Using Mint for Small Business: Pros, Cons and More

Are you looking for a good budgeting tool to cater to your small business needs? If yes, keep on reading!

There are a plethora of budgeting apps available right now but one of the best out of them is Mint. Mint helps in keeping a track of your account balance and observing your spending habits. It can also be used to get a free credit score. Mint became one of the most famous personal finance software and budgeting apps in a short period.

Basically, this budgeting tool provides your full-fledged financial information in one place. It’s rightly said, you could never have too much assistance when it comes to budgeting. Irrespective of the type of spenders, everybody needs an extra pair of eyes to look at their finances closely. And Mint is that extra pair of eyes for you.

Wondering what this article is all about?

Well, this detailed article will talk about – What is Mint? Is mint safe? And is mint good for small businesses? If any of these questions intrigue you, stick on!

What is Mint?

Mint is a personal finance software built by Intuit. It provides user-friendly financial planning along with tracking tools. The primary function of Mint is to connect to all your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and likes.

Mint for Small Business

Simply put, this tool pulls out all of your financial information in one place for you to have a look at. It automatically classifies your transactions. That helps you to see where your finance is going without putting in any effort.

It navigates transactions, reports, bills, goals, budgets, investments, and other ways to save. From its overview page, users can view recent transactions, account balance, pending bills, financial reminders, activity alerts, and much more.

Once you sign up on Mint, you have to link your financial accounts with your Mint account. It links with the majority of financial institutions to keep an eye on your accounts, investments, loans, and related subjects. Mint can also set reminders for your bills and track them easily. With all this don’t forget to use the free credit score feature.

As you link your financial accounts, Mint will automatically download months of data. At first, this can take a little long but all the future updates will happen automatically.

With its straightforward and convenient features, Mint stands strong. However, due to the absence of the account reconciliation feature, it becomes unusable for those who need this feature most. 

Mint has a family of 20 million users. Its App Store rating is 4.7 out of 5 which makes it one of the highest-rated applications of all time. And the Play Store rating is 4.6 out of 5.

Is mint safe?

Many people keen to manage their finances without much hassle have chosen Mint for its easy, simple, and free budgeting services. But, with every app that deals in finances, the major question that arises is how safe it is.

Coming to Mint, is it safe?

To answer in one word, Yes! Mint is all safe to use. The safety of financial data is imperative and can’t be taken lightly.

Mint has many advanced and innovative security features, encompassing TouchID, passwords, and multi-factor authentication for account access. It has the backup and assurance of Intuit – financial services firm, having thousands of dedicated security personnel.

Like Paypal, Mint collects bank accounts, bills, financial statements, and payment accounts. This might bother some, as security breaches and hacking risks can’t be overlooked.

But what if a hacker gets access to user information? Then what?

If a user’s information is hacked,  the hacker will not be able to do much as Mint is created as a read-only format. What does that even mean? In simple words, it means even if an account and its information are exposed, hackers can’t do anything until usernames and full account information are displayed.  Mint does this by sending a token to the connected financial institution to receive all user information in a read-only format at the time the user signs up.

With that said, users should move forward with sharing their bank account information at their own risk. But today there are an array of banking-level security measures in place to keep user information safe.

Is Mint good for small businesses?

Many people dream to start their own business at some point or another. However, it’s easier said than done. If you’re going to start your business, keep in mind the costs incurred. In the initial days, the money required to handle a small business could be quite steep. That’s why you need to budget everything.

If you are already operating a small business you know what we are talking about. Don’t you? Now, we all have 24 hours in a day and these limited hours can’t be spent on tasks that could be done with the help of an app. That’s where Mint enters. Mint is a personal finance software, and budgeting tool. For a small business, it has a lot to offer.

small business owner managing finacial budget
small business owner managing finacial budget

There are 4 main costs to consider while budgeting for your small business.

  • One-time cost (for example, incorporation fees)
  • Fixed ongoing cost (for example, rent, administrative cost, website fees, etc)
  • Variable ongoing cost (for example, utilities, inventory, transportation cost, etc)
  • Additional cost (for example, decoration cost, refreshments cost, etc)

With Mint, you can take care of all these four costs. Mint’s budgeting tool assists you to arrange and incorporate all points into your fixed financial line. With time, when you earn more you have the flexibility to adjust your figures, and your savings and small business will be on track.

Some of the benefits of Mint for small business are:

  • It is free.
  • Can connect with the majority of financial organizations.
  • Extremely straightforward and convenient to track spending and set savings goals.
  • Robust with advanced security features to keep all your financial information safe.
  • Provides bill payment reminders so you don’t miss any bill payments. And has text/email alerts for any unusual account activity or low account balance.
  • It has free credit score monitoring.
  • Tax tool integration with TurboTax to pay your taxes timely.

Some of the drawbacks of Mint for small business are:

  • It’s free but comes with annoying advertisements.
  • Limited customer support system (not 24/7).
  • No real saving or investment functions available. You can’t move your money; you can only track it.
  • No direct option to pay bills; you have to clear your bills outside the application.

There’s enough scope for improvement. Besides, if your business has reached a level where it needs to manage contacts, track inventory, manage account payable, perform account receivable, create invoices, Mint can’t be much useful for you. As it has a limited feature which can only serve a person for personal finance management or to handle a small business.

Bottom Line- It can be said Mint has many features which can be useful when a person is just starting off but with time you need to move to a better application to serve your growing needs. 

Takeaway

To conclude, we’d say Mint is an intuitive and advanced budgeting tool to keep a track of your finances and manage it better. You can link your bank account, create a dashboard for your financial life and then drill down to optimize it. Even the best part is that it is completely free which is good for someone just starting his own small business. And it’s a thumbs-up from our side to use Mint for small business.

Ultimately, it’s all up to your requirements. Decide accordingly! 

We hope this article was insightful for you and best of luck with your journey towards financial freedom.

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