Home Budget / Expenses App
Home Budget / Expenses App
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Dan_1981

Original Poster:

18,100 posts

229 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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Any recommendations for a decent and ideally free budget app that allows you to track your spend throughout the month?

Would be even better if it can be shared over two users with mobile app access?


Bikesalot

1,885 posts

188 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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What about excel spreadsheet on google docs? Accessible anywhere and whoever you choose can make edits


paulrockliffe

16,586 posts

257 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
quotequote all
I'm after something similar, problem I always find is that the apps want to basically reconcile your bank account rather than record transactions. And we don't have the same level of access to bank accounts that other countries have, ie you can't have a third party app go and get your bank statements and integrate them into your spending, so they all tend towards being a bit rubbish.

I've got a spreadsheet that I've used for years, it's good, but it's also a bit clunky and I can't open it on Android as it's a huge formula-fest. The basic principle is that I download bank statements, copy them into a table, delete payments to credit cards and copy in credit card statements. Then run some VBA that looks through each transaction description and matches it to a list I've built over time. If there's a match it copies the transaction category. Then I go through the rest and manually categories to build my hierarchy of income and expenditure. PayPal Amazon cause me loads of issues as I then have to go through my purchases on there to work out what they are.

Actually, that's my main reason for apps all the time, an app could log in to Amazon and PayPal and auto-categories those purchases for me, it could also log in to a LCubcard/Nectar account and categorise supermarket spending in a lot more detail, at the moment I categorise loads of other stuff as Groceries/Food because I'm not going to go through receipts pulling out birthday presents, household goods or motor oil etc.

What I've found tends to want to reconcile how much money is in your bank account, more of a measure of assets rather than focusing on what you've got coming in and what's going out.

So yeah, if anyone has any great app-based options that you can get a .csv file into and it'll learn what things are that would be great!

Pistom

6,421 posts

189 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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I'm sure everyone has their favourite. Mine is Account Tracker on IOS.

The reason I like it is because it doesn't try to hold your hand, it simply displays your transactions by account and is easy to customise.

This is the main reason I still hand an IOS device.

Unfortunately it is not available on Android.

Dan_1981

Original Poster:

18,100 posts

229 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
quotequote all
I've downloaded the following to try out

Goodbudget
Fudget
Wally
OnTrees
Spending Tracker

paulrockliffe

16,586 posts

257 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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Do you mean Wallet? If not, it might be worth a look. It will take a .csv upload, so I've just built one to test it.

Dan_1981

Original Poster:

18,100 posts

229 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
quotequote all
paulrockliffe said:
Do you mean Wallet? If not, it might be worth a look. It will take a .csv upload, so I've just built one to test it.
Nope - Wally - Smart Personal Finance

On iDevices

Craikeybaby

12,130 posts

255 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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Bikesalot said:
What about excel spreadsheet on google docs? Accessible anywhere and whoever you choose can make edits
This is what we use.

sixspeed

2,062 posts

302 months

Tuesday 28th November 2017
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MyMoneyDashboard?

Dan_1981

Original Poster:

18,100 posts

229 months

Thursday 30th November 2017
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Free ones don't seem to be meeting this need so well.

Been recommended to try Homebudget (with sync) - got the free version at the moment - it's a whole £5 for the paid version....