For a nominal fee ($10 /yr) this would be a very attractive peice of software. A lot of effort would have to be put into hardware and software however, as the risks of losing or corrupting the data is quite high.

I'm sure there are sites that would want to be able to integrate in some way with this. For example, SalesForce.com might want to integrate with the small business version as an add on for their customers (just rebrand it to look like SalesForce.com).

I am actually dying for a service like this for my personal finances, I was even going to post an idea to CH but forgot about it. For me, a web-based solution is 10x more attractive than a desktop based solution. I wouldn't hesitate to shell out about $25/year for this service, and might even bite for upwards of $75 if it was a really nice offering. I was using MS money for a while, and while it was really improving my savings and spending patterns, my Windows95 OS eventually got "sick" and needed a full re-install. Three months went by before I got the same edition of MS Money installed again and got the data imported. Then I later moved to Debian Linux and have not bothered with running MS Money under Wine or VMWare, and am probably just going to wait until someone comes out with a web-based solution. Incidentally, there was a company doing this exact same thing (forget the name) for personal and small businesses, and they were bought out by Oracle about 5 years ago. Their subscription prices were a little on the expensive end, starting around like $20/month. As far as data loss potential that weasel mentioned, the site should offer a compressed XML snapshot download so users could backup their own data, in addition to sitewide backups.

If it allows for a wife range of personal situations and does taxes to, this would be a killer app. This could be like a banking 2.0 platform for the 30 and under crowd.

With Identity theft on the Up, I'd rather keep most of my financial information off the internet. Its a good Idea if the site is backed by an insurance company and offers customers some kind of protection if their info is hacked or something goes wrong.

I like this alot, letting users make backups is a must but also allowing other sites to tie-in, reselling the service could be lucrative.

In regards to identity theft, there is no need for this site to know your name or your address, two things which are virtually essential for identity theft.

Backups and security are a must for any site, of course. CH have great infrastructure in place to help with these things.

I'm just not sure how effective the system would be without identity attached. Identity and money are still closely related and will be for years to come.

In a perfect world, you would publish an API for your system and then expect the banks to build up the connection towards the system, so that all statements and reports could go in automatically. If you promise you would not become a bank yourself, by time, you will build the respect!

You got my small thumb up :)

This may have been done, or it is being done with One Statement
http://onestatement.com/

Have you looked at yodlee.com?

Keep it as a service but offer the option to keep data on pen drive and manipulate the data locally with applets. Online dattabases handle accounting questions but your pc handles the personal info. See about offering the service modifying existing Linux software.

Catering to the paranoid, the pen drive could also store password information say a thousand characters or longer acting as a very secure key.

I would definitely use it!

Too bad man... seems like OneStatement.com beat you too it... and their app seems to be very cool (at least from the screenshots).