Simple mobile apps to help you manage your activities, resources, and health.(Part 2)

Keep track of your financial transactions(income and expenses) with "My expenses" app. Episode 2

Hey! Are you aware of how much money you spent on your outing today? Do you know how much you had in savings before you purchased that awesome gadget in vogue? Was that Nike shoe part of your budget this month? How much money have you made this week?. These are random questions I formulated in my brain. But, this is what my brain does every now and then. I found myself questioning every purchase I want to make, in my mind first before actually making the purchase. This is what income and expenses tracking has been doing for me lately. Honestly, I must tell you it feels kind of weird that I have to thoroughly scrutinize my budget before I purchase any item.

Flashback to 2018, when I cared less about how I spent my funds were spent, I doled out cash with reckless abandon and didn't have any second thoughts. Well, 2019 had me making resolutions to ensure that every activity I engaged in was beneficial to me. As well as every expense that will be made from the proceeds of my activities.

The road to making these resolutions a reality hasn't been easy, I must tell you. Activity tracking hasn't been too difficult because I engage in almost the same cycle of activities every day. On the other hand, managing my expenses has been sort of a pain. Until now, I didn't know it will be so hard to curtail my spending habit even when I know it is harmful to me. I've tried to work around my budget for the month and it's not been easy. I've had to tweak my budget several times because I broke a spending rule. I think I'm a hypocrite for that. I take full responsibility for my actions though, and I still partly blame the environment I find myself.

The holidays are finally over for me and by next week, I will be engaging in different activities which would lead to different expenses. I have made a budget for those expenses and I'm hoping I work with my budget, successfully. In all, what I'm trying to say is that, expenses tracking is not a piece of cake. It is not easy to handle. It requires lots of discipline and dedication to make it work according to plan. These are habits I lacked but I'm gradually stepping up.

In case you are lost, this article is a sequel to my previous publication about "My Expenses" app. An Android software designed to help you track, and manage your expenses and, income. This article is published under the series "Simple mobile apps to manage your activities and resources". In this series, my objective was to expose people to two simple software that will help them properly manage their time and resources. Although the central focus of this series is the app themselves, I found a way to make my publications educational and valuable. That's why I took time out to explain why activity and expenses tracking was vital. For activity diary, I explained the why activity tracking was necessary and important in episode one. I also did the same thing for "My expenses". I explained why tracking income and expenses were important. This was actually done in the previous episode before this one.

Here is a recap of what I discussed in the previous episode about "My Expenses".

• What is My Expenses app?
• How the app functions
• Why it is necessary to track our finances.

The three points above were adequately discussed in the previous article. However, the major talking point, which I think was more important was the third point. "Why it is necessary to track our finances". I think without that point, the app wouldn't be considered relevant. I discussed three sub-points at that point. I stated that it was necessary to track our finances because;

• It helps us to identify spending issues.
• It helps us to stick to our budget.
• It helps to create financial awareness.

So basically, the previous over was just a general discussion of the project's concept.

In this episode, I will be reviewing the features of the app. I stated in the previous episode that the app is packing quite a lot of features. However, I will be reviewing only the relevant features.

Do have a wonderful read.

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Review of My Expenses features.

In this section, I will be reviewing the app's features. Remember in the last episode I mentioned that some functions in the app needed to be paid for.

The first feature to be reviewed is the User Interface. There's no need to explain why this is the first feature I will be reviewing.

My Expenses User Interface(UI)

The UI of the app is basic. I don't think the project owner bothered too much about how the app looked. Naturally, I'm freaked about great user interfaces, but I become bias when the services of the app overshadow the importance of a good UI. Well, that is not to say that the app looks bad. I would rather say that the user interface suits the services of the app. The app has a dark mode and users can adjust font size. I think that's enough UI customization already. I am getting used to app's without night mode, but, I still have a special attraction towards apps that has a night mode option.
You can already guess that the night(dark) mode is my preferred theme on the app.

My Expenses functionalities.

There are too many functionalities on this app, and honestly, I'm yet to try out all of them. I have only used the functions that are important to me on the app.
In the previous episode, I explained briefly how the app worked. I really don't know how to start reviewing the functions of the app. However, I will try to make it explicit enough for you to understand.

These are some functions and features of the app;

Create a transaction

This is one of the basic functions of the app. After the setup at first launch, the next thing to do on the app is to create a transaction either for an income or expenses.
Creating a transaction on the app is not rocket science. So far you can read and understand, performing this action should be a piece of cake.
While creating a transaction, you can attach notes and pictures to it. This means that the app has a note and photo capture function. This is quite similar to the activity diary app. Users can add notes and photos to a transaction. But, to attach photos, you will need to unlock premium features. When I realized that fact, it was disheartening for me. I totally understand if the project owner wants users to pay for some features, but not something as basic ad attaching a photo.

Multiple accounts(Premium feature)

When you launch the app for the first time, one of the setup steps is to create an account. You can set up different accounts with different characteristics. You can either set up a cash account, credit card, bank account, or, asset account liabilities. You can set up more than one of each. However, you will only be able to set up only 5 accounts on the free version. Once again this was saddening. But the project owner was considerate here. I currently have only one account set up for now. Which is a bank account. Maybe I will set up a cash account later. I don't think I will set up to 5 accounts so I don't have much complains here.

Budgeting(Premium feature)

The app lets you create a budget. Your budget could either be daily, monthly, weekly or yearly. This is an important feature of the app. One of the reasons for tracking expenses and income is to help us check if we are working according to our budget. The app would have been incomplete if it was packing this feature. This feature also requires the premium features unlocked. However, you can use this feature free for 30 days.

Distrubution(Premium feature)

This feature is similar to statistics on Activity diary. The distribution feature displays how your expenses or income are distributed among different categories. With this feature, you can tell which category consumes more of your money. The stats are represented in a pie chart. That's why I said it is similar to Activity diary.
The feature is premium, but, it is available for 30 days free use.

History(Premium feature)

I really don't understand the history feature, so I can't really talk about it. However, it is still a premium feature.

Export and reset

You can export all your transactions and reset your history of transactions if you wish. The export feature is a way of backing up your transactions. You can either export the file in QIF or CSV format.

Print (Premium feature)

You can print your transaction statements from the app. This is amazing honestly. The transactions log is automatically converted to a pdf file. You can now share this file and print at a later time. Well, I thought maybe the print function will allow me to quickly link to my printer app on my phone and print immediately. But that's not the case. Once again, the feature is free for 30 days.

Currency

I loved the fact that I could display my funds in my country's local currency. I was expecting the app will only display figures, and I'd be tasked with placing the currency with my mind. Well, I was proved wrong. The app's currency database is quite a lot. I couldn't count, but I think almost all the available or prominent currencies in the world are in the app. Sometimes, my country's local currency is not found in drop-down lists like this, so I was a bit upset. I took a leap of faith and scrolled to where it was supposed to be and found it. I was excited.

Language

Language wouldn't be a barrier for any users of this app. The app is packing a reasonable amount of language translations. I think major languages in the world are covered in that list.

Security

The app has a security system. Which is quite cool. Although I don't think the security system is really important. I mean the contents of the app should be harmful. But what do I know? Some people are very secretive about their wealth, so this feature will be of great benefit to them.
The security system looks basic though. You can either use alphabets or digits. But what you don't know is that, once the security protocol is active, you cannot perform screenshot operations anywhere on the app.

The above are the features of the app I have checked out. There are a lot of features still undiscovered, but these ones are the ones you should mostly be concerned about.

Summary.

In this article, I've been able to review the important features of the app. From the review, it is safe to say that the app was carefully thought out and executed. I was quite displeased with the fact that a lot of important features were locked. I don't blame the project owner though. However, it would have been great if users could make a one-time payment for the premium feature and never have to pay again. But that's not possible, as the highest validity is 30 months which is 2 years and 6 months. The price of this subscriptions is 14 euros. The price is not so expensive though. Especially when you consider the value you will be getting out of it. I'm yet to purchase the premium feature, maybe I won't. But the app still does what I need it for. It's an app worth trying out.

The importance of expenses and income tracking cannot be overemphasized. I've said this before and I'm saying it again. If you want to get the best out of this year, engage in activity and expenses tracking. In this series, I've been able to review two apps that will help you properly carry out proper management of your time and resources. I urge you to try out the two apps discussed in this series.

This episode would have been the last in this series. However, I think I will create one or two more episodes. I will be talking about our health and I will be reviewing an app that kind of ensures we stay in shape and our health is great. The reason for this is because, if our health was in a bad state, our activities will be very limited. Then our expenses budget will be for drugs or other health medications, which is not a good thing. So for activity and expenses tracking to be meaningful and productive, our health has to be in good shape.

The next article on this series will be about health. The open source app I will be discussing is unknown. I will check out some of these health apps and select the best one for my review.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Links

Project repository: https://github.com/mtotschnig/MyExpenses

App download link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.totschnig.myexpenses

Resources:

The content of this post is based on my knowledge of the project and mostly my experience. The images used are screenshots of the app on my device. Other images gotten elsewhere have their source links provided just below them.

N.B: The figures displayed in the screenshots are mockups and not my current financial status. The figures were used to make my presentation more descriptive. The original app is in my device's second space.

Series backlinks:

• Simple mobile apps to help you manage your activities and resources.Part 1
• Simple mobile apps to help you manage your activities and resources. (Part 1 contd.)
• Simple mobile apps to help you manage your activities and resources. (Part 1 contd.)
• Simple mobile apps to help you manage your activities and resources. (Part 2)

Github profile:

https://github.com/HarryHeights