I was pleasantly surprised today to find that American Express has slipped basic PFM (personal financial management) functionality into its online card management area (note 1). The company allows the user to tag transactions and view results in graphical format (see screenshots below).

According to the FAQ, each transaction can have up to five tags. And each user can create up to 200 unique tags to apply to transactions.

Significance: Combined with the categories automatically assigned to each transaction, American Express is now offering basic PFM services. Although a little clunky—a three-click process is required to add a tag—it’s a nice addition and something every online banking service should support. 

How it works
1. Click the “Add Tags to Transactions” link on the right side of the Statements & Activity area (below):

2. Select a transaction(s) and apply an existing tag or create a new one, then click the Apply Tag button (lower right):

How it looks
After apply the tag “Personal,” it now shows up in the transaction listing:

Once tagged, users can view transactions by tag categories:

Or view graphs by tag:

Note:
1. The example shown is for a Business Gold account. I’m not sure how long it’s been available. The first mention I could find about it via Google was Nov. 2010, so we’ll go with that until someone chimes in with better info. 
2. For more on online personal financial management (OFM/PFM), see our Online Banking Report.