A New Online Tool Offers Small-Business Owners Low-Cost Personal Banker ServicesBalance Financial acts like a pricey personal banker -- but at a fraction of the cost.

Balance Financialis bringing high-end private banking to the entry-level business--for around $40 a month.

The 15-person, Bellevue, Wash.-based firm with roughly $1.5 million in financing, has created a web-based accounting and personal finance tool that is supported by a living, breathing person. The so-called personal bookkeeper enters data, tracks expenses, updates forms and pays bills--and then marries that information with Balance's own financial management software.