Personal finance integration system and method

Abstract

An integration device retrieves credit reports, and/or other financial data that is available from one or more credit sources, for consumers and extracts financial account information from the credit reports. The integration device may then format and/or translates the account information into a format that is usable by a particular consumer's personal finance software and communicates the account information to the personal finance software. Accordingly, the personal finance software is provided with information regarding each of a plurality of financial accounts that are associated with the consumer so that the account information may be populated in the personal finance software with minimal effort by the consumer.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . (canceled) 
     
     
         2 . A method of providing financial account data readable by a personal finance system, the method comprising:
 receiving, at a computing device comprising at least one processor, credit data associated with a consumer from a credit data service, wherein the credit data is in a first data format;   extracting, by the computing device, account information associated with one or more financial accounts from the received credit data; and   converting, by the computing device, the extracted account information associated with the one or more financial accounts into a second data format readable by a personal finance system.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein converting the extracted account information further comprises:
 formatting the extracted account information into a data stream format useable by a personal finance system.   
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , further comprising:
 transmitting the account information in the data stream format to a consumer computing device,   wherein the personal finance system is configured to be accessible by the consumer from the consumer computing device.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the consumer computing device is a mobile computing device. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 receiving, at the computing device, consumer information identifying the consumer,   wherein the consumer information is useable to determine the credit data associated with the consumer.   
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising:
 providing the account information in the second data format to the personal finance system,   wherein the account information in the second data format is readable by the personal finance system in order to populate the personal finance system with at least some of the account information.   
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 7 , further comprising:
 displaying, to the consumer, the account information in the second data format; and   receiving, from the consumer, an indication of changes to the account information,   wherein providing the account information in the second data format to the personal finance system comprises providing the account information including the indication of changes from the consumer.   
     
     
         9 . A computer-readable storage medium comprising a set of instructions that, in response to execution by a computing device, causes the computing device to perform operations comprising:
 implement, in a personal finance software program, an add-in configured to at least:
 receive credit information associated with a consumer from a credit service, wherein the credit information is in a first format; 
 extract financial account data from the received credit information; 
 convert the extracted financial account data into a second data format readable by the personal finance software program; and 
 provide the converted financial account data in the second data format to the personal finance software program, wherein the second data format is readable by the personal finance software program. 
   
     
     
         10 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 9 , wherein the add-in is further configured to:
 receive consumer information useable to identify the consumer, wherein the consumer information is useable to request the credit information associated with the consumer.   
     
     
         11 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 10 , wherein the consumer information includes at least one of the consumer's name, social security number, residence address, birth date, and spouse. 
     
     
         12 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 9 , wherein the add-in is further configured to:
 access account rules indicating which credit information associated with the consumer is to be extracted, converted, and provided to the personal finance software program.   
     
     
         13 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 12 , wherein providing the converted financial account data comprises auto-populating the converted financial account data into the personal finance software program. 
     
     
         14 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 13 , where the account rules indicate information about which data items from the financial account data are to be auto-populated into the personal finance software program. 
     
     
         15 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 9 , wherein the add-in executes on a server in communication with a browser executing on a consumer mobile computing device. 
     
     
         16 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 9 , wherein the add-in executes on a consumer mobile computing device. 
     
     
         17 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 9 , wherein the extracted financial account data includes at least one of: account names, current account balances, account payment statuses, account holders' names, account statuses, and account types. 
     
     
         18 . A system for providing financial account data for population in a personal finance software application used by a consumer, the system comprising:
 one or more computer processors configured to implement:
 an account detection module configured to:
 receive consumer information identifying a consumer; 
 retrieve credit information associated with the identified consumer from a credit bureau, wherein the credit information identifies financial accounts of the consumer, and wherein the credit information is in a first data format; 
 detect a plurality of financial accounts indicated in the credit information; 
 determine one or more account rules associated with the consumer indicating which of the plurality of financial accounts indicated in the credit information should be included in financial account data for transmission to a personal finance software application; and 
 extract, from the credit information, financial account data matching the one or more account rules; and 
 
 a personal finance software integration module configured to:
 generate a data file in a second data format, the data file comprising the extracted financial account data for transmission to the existing personal finance software application, wherein the data file comprises information regarding the indicated financial accounts, and wherein the second data format is useable by the personal finance software application in order to add the extracted financial accounts data into the personal finance software application. 
 
   
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 18  wherein the account detection module is further configured to retrieve credit information associated with two consumers, and wherein the personal finance software integration module is further configured to generate the data file comprising the extracted financial account data for the two consumers. 
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the account detection module is further configured to periodically retrieve credit information associated with the consumer. 
     
     
         21 . The system of  claim 20 , further comprising a deduplication module configured to locate and remove duplicate information in the financial account data.