Bill payment can be managed cleanly in the context of bank balances and other pending transactions. Bill payment does not occur in isolation, so we now look more closely at how these models of bill payment integrate with bill delivery and online banking. An insightful article by Michael Liedtke, ' Exploring Your Online Banking Options ' , groups users into 'transactors' and 'trackers'. Transactors deal with events as they happen, and are usually concerned with minimizing administrative hassles. They do not spend much effort on financial planning.
Trackers undertake detailed financial planning, monitoring and management.
Liedtke's basic argument is that transactors should use web-based online banking and trackers should use desktop products such as Intuit Quicken or Microsoft Money. While the transactor vs. tracker approach seems simplistic, it translates well with regard to how people approach their personal finance in practice. The rest of this section looks at how these approaches work online and how they will deal with banking, bill delivery and bill payment. A web interface offers a convenient way to access basic services. Logging into the biller's website to retrieve bills will be additional effort, and not desirable.