Apple 3G iPhone App Review: Pennies

Are you all about making money? Do you track your cash in or cash out perhaps? Do you own an Apple iPhone and want to stay on top of your set budget? Perhaps a small iPhone application can help you stay on your financial budget from your day to day expenses.

I have been looking over my expenses lately and I the question I have asked myself has been: Where is my money going? So I have set out in search of an application for the iPhone in which I can easily track my daily expenses and then perhaps at a later time export them into Excel and graph them so I can see visually where my money is going.

Pennies

I was recently looking over the iTunes App store and came across a small expenses application called Pennies. Pennies allows you to track your daily expenses by category as well as set a master monthly budget to ensure you do not go over it.

Interface and Usability

The main screen is a nice piece of work and shows you your top 3 expenses by category, how close you are to your maximum budget as well as your rough estimate on how much you spend per day. It also keeps a running total of your expenses for the month though it is rounded to the nearest dollar. From the main screen you can also add a new expense

Adding a new expense is easy. Just select the category in which your expense applies to (such as food, amusement, personal etc) and enter the amount. Hitting save will add to the daily tracking as well as your overall monthly spending. I find that you cannot edit the categories nor can you add more customized categories to suite your needs.

Set Budget

From the main screen you can set the monthly budget limit. A slider allows you to adjust the budget starting at $100 up to $100,000 in $100 increments up to $9,000 then it goes into $10,000 increments up to the maximum of $100,000. How many people here have a $100,000 monthly budget?

I would like to be able to set a value from 0 and increment it to what I see fit. I might want a $450 monthly budget, but Pennies does not allow this. I would also like to be able to set a budget for each category as well to ensure I do not go over a particular amount say on food.

Expenses

The Expenses portion of the Pennies application is nice; it gives a receipt-style list of your expenses and tallies it up for you.

One feature I do like about this is that you can attach notes to the expense. When you first purchase Pennies, it automatically creates a $2.99 expense for it and attaches a note thanking you for your purchase.

From the Expenses screen you can also add new expenses again there is no ability to modify or add categories which I am finding to be an issue.

History

History is done on a monthly basis and since I have had this application for only a day I will not see any history until the end of the month. I also do not see an export feature so I could upload the information from Pennies to say a program like Excel.

Conclusion

Pennies is pretty application with its ‘fuel gauge’ graphic for your overall monthly budget expenses and the nice little icons it uses for the pre-set categories. It is also very easy to use and to understand within the first 5 minutes of downloading the application as well. Being able to add notes to your expenses is quite useful and seeing a monthly overview allows you to ensure you stay on with your monthly budget, even if it’s a basic monthly budget.

There are a few things I would like to see changed or implemented to make this a wicked little expenses application.

Have it stop rounding up my monthly spending total on the main page. I spent $2.99 and it shows me I spent $3 of my $400 monthly budget? Looking over at the expenses sheet does show me the exact amount.

Allow me to at least edit the category names, though I am sure a lot of people would like to be able to add their own custom categories as I would.

Export the data. What is the point of this information if I just have to retype it out in a spreadsheet and do my calculations there? Allow me to email (export) the data via a CSV file so I can import it and work on it at the end of the month.

Is the application worth the whole $2.99 I spent on it? Sure why not. I mean it still tracks my daily expenses, I would just have to get used to not being able to create categories that fit my needs. It is still useable but those who might be a bit more involved with their monthly budgets might want to keep looking for a better application.

Pros

• Nice user interface
• Daily tracking of expenses
• Price is good at $2.99

Cons

• Cannot add or modify categories
• No Export feature
• Cannot set budget less than $100 and only does $100 increments
• Cannot set category budgets for better fine tuning of your monthly spending

Overall Rating: 7 / 10