MakeUseOf Directory » Finance

Urge: Helps You Stop Wasting Money On Those Little Expenses [iOS]

Dave LeClair — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:01:24 +0000

Every day we spend money. Sometimes it’s buying an energy drink or a sandwich that we don’t really need. At the time, they seem like small, insignificant purchases, but after a while they add up to a lot of money. Urge is designed to help you stop wasting money on those little things. Instead, it has you transfer money directly to your savings account when you would normally spend it on something small and not needed.

Let’s say you drive by a Starbucks, where you would normally spend $4.00 on a coffee. You enter that amount into the app and it will keep track of how much you saved (provided you don’t buy the cup of coffee anyway). It’s pretty crazy how quickly these little things add up. You can set a savings goal, and the app will help you get there by preventing the little spending sprees. You can also share your savings on Facebook, if you choose.

For a $1.99 in-app purchase, you can use the app to actually transfer the money you’ve saved from your checking account to your savings account. This way you aren’t just seeing the savings, but actually saving. However, the top 15 banks in the US are not supported as of now, but they do support over 300 other banks and credit unions.

Features:

Stop nickle and diming yourself into poverty.
Avoid little purchases and keep track of how much you have saved.
Set saving goals for extra motivation.
Transfer money to savings account with $1.99 in app purchase.

Find Urge on the iTunes App Store

Lemon: Capture & Store All Your Receipts Online

Israel Nicolas — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:01:07 +0000

Mobile devices have made the tracking of expenses much easier. But even in this age of smartphones, many people still can’t get their daily finances in order. What we need is a dedicated app that will not only track your expenses but also capture and store online paper receipts so that everything has a tangible record. This is what Lemon does best.

Lemon is both a web app and a mobile app that captures receipts for you, done by sending your online receipts as an email to your Lemon account, or by snapping photos of paper receipts and saving them on the app. Lemon also helps figure out where your money goes by showing exactly how much you spent based on the receipts that you collected.

Since all your receipts are stored, you can easily backtrack, browse, and view specific receipts – handy if you need to return an item or write expense logs. This saves the trouble of fiddling through your messy wallet to find the receipt that you need.

Lemon is also a great companion app for paperless expense tracking – which not only reduces clutter, but saves trees too!

Features:

Capture and store receipts for expense tracking.
Use @lemon.com e-mail to save online receipts.
Take a photo of paper receipt and save to your account.
Provides expense reports based on receipts.
Mobile app available on iOS and Android handsets.
Free and easy to use.
Similar tools: Doxo, MyThings and ShoeBoxed.
Also check out another cool billing organizer: How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.

Check out Lemon @ www.lemon.com

Toshl: Nice Mobile Expense Tracker

abhijeet — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 23:01:03 +0000

A mobile expense tracker is a great tool to have and is probably the best way to track expenses because, whenever you spend anything, you could quickly enter it into your mobile phone. This way, there’s no chance of forgetting later. Toshl is a mobile expense tracking app that can help you track your spendings on iPhone, Android, Maemo and Symbian phones. The interface is good, you can instantly enter values, sync them to your Toshl.com account, and even sync multiple phones.

The data can be easily exported in various formats to your computer. The apps, and the online account is free, and you can grab extra features for an yearly pro membership.

Toshl uses SSL encryption so that the data is safe and secure. You can also tag your expenses, analyze the trends in your spendings and do much more with this app.

Demo video:

Features

Mobile expense tracking software.
Free apps for iPhone, Android and Symbian phones.
Sync and backup data to the online account.
Similar tools: Xpenser.

Check out Toshl @ www.toshl.com (By Abhijeet from GT Resources)

Venmo: Text Money Transfer Between Friends

Umar — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:01:05 +0000

Have you ever been to a restaurant and discovered that you left your wallet at home? In such situations, your friends are the best ones to help. Venmo is a web tool that facilitates money between friends.

Venmo is a web service with a wonderful concept behind: it lets friends SMS text money transfer each other. Here is how it works: you create an account on the Venmo website; next you select your smartphone type such as iPhone or BlackBerry; then you link your bank account or credit card to your Venmo account.

After all that is done, you can connect your friends’ Venmo accounts to your own and then pay or charge your friends. Your account history is given a “˜social’ touch by making it visible in a payment stream; this way your friends can view to whom you have paying or charging and for what.

You can also categorize some of your friends as “trusted” contacts; this will auto-approve the transactions and notify you of them.

Features:

A great service to facilitate casual payments between friends.
Link up your bank account or credit card with your account.
Highly secure.
Provides a “trusted contacts” category that automatically approves transactions.

Check out Venmo @ www.venmo.com

Texthog: Track Budget & Expenses via SMS, Email & Twitter

azim — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:00:17 +0000

Texthog is a free online app for tracking budget and expenses in real-time. Just signup with your email and then start adding your daily transactions manually, by email, SMS or Twitter.

The application lets you setup budgets with reminders, tag & organize similar transactions (food, coffee, restaurant etc), view spending reports to know where your money goes and adjust accordingly.

All your data can be exported to Excel, Quickbook or Quicken in CSV format.

Features:

Tracking your budget and expenses in real time.
Add transactions manually, via email, SMS or Twitter.
Classify your expenses by tagging similar transactions (food, clothing, coffee etc).
Setup daily, weekly, monthly budgets for different expenses.
View spending trends by last week, month or year.
Export data to Excel, Quickbooks or Quicken in CSV format.
Search transactions and set up reminders.
Also see 15 Cool Tools for easy Expense Tracking and Budgeting.

Check out Texthog @ www.texthog.com

Rudder: Manage And Keep Track Of Your Finances Online

TehseenBaweja — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:59:45 +0000

Rudder is a web service that aims to make it easy to keep track of your finances online. It acts as an online platform that consolidates information from all of your bank accounts, credit cards, utility bills and all other financial sources.

There is no need to go to 10-12 different websites each day to check your account balances, monthly statements and bills. Just consolidate all your information on Rudder once and then keep track of all from a single place for free.

Rudder is similar to online services like Mint but it is a much simpler interface and functionality and moreover, it also shows you how much money you have in total or in each account. Rudder uses the same data services as 4 out of 5 top US banks so security is top notch.

Here are some of the main features of Rudder:

Easy personal finance tracking and management.
Keep track of all your credit cards and bank accounts at one platform.
Get reminders for your bills in your inbox.
Always know how much you have left to spend.
Avoid late fees and overdraft fees.
See a forecast of your future cash flow.
One of the most secure data services, they never store your passwords.
For more similar tools go to MakeUseOf finance section.

Check out Rudder @ Rudder.com (Contributed by Tehseen Baweja from Ijaar.com)

Quicken Beam: Check Bank Balance & Get Payment Alerts on Mobile

Kaly — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:38:44 +0000

Want to keep a track of your daily spendings and bank accounts from your mobile phone? Try Quicken Beam. Using this program on you will be able to track your bank account balance, setup payment due alerts, check and log transactions, create reminders and more directly from your mobile phone.

Once you have signed up for an account, find and select your bank and add your account details by following instructions. Now you can begin adding reminders alerts, payment due alerts and so on.

Features:

Check your bank account balance from mobile phone.
Keep track of your daily spendings and transactions.
Setup and receive text message reminders and payment due alerts.
Manage your Quicken Beam account from your PC or mobile phone.
Available only to US users.
iPhone optimized.
See all features and how to instructions here.

Quicken Beam is a 100% free service, however please keep in mind that your mobile provider may charge you for standard text messaging fees (unless your service plan includes unlimited text messaging).

Get Quicken Beam @ quickenbeam.intuit.com

4info : Free Alerts and SMS Search for your Phone

Kaly — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:09:09 +0000

4info is an ultimate all-purpose free assisstant for your mobile phone. Want weather reports, stock quotes, flight status, package status, nearby WiFi hotspots,…. it’s all here. Quick, simple and free.

How does it work?

(1)

Available alert categories: Sports Scores, Player Stats, Weather, Stock Quotes, Horoscopes, Celebrity Gossip, Celebrity Birthdays, Health Tips, RSS News Feeds, Package Tracking, Craigslist, Personal reminder

(2) Text Message Search: Instantly lookup specific information by sending short text message. Type in a search term and send a text message to 4INFO (44636) Type a search term in the message body. Your serach term may vary depending on what type of information you want to lookup (stocks, weather, flight status etc.).

Available search categories: sports scores, player stats, stock quotes, wifi hotspots, package tracking, weather, yellow pages, news, flight status, city search, TV Guide, movie show times, drink recipes, price lookup, jokes, joke, horoscopes, pickup lines, celebrity gossip.

Additional Features:

RSS Alerts: Monitor updates from your favorite blogs and websites.
Customization: Choose time and number of alerts you want to receive per day.
Create as many alerts as you like. Manage, modify or edit your alerts online.
If you want to test message search functionality right now you can do it from here.

[Video] 4info Intro

Check out 4info @ [ www.4Info.net ]

Xpenser: Mobile Expense Tracker

Aibek Esengulov — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 23:07:54 +0000

Xpenser is a simple expense tracker that lets you easily record expenses as soon as you incur them, via email, voice message, mobile SMS, IM, or Twitter.

Feature List

Log expenses by email, SMS / text messaging, instant messengers (Yahoo, AOL, MSN, or Google), voice (just call and say your expense), or by posting them to Twitter.
Edit and finalize expenses online, and generate expense reports.
Export your expenses to Quicken, Microsoft Money, or any other financial application that supports QIF or CSV formats.
For more details go to Xpenser FAQ page or see a quick video demo here.

Note: Xpenser is a free service, however standard SMS text messaging rates from your cell phone provider may apply.

Check out Xpenser www.xpenser.com

DimeTracker: Budget and Expense Tracking

Aibek Esengulov — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:54:14 +0000

DimeTracker is a budget and expense tracking tool that allows you to: keep track of your expenses online, view / log expenses directly from your mobile phone, and create budgets you can stick to.

DimeTracker Features

Log expenses to DimeTracker account and check up on spending totals directly from your mobile phone.
Picture it: Include a photo along with your text message to keep a visual record of your payment slips.
Create monthly budgets. Save detailed spending reports to Excel.
Share your spending stats on your Facebook profile.
Note: Although DimeTracker is 100% free during beta period, there is no word on how it’ll proceed afterwards.

Check out DimeTracker @ [www.dimetracker.com]