AppCraver » Finance

Cash Trails – Expense Tracker is Hot on the Trail of Where Your Money Goes

Jennifer Beam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:49:54 +0000

Over time, the App Store has grown exponentially with an array of personal finance utilities for tracking expenses and budgeting. I’ve always been a firm believer that it is difficult to find a one-size-fits-all expense tracker because of the different styles of budgeting and organizing expenses. Much to my surprise, Cash Trails – Expense Tracker, by Vasyl Smyrnov, is pretty close to a one-size-fits-all deal.

With Cash Trails, users can easily add expense items with a single tap. Further customize your entries with the ability to assign groups, tags, and even make notes. Users can also quickly view expense history, by daily, weekly, or monthly filtering and you can export expense data over wifi. There are several features that make Cash Trails an excellent option for a variety of users, including support of different currencies, password protection, and the ability to track separate expenses for work, home, and hobbies.

Cash Trails allows you track expenses in contrast with income, but even if you prefer to track expenses only, you aren’t limited. By ignoring the + and – features, you can simply track your expenses and quickly see where your money is going. The user interface is friendly and allows you to quickly input notes for later clarification and you can go back and edit or delete entries at any time.

When I first gave Cash Trails a spin, I set it up to track holiday expenses. By assigning a budgeted amount from the beginning, I was able to enter expenses as I incurred them, make notes on what I had bought, and see how much I had left over. This is only one simple example of the expense tracking options available to Cash Trail users, but I’m finding it quite useful. What further impresses me is the option to first try the free version, Cash Trails Lite, which contains all the features of the paid version, but limits users to 30 entries. If you like the Cash Trails interface, simply purchase the full version and you’ll be able to import your expenses from Cash Trails Lite.

No doubt, personal finance and expense tracking apps aren’t for everyone, but if you have been looking for an expense tracker that allows you maximum control, ease of use, and the ability to separate expense categories, then Cash Trails is well worth a look. It may just help you revise your entire personal finance strategies and at the very least, it will help you see where your money goes.

rating: 9/10
app_name: Cash Trails – Expense Tracker

InvestCalc Gives a Detailed View of Financial Future

Barbara Holbrook — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:39 +0000

InvestCalc is a handy calculator app that (unsurprisingly) provides users with the ability to calculate how their money might grow over the life of an investment. Created by Reva Technologies, the app can also calculate debts such as long-term loans and provides an amazing amount of financial insight for $0.99.

InvestCalc has screens for three types of financial holdings — property, investments and loans. There is also a fourth screen for reviewing your favorites, but we’ll get to that in a minute. From the property, investment or loan screen, users can enter the specific details of a potential or actual transaction to see how the terms will affect their bottom line.

The app seems pretty thorough. InvestCalc offers slots for all the necessary particulars — even a space for entering extra payments on revolving accounts. The more information you provide, the more accurate the calculations will be. And, once you get your results you can easily email them to a friend or co-signer.

Tracking financial transactions over the long haul isn’t really much fun. And, it’s hard to get excited about a calculator. However, after playing around with this app, I must say that InvestCalc presents some interesting details. Who knew my car loan actually cost nearly $4500! For the privilege of making five years of monthly payments the interest came to a pretty hefty sum. Next time, I’ll try harder to make an extra payment early on. Turns out even one or two extra payments during the first couple years of a loan can add up to big savings on interest.

Speaking of savings, financial flakes can use InvestCalc as a motivational tool. Remember that favorites section I promised to talk about? This is where it really comes in handy.

After entering the details on any of the three screens, users can opt to save the information as a “favorite.” Just tap the star in the corner and InvestCalc will save the loan or investment info and categorize it so you can find it again later.

You can use this to compare outcomes of several “what if” scenarios or to remind yourself of the power of compound interest. Then the next time you’re ready to splurge on a nifty new iPhone case, pull out InvestCalc and take another look at the amortization chart of your favorite savings plan. You’ll notice that $50 a month doesn’t sound like much, but if you invest it for 30 years… well, that’s a heck of a lot of iPhone apps.

app_name: InvestCalc
rating: 7/10

Track and Organize Finances with moneyStrands

Derek Walter — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:00:57 +0000

New app moneyStrands by Strands, Inc. joins a growing number of financial management applications that inhabit the App Store. This trend represents the wider popularity of web-based budgeting tools that have replaced long-standing giants Quicken and Microsoft Money. The move by users to such free web-based apps and their iPhone counterparts has been so popular that Microsoft announced recently it is discontinuing its Money software. Quicken now offers both a free web and iPhone app.

Like its competitors, moneyStrands organizes all of your various banking and investment accounts into one web application. The moneyStrands iPhone app is an extension of the web interface, with a user-friendly design so you can keep tabs of your account while on the go. In fact in order to use moneyStrands you will first need to create and register an account on the main site. After doing so you have the option of adding accounts for your banks, credit cards, and investments.

Adding accounts on the main site was pretty easy – but make sure you have all those answers to security questions and passwords handy. When checking in with my bank accounts the app was fairly accurate at rendering the data. There were a few hiccups at times when it would not sync, which was a bit annoying. But it gave a pretty good snapshot of how the finances looked when I tested it out.

Probably the strongest feature was a section of pie charts that broke down your income and spending. By tapping and holding on each piece of the pie you get more details about where the money went or came from. An alerts section notifies you of any overspending or low balances. Fortunately the options menu can let you decide how much you want your iPhone telling you not to buy that new car you want. There is also a security feature; a mandatory four-digit PIN must be created for each time moneyStrands is opened on the iPhone.

With moneyStrands you will get some basic account information on the go, which can be a great resource. But deciding if you want sensitive financial information readily available on your iPhone will be a mater of personal choice.

app_name: moneyStrands
rating: 7/10

LottoFetch Works Great for a Narrow Audience

Amelia Sauter — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:30:50 +0000

LottoFetch – Every time I buy a lottery ticket, I start dreaming about how I am going to spend my 25 million dollars only to have my hopes shattered when my numbers are not drawn. In order to avoid that painful disappointment, I do not play the lottery often. But if I did, I might want LottoFetch.

How does one rate an app? If it is on functionality, LottoFetch would get a high score. This app does exactly what it says it will do. LottoFetch gives you the last seven lottery results for Mega Millions, California lotteries and Texas lotteries.

If I were to rate LottoFetch on usefulness, I would say that if you live in California or Texas and you play the lottery regularly, then LottoFetch is pretty useful. In terms of ease of use, LottoFetch is intuitive and gives you lotto numbers at your fingertips.

If you are like me and you live in New York (or one of the other 48 states that are not California or Texas) and only play Mega Millions once every couple of months, LottoFetch is not going to seem like a meaningful app. Since Mega Millions is only played in 12 states, that leaves 38 states that LottoFetch simply does not apply to. If other states collaborated with 212 Technologies to expand LottoFetch, the app would appeal to a much wider audience.

I try to remain open when rating apps like LottoFetch. Just because I don’t play the lottery regularly does not mean that LottoFetch is a not a good app. There is a place for apps like LottoFetch and iBeer. (And yes, full disclosure, I do have iBeer on my iPhone.)

So, while I can easily to look up the numbers the rare instances that I play the lottery, LottFetch might be useful for more than occasional gamblers. If you play Mega Millions or the California/Texas lotteries regularly, go for it. What’s another dollar? LottoFetch is convenient and functional, and you will find out immediately if you can purchase that house by the seaside that you always wanted.

app_name: LottoFetch
rating: 6/10

Mortgage Calculators to Help You Buy Low and Sell High

Michael Alexander — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:30:46 +0000

Mortgage and loan calculators – A real estate agent told me recently that she’s seen a small uptick in house sales in my little town. Along with most Americans who own, or plan to buy, homes, my wife and I are always worrying how the current economy will affect us. Any positive news, no matter how small, is a big deal.

If you’re considering getting a mortgage or refinancing application, the App Store has more than a dozen apps from which to choose. Many are free and those that are paid are only a couple of bucks or so.

Mortgage calculators apps are alike in the ways that matter most: You can enter loan amounts, amount of your down payment, interest rate, term of the loan and other essential information and then run calculations against the data.

You can view the results of your calculations per month, year or over the lifetime of the loan and you can save your loans for reference. One other feature you often see is the ability to play “What if?” using a variety of scenarios.

What else do you need? I favor any app that makes it as easy as possible to enter data, that means a good-sized keyboard to enter numbers, and ideally, a set of scroll wheels to enter dates, and a few charts and graphs to display my data. After that, I look for a visually appealing work screen, with a polished, intuitive interface.

Here’s a quick rundown of the apps that pass the mild-acid test and may interest you:

Mortgage Calculator Pro, from SVT Software, is the best-selling paid app ($0.99) at the moment. It meets most of my criteria, although I think there are better looking apps out there.

CalcsPro – Mortgage Calculators (With Estimated Tax Savings), from Rajesh Jain, is another paid app ($1.99) worth checking out. It’s more comprehensive than most, good looking, and is capable of displaying charts containing information such as post-tax interest, estimated tax savings and principle.

Morgulator+Mortgage Payment Calculator, from David Holzer, is currently on sale for $0.99. It’s streamlined and functional and it’s easy to compare one mortgage to another. One feature Morgulator has that some apps lack is the ability to email mortgage summaries.

RECalc-Real Estate Mortgage Loan Calculator, from Anil Baja, is a button pusher’s delight. In addition to the usual loan calculation functions, this paid app ($1.99) also has a fancy mathematical calculator.

Home Buying Power, from NotTooShabby Software, is visually a bit busy for my tastes, but it gets the job done. It’s a paid app ($1.99) that enables you to save a list and details of the home’s you’ve looked at to buy. None of the other apps I looked at have that feature.

CalcsPro – Mortgage Calculators (With Estimated Tax Savings) and Home Buyer Power would be my top picks. Keep in mind, I haven’t looked at every mortgage app because there are so many. If you know of better ones, throw a tip into comments.

iProtect – Serious Investors Only Need Apply

Derek Walter — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:30:19 +0000

New app iProtect is for the serious investor. It serves as a risk calculator for making investment decisions by taking a variety of factors into consideration. While iProtect makes use of some sophisticated calculations to return an investment strategy, the current feature set does not match up with the level of service that it promises.

There are two major factors that you need to enter — the horizon and risk tolerance. The horizon equates to the number of years that you want to project for the investment period. The risk tolerance is adjusted to account for how much risk you want to incur over that period. Enter a high risk tolerance and you will be advised to roll the dice with your future earnings. Enter a low risk tolerance and plan for some low-risk, low-reward investing.

The calculations are certainly impressive and designed for the type of investor who is familiar with all the terminology. But iProtect doesn’t quite follow up with the matching amount of features for the high level of sophistication it aims for. A major drawback is not being able to save any of the calculations. It is always a one-shot deal. Close iProtect and all the calculations are gone.

Ideally, once the investment information is available it could be tracked and linked to a portfolio. If this is in the developer’s future plans this would certainly be a welcome addition. This would add some follow-through to the investment calculations that are currently in iProtect.

Essentially iProtect is most useful if you want to play around with various calculations for determining an investment strategy. But in reality if you are a serious enough investor with a significant portfolio you probably have access to other resources online or elsewhere. In the end iProtect promises a lot but does not match up to its lofty goals.

app_name: iProtect
rating: 6/10

Motivate Kids with Kids Allowance and Rewards

Jennifer Beam — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:00:22 +0000

Categorized as a finance app, Kids Allowance and Rewards could also fall into the category of productivity because when it comes to kids, a reward system is one of the best motivators. Kids Allowance and Rewards by Gedgers is for parents with kids of any age to set up individual “accounts” for tracking allowance and reward points. There are several features in Kids Allowance that create a well-rounded app that parents will find easy to use and kids will easily understand.

With Kids Allowance and Rewards, users simply create an account for each child and opt to set default allowance pay-ins to occur automatically or manually enter the information as the allowance is earned. Additionally, users can enter reward points, tagging them with specific events. The reward points tracker is really part of what I like about Kids Allowance and Rewards. You can assign whatever tag and reward amount you like and the app keeps track as the points are earned and “redeemed” for reward. I see great potential for use of this app across several arenas, but the good news is, no matter how you choose to use it, it is user-friendly enough for most any scenario.

Upon launching Kids Allowance and Rewards for the first time there are no accounts, as you have to create them. The user-interface is pretty straight forward, but there are basic instructions included within the “info” tab at the bottom of the screen. After you add each account, you can set up a direct-deposit in a sense by the default allowance function or manually input your own information. There is enough flexibility that Kids Allowance and Rewards should work well for most any family situation.

Once the accounts are created, the main page will provide each account’s basic account information at a glance, which means it’s easy for kids to see their standings. Clicking on an individual account allows users to enter or change information. Using Kids Allowance and Rewards for more than one child may even inspire some competitive creativity. Parents can quickly see how much money they owe their child, can input “pay-out” information when their child collects, and can also track reward points for any other system they may be using. The reward tracker is very much like a sophisticated and high-tech version of a sticker chart.

While Kids Allowance and Rewards was obviously developed for use by parents, I believe it could be useful for teachers as well. I’ve seen teachers use both a “money” system and a point system to encourage productivity and good behavior and both could be easily tracked on Kids Allowance and Rewards. I am not sure if there is a limit to the number of accounts you can add, but I was able to add ten and didn’t get the impression it was overloading. I haven’t yet figured out how to delete accounts, which would obviously be necessary for a teacher, but I’ve emailed support this question.

As an allowance and reward tracker, Kids Allowance and Rewards fits the bill quite nicely. There are even a few updates in the works to improve performance, including the ability to assign descriptions to deposits and withdraws. As it stands, Kids Allowance and Rewards is a solid tool for both parents and kids with possibilities that are essentially up to the user to create. It also serves as a great introduction for kids to finance applications and budget trackers. Check out the demo video below.

app_name: Kids Allowance and Rewards
rating: 8/10

Historical Currency Converter Makes Sense Over Time

Michael Alexander — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:30:06 +0000

Historical Currency Converter, from WFTSoft, puts a new spin on your ordinary, everyday money changer app. You can use the Historical Currency Converter to calculate the conversion rates for the world’s top currencies — US Dollar, Japanese Yen, British Sterling and the Euro — from January 1971 to the present day.

All the historical data is stored on your iPhone or iPod touch, so you don’t need an Internet connection to find out that 1 US Dollar was worth about 125 Yen April 29, 1988, for example.

To get the latest currency conversion, tap the circular arrow in the lower left corner and Historical Currency Converter will connect to a network and take care of business. On the same day in 2009, 1 US Dollar is now worth about 96 Yen, by the way.

An app like Historical Currency Converter is likely to have broad appeal, given that travel and shopping are the two most common productivity uses of the iPhone beyond making phone calls and checking email, according to a new survey by Compete, a Web analytics company. “Our latest results showed that iPhone owners are using their devices more than other smartphone owners to help them make purchase decisions while they shop and to manage logistics and get information when on the road or considering travel,” says Danielle Nohe, a research director at Compete.

Historical Currency Converter’s streamlined and polished interface make currency conversation as easy as tossing a penny into a wishing well. Enter a number in the Amount field and select a date using a slot-machine-style menu (today’s date is highlighted in blue, which makes selecting the date even easier). Conversions are quick to do using icons for each currency. Tap one icon for “To” and another for “From” and your converted amount will appear in the designated field.

If you want to see how how well a currency has fared over a period of time, turn your iPhone or iPod touch on its side (landscape mode, in other words), and it will automatically display a chart with additional options of viewing trends over 1 month to as far back as 1971. As you can see from the screen capture above, the US Dollar hasn’t done so well against the Japanese Yen in the past year.

Just so you know, the Euro did not come into existence until Dec. 15, 1998, so that’s as far back as you can go for that currency.

In addition to travelers and shoppers, analysts, accountants and business execs, will find Historical Currency Converter a handy tool.

app_name: Historical Currency Converter
rating: 8/10

Coupon Sherpa Is Here To Help You Save

Tracy Rodgers — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:00:44 +0000

The old saying goes “you have to spend money to make money.” With Coupon Sherpa, you have to spend money to save money, it’s up to you to decide whether the $1.99 price tag is worth it. My guess? It probably is.

Coupon Sherpa is a simple application that collects coupons from a number of retailers and restaurants and helps you find them quickly on your iPhone. Using the iPhone’s GPS ability, Coupon Sherpa makes sure to only show coupons for businesses in your area, so you never end up with links to a bunch of coupons you can’t use.

Coupon Sherpa is very straightforward to use. The main screen has several tabs across the bottom. Store List shows an alphabetical listing of every business for which there are coupons available — from my location in Rhode Island as I’m writing this, I have 182 coupons available from 116 stores. The Categories tab, in case you couldn’t have guessed, lists stores by category, so if you’re looking specifically for savings on shoes or on hotels and travel, it’s a quick way to find what you need. There’s also a Featured tab, which show Coupon Sherpa-exclusive coupons.

The next tab on Coupon Sherpa is one that I suspect will come in handy, the Favorites tab. When browsing through stores and restaurants, you can choose to add a business to your favorites, keeping the deals for your preferred retailers readily at hand.

There are a few issues with Coupon Sherpa, however. One, which should be easily remedied, is that there’s no indication of how large the search radius is for available coupons. I have no idea if Coupon Sherpa is only showing me stores in my zip code, in my state, or within a certain mile distance. It would be great if future updates to Coupon Sherpa included an option to set search parameters.

The other issue, of course, is how well it will function on a regular basis. While it seems likely that society will certainly forgo paper coupons entirely at some point, right now I’m not sure how widely accepted it will be to simply show a cashier a coupon you’ve pulled up on your iPhone or iPod. While some scanners will actually scan bar codes right off your screen, not every business currently has that capability.

My point, I suppose, is that Coupon Sherpa looks like the future…I’m just not necessarily sure that the future is here yet. Luckily, in the meantime, Coupon Sherpa also allows you to simply email coupons to yourself to print out on your computer. And those, I’m pretty sure, will work everywhere.

At least until the future gets here.

app_name: Coupon Sherpa
rating: 7/10

Tip Calculator Top Can End Your Meal Right

Jennifer Beam — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:30:45 +0000

Like other similar apps for iPhone, Tip Calculator Top is exactly what its name implies — a tip calculator. You can input the amount of the bill, select the percentage you want to tip, and even split the total bill evenly between multiple people and receive an immediate calculation. You’ve probably seen it or similar apps browsing the app store and I’m pretty sure Tip Calculator Top is the tip app demonstrated in one of the iPhone commercials on television. But even if it’s not, it’s still rather ideal for its intended purpose.

I must confess that early on, I seriously questioned the validity of an app that calculated something as simple as a tip. I have avoided downloading any apps in this particular subcategory on sheer principle. I am the person who gives kids at fast food restaurants two-dollar bills or odd amounts of change in order to receive even amounts of change back. Then I laugh silently when the whole concept of addition and subtraction of money perplexes them, while I lament for the lost generation of kids who can’t perform simple math without the aid of buttons.

All principles aside, Tip Calculator Top is pretty darn cool for something so simple. And, (gasp) I rather like having my own buttons to push to perform simple math. Simple math isn’t all Tip Calculator Top does though. Sure it calculates the amount of a tip based on an assigned percentage of the total bill and supplies the grand total, but it goes a little beyond that. Tip Calculator Top will also calculate the tip exactly, rounded, or mirrored.

I especially like the mirrored function, which is useful if you pay for meals with a debit or credit card and want to ensure nobody is taking more than they should. If you always calculate your tip to give a mirrored total (example: $27.72, $31.13, $14.41 etc.,) you will always know your payment was processed correctly when you check your bank statements. Of course if you are one of those people who save all receipts until you verify your statements, you probably won’t use this function, but some of us aren’t that organized.

Tip Calculator Top is good, but does not do what some of the other tip calculator apps do. For instance unlike Tipulator and CheckPlease, Tip Calculator Top does not allow for currency other than US Dollars and it doesn’t give you the option to choose which way to round. Still, the user interface, with side by side keypad and scroll wheels, is seamless and easy to use and it still tells you what you want to know.

If you are looking for a simple to use tip calculator and don’t need to figure additional currencies, Tip Calculator Top will serve you well — and depending on whether or not your actual server does, scroll the wheel and adjust accordingly.

app_name: Tip Calculator Top