Most people spend their money willy-nilly and have total disregard for tracking their money to see how they are utilizing it. Considering that most people live on limited or inadequate incomes it becomes quite imperative to track your money with the pursuit of being as frugal as possible. Nowadays with mobile technologies such as smartphones & mobile apps, tracking your money can now be done semi-automatically. Herein I shall discuss some free mobile apps one can use to track their money.
Bill Gates once said that the first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. My point here is this, effective use of these apps will only be possible if you have a disciplined moral code on how you handle your finances.
EcoLedger
This is an automatic tool for budgeting & managing mobile money wallets. It was developed by MobiSoft Pvt Ltd and was released onto the Google Play Store on 8 March 2018. It generates statements of account & reports by use of SMS notifications sent by your respective mobile money service provider i.e. Ecocash, Telecash or OneMoney. It enables you to also search for any prior transactions you would have done. You can pay subscriptions for premium features which will allow you to download statements or view more transactions; there are packages to choose from.
Spending Tracker
App was developed by MH Riley Ltd and released on 31 January 2014. The whole point of this app is to help you adhere to a budget by virtue of tracking your expenses so as to save money. You can track expenses weekly, monthly or yearly. It also has an option to set a fixed budget amount that will serve as a benchmark for your spending conduct. The interface allows you to easily key in an amount every time you incur an expense or receive income. You can separate accounts for instance for business, personal or savings. There is also a report feature where you can get detailed chart overviews on how you are spending. There is an option to back your data on the cloud storage service provider Dropbox. It’s also available for iOS devices.
Wallet – Finance Tracker & Budget Planner
You have to sign-up through your Google, Facebook or by your email account; its user interface is quite sleek & alluring. You start off by entering your initial balance then you can budget and track expenses. You can set up reminders and set up planned payments so that you can make projections. Data can be backed up online and you can get graphs on your balance trends. Comprehensive stats & overviews on balances, outlooks, cashflows, spending etc, are obtainable.
Money Manager Expense & Budget
The app was developed by Realbyte Inc on 5 March 2013. This app helps you to budget, record & track personal or business transactions. You can get reports on your daily, weekly or monthly spending. You can get graphical depictions of expenses in light of your budgets thus enabling you to easily infer key indicators in your spending habits. You can back up & restore data in Excel format online.
Monefy
This is an app with quite a unique interface from all other apps I have analysed. It’s an app for tracking expenses & income with an allowance to manipulate your transactions daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. There are search features where you can search for a particular transaction by date. You also can categorize your expenses for much easier overviews. Other features like multi-currency, synchronization, passcode protection & category management can only be unlocked if you choose to go Pro; this entails making a payment. Also available for Apple devices.
AndroMoney (Expense Track)
This app is for tracking expenses & managing your budgets; it’s also available for iOS devices. It was developed by AndroMoney and was released on 16 July 2011. Essentially you can manage your accounts (it offers multiple accounts handling) on a day to day basis. You can back up data online on Dropbox or Google Docs and it’s also possible to sync with your other devices. You can get reports in the form of trends, pie or bar charts detailing your expenses or cash flows.
Daily Expenses 3
Again this is an app that allows you to manage your expenses & incomes daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. It’s an app that was developed by Michel Carvajal and was released on 20 October 2013. You also can get graphical reports by virtue of periods and balances; reports can be daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly or yearly. The option to back up your data online is available.
Evidently, I only came across two locally developed apps i.e. EcoLedger & ziWallet, of which their functionality is currently limited to mobile money management. I believe there is need for development of more local apps with diverse functionality that is specially tailored for our local context. I say so because for some of the other apps I discussed herein, you can’t use some of their features because they are tailored for foreign countries. It would be reat to have an app that differentiates between bond, US$, RTGS and Ecocash balances.
