I was a huge fan of Saver when I was stuck using iOS 6 on my iPhone 4S, but when I recently upgraded to an iPhone 5s, the app just didn’t cut it for me. Saver did not have iOS 7 or iPhone 5 support and did not have exporting capabilities either. I had to look for another app to suit my needs, that’s when I found Expenses, a beautiful expense tracking app with a heap of amazing features. Expenses for iPhone has been created keeping almost every expense tracking feature in mind while maintaining a beautiful, highly customised UI.
Every UI element in Expenses is custom-crafted and the developer has done an amazing job with the app icon as well. There are 4 ways to get an overview of your expenses. You can either use the Stats, Calendar, Timeline or Map view to scroll through your data. The app lets you add entires either as ‘Spendings’ or ‘Incomes’ using the ‘+’ button that is available in each one of these views. This makes it extremely quick and easy to add an entry no matter where you are in the app. The main view of the app — Stats, has been created specifically to let you glance at your expenses using a gorgeous pie chart. You can also view your sources of income via the pie chart by tapping the income glyph. The animation played as the chart switches is lovely. While adding a new expenditure or income, you can add a Category, Tag, Location Tag or even change the date. The app pulls your current location and adds it to the expenditure by default, which is a nice touch.
By tapping the icon on the top right of any of the 4 main views, you can filter your data either by tags or by categories. You can also filter by time period, by tapping on the small clock icon in the main view. If you want to view statistics on a particular category, you can tap on it in the main view and a beautiful little chart is displayed within the table itself. Another very useful and well implemented feature of the app is its ability to handle foreign currencies. While adding an expenditure in another country/currency, the app automatically converts it to your home currency. You’ll notice especially in the main view, that every transition and view in the app has been made specifically to suit the app’s UI and beautiful design.
The Calendar view is a nice way to get an overview of when you’ve spent your money. By double tapping a date on the calendar, you can go straight to adding a new expense. The Timeline view displays all your expenditures and incomes in chronological order and can be quite useful. The way the navigation bar and tool bar retract from the screen and let you scroll through your timeline in full screen mode is just brilliant. The Map view is extremely useful and gives you an amazing way to view where you spent your money. You can add a new entry directly on the map by long pressing anywhere whereas tapping and holding a current entry lets you move it around to your desired location. Tapping on an entry in the timeline, map or calendar lets you view, edit or delete it. You can switch between any of these view by swiping to the right or by tapping the ‘hamburger’ button on the top left.
Expenses has very robust syncing and exporting capabilities. The app syncs via iCloud or Dropbox and will be getting Google Drive sync very soon as well. Exporting can be done through the settings menu, where you have the choice to export your expenses via a CSV file, PDF document or a proprietary Expenses file. The app also has other bonus features such as reminders to add entries, geo-notifications for marked places, editable tags and categories, 24hour date mode and much more all in the in-app settings.
Expenses has its flaws though. When you add a new expense category, it does not reflect in the list instantly, you must reload the view first. So you have to choose a temporary category, save that, and edit it later. This is actually the case with other views in the app as well. The app can be a little hard to get accustomed to and although the ‘Tips & Tricks’ page can be useful, there were several ‘Tips’ that left me confused. Expenses is still a solid app and offers almost every feature you could ever want from an expense tracker with a Budget section coming soon. It’s also extremely pretty. The app is worth just $2.99 on the App Store and you should give it a try. You can view some screenshots below.