Folks, we have extensively redesigned the website, in an effort to make it look better and more fun to use. We have a brand new logo, and a pleasing blue color scheme.

We also made several usability enhancements alongwith the UI redesign. In particular, we have vastly simplified entering transactions manually, and being able to search through transactions effectively.

Let us know what you like and don’t like!

We have introduced RSS feeds for your transactions. So, those of you think email is too passé as a notification mechanism should be happy now! We will soon add more customization to the feeds — so that you can tailor it to get notified about exactly the information you are interested in.

You can find the feed settings on the Transaction History page.

In addition to OFX (MS Money, Quicken) files, we have now added support for QIF files. So, for users banking with technologically challenged financial institutions, all is not lost :) Download your data as a .QIF file, upload and understand your expenses using Buxfer’s analysis tools.

Test-drive Buxfer before inviting friends: With Buxfer, you can create contacts without specifying email addresses. So you can try out Buxfer, see how bill-splitting works and how Buxfer makes it really convenient to track your shared and personal expenses at one place. And after you are convinced of Buxfer’s utility, you can add your friend’s email address to the contact you just created. No need to spam your friends if you just want to try out Buxfer.

We are committed to making Buxfer as easy to access as we can. We already supported Google, Yahoo and Facebook authentication. We have now added AOL and OpenID to the list — you can use your AOL or OpenID accounts to access Buxfer. Learn More

In addition, we have made several improvements to our interface to enhance usability. You can now apply tags, cancel or edit multiple transactions — all from the transaction history view. No need to visit each individual transaction page to make those changes!

Invite friends in bulk :) Select friends from your Gmail, Orkut or Yahoo address books and let them know about Buxfer! Try it TODAY!!

• A slick and efficient UI for reporting transactions: Reporting transactions has become faster and simpler. The common case of one guy paying the bill, and 3-4 guys sharing equally can now be reported with a single click.
• Auto-tag your transactions: No need to manually tag each transaction. With our new AutoTag Wizard, you can set up simple rules which determine when particular tags will be applied to transactions (e.g., apply the tag ‘utilities’ to all transactions matching ‘elec bill’) So you don’t need to think about tags everytime you enter a new transaction. More tags, less work, better categorization of transactions, and a better analysis of expenses. At Buxfer, you can have your cake and eat it too! Read more about this feature
  
• Share tags with other participants: Help each other categorize transactions with shared tags. Type in shared:tagName to share tags with friends who were involved in that transaction. Read more about this feature
• And there’s more stuff: Set your default timezone to where you stay (and not where our server stays!). Upload attachments to transactions via URLs. Plus a bunch of UI improvements.

We want to make it really easy to report expenses, really easy to categorize them, and really easy to analyze them. Hope you find these features useful. And more importantly, enjoy using them!

Buxfer just got techcrunch’d! Nick Gonzalez writes:

Buxfer is deeper than Billmonk, letting you track and tag out your expenses with friends and groups over time. The groups option makes it great for managing debts between roommates or within a club. Buxfer goes further (than Billmonk), letting you analyze your expenses over time through a Google finance-style pie chart with adjustable time frame. Buxfer has gone to great lengths to make importing transactions as easy as possible.

The article is the first to publicly mention our collaboration with Paul Graham and co.’s YCombinator. We received seed funding from YC a couple of months ago, and moved from Pittsburgh to the Bay area (yes, we took a break from being PhDs at CMU!) Things have been moving rapidly since we arrived at YC, working closely with Paul, Trevor, Jessica and the other YC startups. Couldn’t get better for us!

We have rolled out a couple new features which should make managing and understanding your shared expenses easier.

Keeping track of your monthly expenses has just become easier. With Buxfer’s transaction filters, you can now view monthly summaries of expenses you had and the money others owe you. You can also filter transactions based on your tags and based on other participants. As always, let us know if you like the new view and what else we can do to improve it further.

For users who need to itemize their expenses, Buxfer now has an easy solution. Attach copies of your bills to Buxfer transactions so that there is no shred of doubt about whether you entered information correctly or not!

• Integration with Google accounts: In addition to Yahoo and Facebook, you can use your Google account to login to Buxfer. Check it out!

• Automatically repeat transactions: You can schedule transactions that repeat periodically (such as monthly rent, utility bills, weekly lunch meetings, etc.) for automatic repetition. No need to manually copy these transactions again and again. Moreover, Buxfer can send you a reminder email about these transactions. So you won’t ever forget paying up your bills on time! Read more on how this feature works …

• Buxfer now allows deletion of contacts and groups that you no longer interact with. Such contacts and groups will not be shown by default. However, we don’t want you to accidentally delete a contact or a group that owes you money or gets money from you (don’t forget your debts :-) So, deletion is permanent only if you have a zero balance with the group or contact. Otherwise, you can restore the deleted contact or group.
• The groups that you hang out with change over time. Buxfer now allows more control over group membership. Suppose John can no longer make it to the bridge club, but new members Sarah and Jessica can. John can either leave the “bridge club” group, or ask the moderator to delete him from the “bridge club” group. The moderator can add Sarah and Jessica to the group.
• After a lot of thought, we finally decided to allow users to create “dummy” contacts. A dummy contact is a contact which has no associated email address (everything else is the same). You can add a dummy contact by just entering a name for your friend. There are two use-cases which convinced us of the utility of this feature: firstly, John may like to track expenses with Tom without informing him - he may be socially uncomfortable doing so. Secondly, many a times, there is a single “most responsible person” in the group who keeps track of all group expenses, and others are lazy enough to not bother. In such a case, the responsible person can create dummy accounts for all the other members.

Finally, we love hearing from you. So we have made submitting feedback even easier. Tell us about what you like about Buxfer, what you hate about it, and what Buxfer should do to make tracking expenses even simpler.

We have been receiving lots of feature requests from our users, and tonight we released some of the most in-demand ones.

• Download transaction history: You can now download all (or some) of your transactions in a CSV format. After all, it is your data.
• Delete contacts: Deletion of contacts with whom you have no shared transactions has been enabled.
• Delete groups and group members: It is also possible to delete groups with no transactions, or members who are not involved in any transaction within a group.
• Track amount paid: You can now easily see what is the amount you paid in each transaction - extremely convenient for verifying that you have reported all transactions appearing in your credit card statements on Buxfer.

You will also notice many small changes here and there, which we hope will add up to a much richer and enjoyable experience for you.

We love to hear from our users, that’s what keeps us going. So please keep sending in your comments, and be assured that we are working tirelessly to give you exactly what you need!