesabe Add-on, and then click Uninstall. Signing in to Wesabe with the Firefox Uploader
To sign in, you need to click the W icon in the toolbar, and enter your Wesabe username and password in the pop-up. The W icon will turn green to indicate that you’re signed in.
Your accounts will be automatically updated as long as you’re signed in. You can also manually update your accounts by clicking the green W icon, and selecting either Accounts > [account name], or Accounts > Upload all now…. Financial Institutions Supported by the Firefox Uploader
The manual uploader and the Firefox uploader both use the exact same list of financial institutions, so any bank that you see in the manual list is also available in the Firefox list.
Because of the way that the Firefox uploader works however, a new financial institution isn’t available the first time the uploader is launched. If there are new financial institutions, they load at the end of the session (this is so that the initial loading time doesn’t seem unreasonably long). If you re-start the Firefox uploader, the list will be updated.
Firefox Uploader Code
The Wesabe Uploader for Firefox extension is under the GPL version 2.0 license.
The code to the Firefox extension is in the extensions/wesup@wesabe.com directory of your Firefox profile directory. Unfortunately, the location of the profile directory varies by OS – take a look at http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile if you’re not sure where to look.
You can also right-click on the Install Now button and Save as… to get the Wesabe-uploader.xpi onto you file system. The XPI format is really just a zip encoding – you can use winzip or any other decompression tool to unzip the Wesabe-uploader.xpi file and inspect the code.
Firefox Password Security
Due to valid concerns about the Firefox password manager and storage of bank credentials Wesabe aren’t employing the Firefox password manager – a malicious extension would be able to exploit any data stored there.
With this in mind Wesabe employed an encryption library (AES with a 256 bit keysize) that’s widely and successfully used in the javascript development community. Your key is your Wesabe password and not Firefox’s master password. The key is never stored on disk, and it is the only way to decrypt the encrypted scripts.
Firefox Uploader Troubleshooting
First, check to see if the Firefox extension is installed, by looking to see if there’s a little grey W icon to the left of your address bar. If not, you’ll need to install the Firefox uploader (which is an extension to Firefox).
If the icon is there, click on it and sign in with your Wesabe username and password. Then click on it again, and then click Add an account from the dropdown menu. Firefox Uploader Stops Working
Occasionally the Firefox uploader stops working. It seems to be related to a state that Firefox gets into after a crash. The easiest thing to do is to uninstall the uploader from Firefox, restart Firefox with a new session, and then re-install the plug-in. Firefox Uploader Using Wrong Wesabe Password
If the Firefox uploader is having trouble connecting with Wesabe, it’s possible that Firefox has the wrong password stored for the Wesabe account. Here’s how to check:
- Open the Preferences panel: Firefox > Preferences (Mac); Edit > Preferences (Windows).
- Click on the security icon at the top of the panel.
- Under Passwords, click Show Passwords. Another window opens with a list of all your stored usernames.
- Click Show Passwords in the window, and confirm in the dialog.
The password that you have stored for Wesabe should be visible – if it’s incorrect, you can remove it and start again.
1 All information on this page (c) Wesabe.