Dunedin Start-up Pitches In to Improve Quality of Life for Millions of Employees Worldwide

Dunedin tech start-up PocketSmith has partnered with industry leaders to improve their work-life balance services using its unique budgeting technology. PocketSmith’s intuitive interface helps individuals budget in a very short amount of time, reducing the emotional stress associated with prolonged financial strain.

US-based Workplace Options and its UK division Employee Advisory Resource will use PocketSmith as an interactive enhancement to the companies’ suites of debt management services, helping employees with budgeting and financial planning.

Workplace Options is the world’s largest provider of work-life employee benefits, delivering support to over 18.5 million employees in more than 10,000 organisations. As a market leader focused on innovative solutions it identified with PocketSmith’s approach towards making financial management simple and appealing.

“The emotional toll of managing debt impacts employees at all levels, and increases the risk of illness and lower productivity,” said Alan King, Workplace Options’ president and COO. “Offering employees access to debt management resources is a win-win situation that many companies are embracing. It empowers workers to be more focused at work, proactive with financial matters and to better manage their stress.”

The partnership seeks to create more financial security by helping employees forecast coming expenses and income. Using these predictions, employees are able to analyse the information in order to help set better goals, monitor cash flow, reduce debt and save money. Instead of focusing on the past, the application helps users plan for the future and clearly illustrates the impact of financial decisions made. It does this through a visual calendar interface, which simply and effectively communicates financial data.

PocketSmith’s interactive platform also allows Workplace Options’ debt specialists and counsellors to work with employees in real-time to assist them in drawing up budgets, identifying potential problems and monitoring spending. These tools empower employees by helping them avoid serious financial problems and achieve long-term goals.

While PocketSmith is available globally as standalone product, it hopes to forge similar partnerships with New Zealand banks. “We’re in discussions with a number of forward-thinking financial institutions to bring our services to Kiwi users in an integrated fashion,” said co-founder Jason Leong. “It’s an investment in their customers’ financial well-being and peace of mind, which is important especially in these times of economic uncertainty. Try PocketSmith, and if you’d like your bank to feature it, let them know!”

Key features of this new budgeting tool include:

* Interactive component allowing debt specialists to assist users in real time with their PocketSmith accounts;
* Unique calendar-based, solution-focussed approach to debt and personal finance management;
* The ability to either manually or automatically update financial transactions;
* Tracking actual spending against forecasts and assessing the financial impact of everyday spending decisions, thus facilitating behaviour-change in spending habits;
* Simple graphs to interpret personal financial data;
* Security – the complete application has 256-bit SSL encryption with no personally identifiable information ever read or stored. When transactions are entered into PocketSmith, the only information that is read and processed are individual transactions-- all other information is discarded from the system.

About PocketSmith

PocketSmith is a web-based personal finance application with a focus on cashflow management. It allows individuals, families, and small businesses to easily interact with their finances, making it fun, simple and compelling. The company was founded in June 2008, is privately held, and is based in Dunedin, New Zealand.

The product is in constant iterative development in its mission to become a personal finance tool that is a global favourite. PocketSmith has thousands of enthusiastic users from all over the world and is available for you to try at http://www.pocketsmith.com .

About Workplace Options

Founded in 1982, Workplace Options (WPO) is America’s largest provider of work-life services. WPO’s market-leading products are recognized for their innovative Web delivery, flexibility and affordable pricing. WPO also offers network management solutions and 24/7 call center services that help Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) run their businesses more profitably and efficiently. For more information about WPO, please visit www.workplaceoptions.com.

About Employee Advisory Resource

Employee Advisory Resource is one of the leading providers of Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) and integrated work-life services, both in the UK and internationally. Employee Advisory Resource helps clients’ employees deal with all sorts of challenges including debt management, financial planning, dealing with addiction, managing stress, absence management and coaching for line managers. They also help organisations further maximise the performance of their employees through integrated services, such as critical incident support and occupational health.

Employee Advisory Resource introduced the UK’s first EAP in 1981 and currently has over 350 clients covering over 330,000 employees in multiple industry sectors.

Employee Advisory Resource is owned by a strategic partnership between Accor Services and Workplace Options. Accor Services is the UK’s leading provider of employee benefits and work-life solutions. Workplace Options is the largest provider of work-life employee benefits in the United States. For more information go to www.ear.co.uk