countabout.com

What is CountAbout?

CountAbout is a personal money management and budgeting app aimed at people who want to keep a long financial history in one place. It combines account syncing, budgeting, net worth tracking, auto-categorization and reporting, and it is subscription-supported rather than ad-supported — the site states there are no ads and no data selling. It has been around since 2013 and is built for households including couples, families, military households, civic organizations and small businesses.

What it's actually for

• Long-term record keeping: The standout feature is direct import from Quicken and Simplifi, so you can bring years or decades of transactions with you instead of starting fresh. If you've used Quicken for a long time and don't want to lose that history, this is the main reason to look at it.
• Budgeting your way: It supports both zero-based and category-based budgeting, and progress accumulates across the year rather than resetting each month. That suits goals like paying off debt or saving for a home more than a strict monthly envelope system.
• Forward planning: A projected register balance shows future account balances on any date based on scheduled transactions, and savings projections model how spending changes affect your goals.
• Learning your habits: Categorize a transaction once and it remembers the rule, so manual entry should decline over time.

Who it fits, and the trade-offs

The main trade-off is that it's a small, independent product. That means no bank ownership and no ad incentives, but it also means a narrower ecosystem than mass-market apps. It offers a 45-day free trial with no credit card required, which is unusually long and enough time to test the Quicken import before deciding.

Next step: If your deciding factor is preserving old transaction history, start the trial and attempt the Quicken or Simplifi import first — that's the feature hardest to replicate elsewhere. If you mainly want a simple monthly budget and don't care about history, a lighter free tool may be enough. You can compare options at CountAbout and see how its feature set lines up with Quicken.

How does CountAbout compare to Quicken and Simplifi for importing financial history?

CountAbout’s most distinctive import claim is that it is built to bring in long transaction histories from Quicken and Simplifi directly. Its page says it can “import decades of history from Quicken & Simplifi” and that this keeps “your financial story unbroken.” That matters if you have years of categorized transactions you do not want to reconstruct manually.

For comparison, Quicken is the incumbent desktop-and-cloud personal finance tool, and Simplifi is Quicken’s simpler, more modern budgeting app. CountAbout is positioning itself as the place to move that history into — especially for people leaving Quicken or Simplifi but wanting to keep old data.

What CountAbout emphasizes

• Direct import from Quicken and Simplifi, including long histories.
• Auto-categorization that remembers how you categorize a transaction, so repeated imports need less manual work.
• Projected register balances and savings projections, so imported history feeds into forward-looking planning.
• Ad-free, subscription-supported, and independent of a bank.

Practical trade-offs

• If your priority is preserving decades of Quicken data without starting over, CountAbout’s import story is the main reason to look at it.
• If you are already comfortable in Quicken and rely on its desktop depth, switching may not be worth it unless you want a simpler, web-based, ad-free setup.
• If you use Simplifi mainly for clean budgeting and account sync, CountAbout may appeal if you also want to carry over older history and see future balances.
• Importing from either app still deserves a test: check date ranges, categories, splits, and account balances after the transfer.

A useful next step: export a sample of your Quicken or Simplifi data and run it through CountAbout’s free trial before committing. The trial is listed as 45 days with no credit card required, which gives you enough time to verify whether the imported history actually matches what you had. You can review details at CountAbout.

Can CountAbout handle both zero-based and category-based budgeting methods?

Yes. CountAbout supports both budgeting styles, so you can choose the method that fits your household rather than being locked into one approach.

Zero-based budgeting assigns every dollar a job until income minus allocations reaches zero. It suits people who want tight control over each category and are willing to adjust frequently. Category-based budgeting sets target amounts per category and tracks spending against them, which is easier to maintain when income or expenses vary.

According to CountAbout's page, the budgeting features are designed to grow with you, and progress accumulates year-round rather than resetting each month. That matters for goals like debt payoff, a home down payment, or retirement savings, where a single month's result says little.

Who this fits

• Couples and families who need one shared view of spending and goals
• Military households with irregular or relocated finances
• Civic organizations and small businesses tracking categorized expenses
• Long-time Quicken or Simplifi users who want to keep years of history intact

Practical next step: decide which method you will actually maintain. If you dislike frequent reallocation, start category-based and revisit zero-based during a high-control month, such as after a raise or a large purchase.

If you already have years of transactions elsewhere, review the import path before committing, since preserving history is one of CountAbout's stated strengths. You can compare its plans at CountAbout.

How does CountAbout keep my financial data private and secure?

CountAbout's privacy position rests mainly on its business model: it is subscription-supported, ad-free, and states it does not sell your data. Because the company is independent and not owned by a bank, your subscription is its stated revenue source rather than advertising or data resale.

On the security side, the page describes connecting US and international accounts for automatic transaction downloads, but it does not spell out encryption standards, two-factor authentication, or data-retention practices. Treat those as questions to confirm directly before committing.

What this means in practice

If you are weighing CountAbout against a free, ad-supported budgeting app, the trade-off is straightforward: you pay a subscription instead of paying with attention and behavioral data. That matters most if you want decades of transaction history in one place, since a long, detailed record is exactly the kind of dataset data brokers find valuable.

A useful test: ask support whether account connections use read-only access, whether you can export or delete your full history, and what happens to your data if you cancel.

A concrete next step

Read the privacy policy and security page, then email support with three questions: encryption in transit and at rest, multi-factor authentication availability, and data deletion on cancellation. For comparison on how another subscription-based service handles the same issues, see YNAB and Mint.

Is CountAbout suitable for couples, families, or small businesses managing shared finances?

Yes. CountAbout is explicitly aimed at couples, families, military households, civic organizations, and small businesses, so shared-finance use is a stated target rather than an afterthought. The main draw for these groups is continuity: it imports history from Quicken and Simplifi and can keep years of transactions in one place, which matters when two people or several accounts are involved.

Where it fits well

• Couples and families: Connect US and international accounts, then let auto-categorization rules reduce duplicate manual work. If one partner handles most of the data entry, the "categorize once, remember forever" behavior lowers the ongoing burden.
• Military households: Frequent moves and multiple accounts are less disruptive when transaction history stays intact and future balances can be projected from scheduled transactions.
• Small businesses and civic organizations: Unlimited categories and splits help separate projects, funds or expense types without forcing a personal-budget structure. Detailed reporting across any date range supports review meetings and reconciliation.
• Long-term planners: Projected register balances and savings projections let you test how a change in spending affects a goal, such as an emergency fund or a home purchase.

Trade-offs to weigh

A practical next step

Before committing, list every account the household or organization uses, then check whether each can connect automatically or needs manual entry. Run the free trial with real data for a month and confirm two things: that imported history lands in sensible categories, and that a future balance projection matches what you expect. That test will tell you more than any feature list.

For general comparison, dedicated shared-budget tools such as Mint (now largely folded into Credit Karma) or YNAB take different approaches to joint budgeting, while Quicken remains the incumbent many CountAbout users migrate from. The deciding factor is usually whether preserving decades of transaction history and ad-free independence outweighs a simpler, more collaborative interface.

What features does CountAbout offer for projecting future balances and savings goals?

CountAbout approaches projections from two directions: a scheduled-transaction register and a separate savings modeler. Both live inside the same budgeting app, so the numbers you see are based on your actual accounts rather than a standalone calculator.

Projected register balance

The projected register balance shows what an account should hold on any future date. It builds that figure from the transactions you have already scheduled — recurring bills, paychecks, transfers and the like — so the projection updates as your real activity comes in. This is most useful for short-to-medium-term cash flow: checking whether a mortgage payment and a tuition bill land in the same week, or whether a credit card balance will be covered before a due date. It is not a forecast of investment returns; it is arithmetic on commitments you have already entered, which makes it only as reliable as your scheduled transactions.

Savings projections

Savings projections take the other angle: modeling how a change in spending or saving affects a goal. The page describes using it for an emergency fund, a home purchase, or retiring earlier. In practice this means you adjust a contribution or a category amount and see the effect on the timeline. Because CountAbout keeps budget progress accumulating across the year rather than resetting monthly, a savings goal stays visible as a running total instead of restarting each month — helpful if your income is irregular, as it often is for military households or small businesses.

What makes the projections work

Three supporting features do most of the heavy lifting:

• Automatic transaction sync for US and international accounts, so the underlying data stays current.
• Rules-based categorization — categorize a transaction once and CountAbout applies it again, which keeps reports and projections from drifting.
• Reporting across any date range, so you can check whether the projection is holding up against what actually happened.

Where it fits and where it doesn't

The trade-off is the same one that comes with any subscription tool in this category: you get an ad-free, independent product with no data selling, and you pay for it annually rather than through your data. The projections are only as good as the scheduled transactions and categories you maintain, so the first month takes real setup work. If you already have decades of history in Quicken or Simplifi, that setup is largely a one-time import rather than years of re-entry.

Next step: before committing, list the recurring transactions you would need to enter for the register projection to be meaningful — rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, loan payments, and income. If that list is long and mostly stable, the projection feature will earn its keep quickly. If your income and bills vary widely month to month, weigh the savings-goal side more heavily, since it depends less on precise scheduling. CountAbout offers a 45-day free trial with no credit card required, which is long enough to run one full billing cycle through the projected register and see whether it matches reality. Details are at CountAbout.