A few months back, we added the ability of using Google Gears to store your private data offline (i.e., on the hard disk of your computer) to provide secure and automatic synchronization with your bank.

Today, we have extended the support for our beloved Safari users as well. Safari v3.1+ users can store their authentication information locally within their browser, and synchronize their bank accounts without ever having to share their username/password with our server.

Safari users do NOT need to install Google Gears or any other extension, since Safari has added support for client-side database storage (conforming to the new HTML5 standard)

You can read more about secure synchronization via offline data storage here.

We have added some new and useful reporting tools to the Expense analysis page:

• Summary view
  
  The summary view gives you a quick snapshot of your financial situation. It shows your categorized income and expenses for the selected period, and also shows how your net worth has evolved during this time.
• Cash flow projections
  Financial planning is not just about analyzing your past spending, but being more proactive and planning out how the future is going to look like. To help you picture what the future has in hold for you, we have introduced the ability to project your net balance at a future point of time based on bill reminders setup by you.

  

Hope you like the new changes! :)

We released a new look for our analysis page, with bigger, intuitive and more interactive charts:

• The pie chart is labeled “in-place”, so you don’t need to roll your eye-balls over to another part of the page to figure out what tag a particular slice represents
• A bar chart beneath the pie chart shows the income v/s expenditure trend for the particular tag you want to dig into
• A slider makes it smooth to go back and forth in periods of time (For those who remember, this slider is a MUCH improved version of the one we had back in June last year.)

Analyzing and understanding where your money is going is the first step towards good financial health. We hope our analysis tools are helping you realize your financial goals, more efficiently than ever before.

We have introduced two new features catering to the needs of our fast growing international userbase:

• Multiple currency support: Each financial account can be associated with a different currency. If you have an account back in your home country, or if you travel a lot within different countries, this is just what you have been waiting for! :)
• Foreign language support: Buxfer is available in 20 languages – English, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, Chinese, and many more. Login to your account and help us translate the site into your language.

With the iPhone due for a worldwide launch, we have localized even our iPhone app. Check it out at http://i.buxfer.com

A while back, we had released support for international financial institutions with our Firefox extension. Now, with support for multiple currencies and local languages, Buxfer is the complete solution for your financial needs … anywhere in the world!

We have been working hard to provide fully automatic synchronization for a broader set of financial institutions. Last night we took a big step forward in this direction. Buxfer now supports fully automatic and secure synchronization with any financial institution in the world. Well, at least the ones that let you download statements in Quicken/MS Money format.

For around 300 institutions, we already supported synchronization via our web interface. However, you had to login and manually synchronize each account. We now provide you with two options for automatic synchronization:

• Automatic sync every night: You can choose to encrypt and store your username/password on our server, and your account will be automatically synchronized every night.
• Automatic sync on every login: You can store your username/password offline on your computer using Google Gears. Every time you login, new transactions will be automatically downloaded into your account.

For institutions that can not be synced from the web interface, we have released Firebux, a Firefox add-on which automates the process of downloading your bank statement and uploading it into your Buxfer account.

• Automatic: Show Firebux once how to download a statement from your bank’s website, and thereafter Firebux will do it automatically
• Secure: Store private data securely on your computer, and never share it with our servers
• Convenient: Quickly access account balances, analysis charts and budgets

We are very pleased to announce that you can now access your Buxfer data and analytics programatically with our REST API.

So, what can you do with the API?

• You can create a widget to automatically update your account balances on your desktop every 15 minutes. Simply send the following request periodically and you are done!
  

  https://www.buxfer.com/api/accounts.xml

• Perhaps, you want to look at your analysis pie chart, but you want to restrict analysis to your credit card account. Just type in the following and out comes a pie-chart! Tweak the URL to your heart’s wish, and get near-instanteneous analytics!
  

  https://www.buxfer.com/api/analysis.html?accountName=Mastercard

  

• Mash up your financial data with other services out there on the web! In the previous example, we used Google’s Chart API to produce compelling visualizations. You can do so with tons of other services to create useful tools.

So get creative and start hacking!

Need more info?

• Read the API overview
• Understand the security issues
• Dig into the complete documentation
• Get started with sample clients in Perl, Python, Ruby and PHP.

Like all things, we think this is only a first step; please let us know whether you can build interesting applications using the API. If not, let us know which API calls you would like to be added, and which cut out to keep the API lean.