Mint, the free personal finance app from Intuit, is receiving an update today, adding more automated features like subscription tracking and new “insights” to keep you informed where your money is spent, Fast Company reports. Mint’s new features may bring it more in line with the competition from banks and companies like Google that have been nipping at its heels with built-in budget tracking features and other services over the years.
Mint’s main function is tracking spending by automatically sorting transactions based on type. By connecting a checking or savings account, Mint can start combing through purchases to see how much is spent in categories like groceries, electronics, or gas. From there, you can create a budget by setting a limit for each category, and Mint can see when you go over or how much you have left to spend for the month. Mint’s automatic categorization isn’t perfect, but it does save time in comparison to manually labeling each transaction.
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The new features in today’s update (arriving first for the iOS app) bring elements of the web version of Mint over to mobile. In the updated Mint app, users will be able to batch edit labels for transactions and view monthly spending in comparison to the previous year. Mint is also gaining the ability to automatically track subscriptions and inform users when prices go up. Intuit is also starting to integrate TurboTax with Mint, beginning with tracking this year’s tax refund. Intuit hopes to allow Mint information to transfer back to TurboTax at some point in the future to make using the software to do taxes a bit easier, according to Fast Company’s report.
These changes can seem minor, but keeping up with the features of other personal finance apps like Digit, online banks like Simple, and offerings from larger institutions like Chase or Wells Fargo is a big part of keeping Mint relevant. Competition has started coming from outside the worlds of finance and banking as well. Google’s recently revamped version of Google Pay combines the peer-to-peer payments and card wallet the app originally offered with a bunch of Mint-like features for tracking spending. Meanwhile, Apple offers tracking for spending for Apple Card owners in the Apple Wallet app.
The Mint update should hit iPhones today, with an Android release to come in “about a month.” If you’re curious about some other solid apps for budgeting, you can check out some of The Verge’s favorite picks here.
