Money Tab is an easy-to-use manual Budget Tracker for beginners
by Toni McQuilken
Apr 20, 2012 12:49 PM –
Install
Money Tab is great for those just starting to budget their finances or those savvy individuals who like to budget strict to their primary device and opt not to use fancy automatic financial syncing services. Bookkeeping of the traditional days meets a bit of smartphone technology extending the task of budgeting to record income/expenses, transactions, and even export information to Microsoft Excel format.
Price: ~$0.99
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- There are a lot of set categories, and you can add your own custom categories, for a very personalized way to track your money!
- You can create templates to make adding things you buy a lot easier!
- You can create recurring income or expenses for regular bills or paychecks!
- You can see statistics and spending history to track how you manage your money!
- You can export your data at any time for viewing in a program like Microsoft Excel!
Cons
- It doesn’t link to your bank account or services like Mint.com, so it won’t pull anything in automatically.
- Since it is contained in the app and not synced to the cloud anywhere, you’re limited to only accessing the data on the device you input it into (with the exception of the export feature that allows you to view it on your desktop).
Features:
Money Tab is a budget manager that allows you to track your income and expenses. You can input each item separately, or set up recurring items – like your paycheck if it’s always the same amount, or a bill that hits at the same time and amount every month. You can also create templates to make it easy to add items that aren’t regular enough to be recurring, but do occur often enough to warrant a shortcut to adding. Things like stopping for coffee a few times a week would fall into that last category.
I like that the app has a wide range of categories to start with, and you can add your own custom categories to make it easy to track exactly what you spend and how you spend it. You can do this for both income and expenses, so for example, you can separately track your significant other’s income alongside your own, or if you do side jobs, you can track each one separately.
When adding an item, you can pre- or post-date it, or just have it posted to the current day. You can also add comments, if you want to. I did find that the dialogue boxes for these items were a solid color – dark grey – only showing the text “Next” or “Cancel” after I had clicked it. After the first time figuring out which is which, it wasn’t a real problem, but it is a minor bug that will hopefully be fixed in a future update.
The interface itself is, overall, very clean and easy to use. There are a wide range of category icons to choose from, and the text is all to the point, without a lot of excess information that you don’t want or need in an app you’ll be in all the time.
I think the only place where I wanted more was in how self-contained the app is. There are quite a few services out there for tracking budgets, but this doesn’t connect to any of them. Which isn’t really a problem if you don’t use those services to begin with or care for sharing your financial data to them, but if you do, this will be a second place you have to track information. It’s also contained on the one device you input it on. You can’t, for example, add some stuff from your phone while you’re out and about, and then later add more items from your tablet at home. In an age where most of us carry multiple devices, this was a bit of an annoyance. A minor one, to be sure, but worth noting. You can export your data – you’ll get a file you can pull into a program like Microsoft Excel, so despite being a closed app, your data itself can be pulled out and put to other uses.
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Money Tab Transactions
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Money Tab Summary
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Money Tab Creatre Category
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Money Tab Statistics
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Money Tab Recurring
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Money Tab History
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Money Tab Template
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Money Tab Categories
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Money Tab Set Date
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Money Tab Comment
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Money Tab Stats
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Money Tab History
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Money Tab Preferences
Usefulness:
If you aren’t using any budgeting app right now, but you want to start, this is a very good app to go with. It’s simple, clean and easy to use, and it’s a good place to start tracking your expenses versus income.
Ease of Use:
As I mentioned above, the app is very easy to use, even for someone who’s never budgeted before. It’s all clearly laid out, and there are enough basic options to get you started, with enough customization to not be overwhelming, but at the same time, give you flexibility to track your personal spending habits.
Frequently Used:
At the least, you’ll use this a few times a month, checking the recurring items, inputting other expenses and keeping an eye on your budget. At most, I can potentially see someone using this a few times a day to track every dime spent, as you spend it.
Interface:
It’s very clean and easy to navigate through. There are a few minor cosmetic glitches, but nothing that seriously detracts from how the app works.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Budget,
Budgeting App,
Financial App,
Financial Planning,
money,
Money Tab
Categorised in: Finance
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