Find Card Issues Faster with Transaction Search

“Why isn’t my card working?”

“What was that attempted charge for?”

“Why do they keep charging my card?”

“How did that charge even happen?”

Most card issues aren’t random — they leave clues. If you know where to look, you can solve them in seconds. After helping families track down card issues for over 13 years, we’ve found three clues to be especially useful:

Guiding Your Family to Better Money Habits Without Conflict

A FamZoo parent recently asked:

“I seem to remember that there was a way to generate a chart of balances over time. Where can I find that? One of my kids is religious about saving. One spends almost everything they have. I’d like to show the balances to them.”

Specific answer:

You’ll find a chart of the monthly closing balances under Bank > Balance History.

• You can select the desired account from the dropdown in the upper right.
• You can adjust the duration from the dropdown in the left-hand sidebar.
• You can click on a bar in the chart to navigate to the underlying transactions.

Broader answer:

Stepping back, there’s a bigger question and objective here: what does the transaction history say about my family’s money behaviors, and how can I nudge them toward good money habits going forward (without alienating them)?

How to Manage a Shared Family Budget

Families have been using FamZoo cards as a simple, effective budgeting tool since 2013. Multiple cards are used to partition funds into separate subaccounts dedicated to specific purposes: everyday spending, saving for a goal, charitable giving, dining out, clothing, online gaming, family vacations, you name it.

This works beautifully when the funds in a subaccount are spent by a single family member. But how do you handle the case where multiple family members need to draw from the same budget bucket?

Over the years, families have developed a set of best practices for managing this scenario. Here’s how to apply them using a family-wide monthly budget for dining out. Note: I’ve arbitrarily chosen a monthly budgeting cycle for this Dining Out example. Choose any budgeting cycle — monthly, weekly, quarterly, annually, even daily or ad hoc — that fits the category and your family’s circumstances.