This Is the Best IOS App for Tracking Expenses Easily
iOS: I’ve never been good at managing my money. But now that I’m about to become a father, I suddenly found it necessary to know where this is going. Yes, there are many well-established budgeting and expense tracking apps like Mint and You Need a Budget (YNAB) . My wife and I use the first one for our family budget, and it does its job perfectly – it allows us to see our current expenses by category, set up automatic bill payments, track our income and plan savings.
The thing is, I also want something simpler: something that doesn’t connect to bank accounts and credit cards, and doesn’t automatically update with every transaction I make. Why? Because for me, these automated apps take away the sense of responsibility for keeping track of my own expenses. I want something that requires me to manually enter all of my expenses, forcing me to confront my expenses as they arise. Enter the name Expense is an intuitive, beautifully designed free expense tracker app for Apple mobile devices running iOS 8 and later.
How it works
The reason I love Expense so much is how simple it is. Open it and you will see the main screen: the dotted line at the top represents the level of expenses in the days of the current month with numbers every other day. You can click on each of these dots to switch between dates, adding expenses you may have forgotten.
Below this line is the ledger in the white line for entering the expenses themselves.
Clicking on the blue “+” button allows you to add a new expense and opens a list of 18 categories to choose from, including many of the basic ones you need: food, transportation, shopping, etc. Enter the amount of expenses at the top with using the numeric keypad, tap the appropriate category and then tap “Save” in the upper right corner – or the green checkmark button on the keyboard below – to record the consumption.
Expenses are now displayed as an item in the ledger, and you will notice that the dotted line above will also change to visually indicate your relative expenses.
You can click the plus button again to add more expenses on any day. To change the consumption, touch it. To delete, swipe left.
Pro tip: When recording an expense, you can also use the numeric keypad as a calculator to combine multiple expenses in one category at the same time (using the arithmetic buttons on the left side).
You can also add new categories or change old ones to better suit your needs. From the main ledger screen, tap the gear in the upper left corner to access the settings menu, tap Customize Categories, then Add and you’ll get a grid of icons to choose from, and a keyboard to type in the name of your new category.
You can edit any of the 18 pre-existing categories by clicking on it and assigning a new icon or name. If you decide you don’t need a category, you can swipe left and hit delete.
That’s all! A simple and reliable way to manually track your expenses – now you just have to remember about it.