Not something too complicated, just for tracking my personal income/spending. I've looked at a few on the various review sites, and like the look of Spend and Pennies most. I figured I'd ask here if anybody else has experience with these or other budget apps and could comment on stability, features, etc.
DO NOT waste your time with Pennies. I've used that one and the it's been nothing but a pain. It doesn't allow you to edit the date of transactions and the CSV export has never worked. The developer also doesn't do much about posting update information or respond to support questions. It looked good early on, but is nothing but a disappointment. There's a free and very simple app called "Balance" which is just like a basic check registry. It's simple, but actually pretty good. My first choice though is Squirrel. It won a design award I believe at MacWorld this year. It's a free Sidekick app to their desktop client, but if you have a Mac, it's a really great combo to keep track of your accounts and then sync them back up over a wifi connection. One other option to consider if you use a larger bank is to scope out "Mint.com". This is a FREE web-based finance tracking service with a sidekick app. You can track accounts and investments, but it tends to be limited to more of the larger chain banks.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll avoid Pennies. Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac so Squirrel won't work for me, and I'm at a smaller credit union and I don't really like the idea of storing my financial information on a website if I don't need to - so Mint.com isn't an ideal option. Balance looks nice and easy to use as a balance register, but I'd like to categorize my expenses, and have an overview of the categories' totals for each month.
Ledger makes my brain explode. I understand the concept but my brain doesn't work like that. I decided to go with Budget (dunno how I missed it before) as it fits my needs perfectly. Thanks for the input folks!
Please give us some feedback after using it for a while. I would like to hear how it compares to iExpenseIt
First day impressions, I spent a few hours setting up categories, entering purchases from February, and tinkering around with the export options, recurring purchases, etc. It crashed a few times, but I've come to expect that given the iphone's lack of memory, and the amount of time I spent switching between screens, and Balance recovered nicely afterward. Shorter sessions were stable. The interface is pretty intuitive but some of the options - budget type, recurring transactions specifically - could be set up in a more intuitive place in my opinion, but setting up the categories, purchases, and budgets were easy to figure out. Budget doesn't offer a WiFi export/backup option like iXpenseIt does, so if you don't have an email account set up, you won't be able to use the backup/export feature. I'm not sure if iXpenseIt offers transaction sharing, but balance allows you to 'synch' between two iphones (again, via email) if you share a budget with someone else and only keep track of your own purchases. Something I really like that the demo of iXpenseIt doesn't offer (I think it's not in the full version either) is the ability to enter actual income per month as well as the expected income. I'm paid on commission, so my paycheck fluctuates. If my income is greater than expected, it shows up on the overview as extra leeway with expense categories. This feature is what really drew me to Budget over iXpenseIt.
But it's a lot easier to just pull out your iPhone/Touch as soon as you leave the store. I tried doing an expense thing on the computer once but I just couldn't be bothered to stick with it. It's a lot easier when you're carrying your expense program around with you in your pocket all the time.
I'm looking for a budgeting app that syncs to a desktop version from multiple iPhones, so that my wife and I can both input purchases on-the-fly. I picked up [app]Day Bank[/app], because the app store reviews of [app]Cha-Ching[/app] scared me off. If anyone has any other suggestions, I would love to hear them. Thanks.
yep i'm looking for one where you can vary your income ie not fixed each month any suggestions ? does budget do that ?
I use Spend and would highly recommend it. Very easy to use but includes essential things like recurring expenses. Nice and cheap too, and regularly updated. I tried a few and this is most definitely the best.
I also use Spend. It's a fantastic application - you can put budgets for each individual spending catagory (rent, utilities, food, entertainment -whatever you want!), transfer funds between the catagories, and the amount you allot to each is set by you, when you need to set it. I LOVE it.
Sure. You don't set an income; you simply put in the amount of your budget set for each thing. You can reset the budgets at any time. My income is varied (I don't work set hours, and I'm not on salary), and I have no trouble using it to keep track of my spending.
No prob. Also, I just stumbled upon WalletWiz at promodispenser.com. I can't recommend it or say if it's any good, as I haven't tried it - but they have promo codes left (as of 9pm eastern, today). Might as well check out a free app if possible, right? http://promodispenser.com/index.php?o=appinfo&id=61
