Spending Tracker Reviews

by Mikey's Orc

The good: Don’t have to sync bank accounts with SpendingTracker , no bank account errors or sync issues, don’t have to pay a monthly fee for using SpendingTracker like other financial apps, a flat one time fee of less than $10 is needed to unlock Premium features for SpendingTracker .

The bad: You have to manually put in all your transactions and do everything else (except the calculations for the balances). You have to pay that one time fee if you really need to use SpendingTracker on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

The ugly: I could never figure out how to use the “budget mode” and had to figure out, with help from Heaven, how to use SpendingTracker for budgeting. I emailed the support guy on help with setting up a budget and all he did was repeat a step in the instructions to set SpendingTracker to budget mode which was no help to me at all. I setup an account with my expenses as income for my budget and compare them to my transactions that I put in my financial institutions accounts that I made. I keep my budget and income rolling from month to month and if I need to change my budget and my income I can (which is a good thing).

by Arktrvler

SpendingTracker has several good features for maintaining records of income and expenses. I have only used it for a couple of weeks and so far it is much more to my liking than the other four or five apps that I tried. The dissatisfaction with other apps is what brought about my surprise that this one actually does what I wanted it to do.
You can maintain a good record of spending in each category, which you can customize to suit your needs. You can also do the same for multiple sources of income. It does some basic reports which are useful and may be all you need.
Also you can run several different accounts at the same time.
One thing that I don’t like is that if you have multiple accounts, the categories that you use on one account are automatically included on other accounts. Deleting a category from one account and keeping it in the other has not been possible yet. I will continue to try, as a bunch of unused categories clutters up the account where they aren’t needed.
I expect to like this better as I get more experience with it.

by Ltlmonkey18

SpendingTracker save a me so much time. Easy to use. Easy to set up recurring expenses. I have been using it for years now and don’t waste time on big software computer programs any longer. I just print important categories out for my CPA at the end of the year. Also, since it is in my phone I never miss putting something in quickly amd easily. This has been a game changer for me! A couple of wishes…1. When I am wanting to export a specific categories it brings up a wheel for selection. This is hard because I have so many categories. I would prefer to be able to do a search or be able to start typing the category name and have relevant ones pop up, or have them alphabetically listed. 2. It isn’t easy to modify a category name once it is established. 3. It would be great to be able to have a couple of different spending sets. Like one for my business account and one for a personal account. I haven't found a way to do these things in SpendingTracker so far.

by CircusTrainActivate

I love SpendingTracker - it is so convenient, especially when I use it through my Apple Watch. I can enter an amount spent through my watch as I am standing at the cash register. It is also reliable (unlike other budget apps I have tracked). I like SpendingTracker because I can put in the amount I have to spend and can deduct my expenses from there - I am not required to set up a budget (I have tons of kids - I can’t predict my budget). I have a huge request, however. There are only four pay periods to choose from - daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. I am paid every other Friday. I would like SpendingTracker to have a bi-weekly option. This also becomes a problem because the budget is reset when a new month starts even though I am still operating from money I received during the last pay period. When a pay period extends over the end of one month and into the beginning of the other months, it resets my budget. As it is, I use the monthly option which doesn’t really meet my needs.

by Drunk_ketchup

SpendingTracker is perfect with one MAIN exception. The only reason SpendingTracker doesn’t get 5 stars is if you are budgeting your time period on a weekly basis you cannot select different views such as daily, monthly, annually. This means that if my time period for my budgeting is on a week by week basis in SpendingTracker , the amount I have left over will accurately carry over into the next week. (When selecting weekly view of my budget) HOWEVR if I select to view my budget on a daily basis (with my time period set to weekly) it will not reflect or even show my carry over amounts, unless I change my time period. This is somewhat inconvenient because I need to plan my budget weekly and need to know how much will carry over until the next week, but if I decide I need to adjust my budget daily and want to use it to view what I would potentially have the next day, it will not accurately reflect. I tried temporarily changing the “time period” setting to daily, and then viewing my budget daily and it did accurately reflect, however when I went back to my “weekly time period” it screwed up the “automatic carryovers I had to manually input to balance my budget.

by Baybreez

I love this program. It is very easy to use. I love the simplicity of adding categories as you go. I don’t use it to budget, but to keep track of expenses for a very small home business. I am able to print out a report suitable for my accountant to do my taxes. I would like to be able to split categories on a single receipt. And I would like a way to assign tags to transactions to designate what they relate to - for example supplies/home vs supplies/kennel vs supplies/rental property. Instead I just enter them on separate accounts, which is easy. Would also love to add a photo of receipts. I would also like to be able to enter the date from the keyboard rather than scroll through the whole year on the calendar. I also need to enter another account, because I don’t have a way to assign tags to transactions. I have 5 accounts now and can’t find a way to add one more?? But it is so easy and fast to enter transactions. I really do like it & use it. Fix these things & I will rate it 5 or even 6. I would also like to put it on my computer or my IPad. I would love a response from the developers.

by 4volvos

I’ve downloaded and tried more than a dozen expense tracking apps and most didn’t work for me. At first this one seemed too simple as I wanted to view transactions by category. Then I discovered that when you pull down on the screen you see the categories box and you can choose to view transactions by the categories you create. I upgraded to Pro then exported expenses and discovered you can export by category, a range of dates, by the month or year or whatever. At this point I saw what a game changer it was for me. When I did an email export all I had to do was click on the file from my desktop and I had a spreadsheet with all the transactions in order. If you had a mind to you could make categories that match your Schedule C for taxes which is what I did. So I have expense categories: Post Office, Shop Supplies, Office, Utilities, eBay fees, etc. I have income categories: Web Sales, eBay Sales, Shop Sale, Investment Sold, etc. Whenever I want to see any or all the transactions I can see any part of them by Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly. Note that it syncs through DropBox so I can see it on my iPad or iPhone. No subscription. You can set up multiple accounts and set reminders, set a passcode, set auto-backup and other tweaks. Highly recommend especially if you’re trying to track receipts, payments and income. Charles

by Fat Fingers 2

Has Multiple accounts, reoccurring expenses and income with transfer capability between accounts, reports showing future months/years expenses vers income. I made my normal expense account with monthly expenses and income and then a savings account with a monthly transfer from my expense account to savings and the reports shows my future savings goal as well as my future expenses account showing my ability to meet expenses with income and if a month is in trouble I can modify that months savings to make up the difference. It a spending and savings plan like a budget or a general ledger and I try to keep it up with any additional expenses or income (ha ha) in order to stay on the plan. I find it fun to maintain and to balance with my banks reality in the monthly carry forward dollar balance. Sure I have a bunch of visa charges but here I only have one monthly visa expense entry as my total expense goal for all those monthly visa transactions.

by Mgamble029

Let’s you categorize ur expenses (bills, rent, entertainment, etc)

The free version is great haven’t upgraded because I have been more than satisfied with the free version. I have had many of these apps and this ones is the only one you need. Never freezes or lags. Great way to save money and visualize where you’re money is going you would be surprised how much money you really spend. Acknowledging and knowing how much you really spend is the first step to setting up a plan to save money. I feel like this review sounds like I was paid to say this but just wanted to write a good review because in a world full of people in debt more people should track their spending and using apps like this make it easy to start saving this one really is a good app especially for free. Try SpendingTracker before trying any others that are similar. I’ve had them all from mint to moneywise and this one exceeds all of those and the simplicity of SpendingTracker makes it easy to stay on top of all expenses and income

by Sampstar

I downloaded about ten different apps in hopes of tracking my spending with my wife. This is the one that made sense and was easy to get started and make adjustments. Also, being able to sync with my wife's phone was essential (luckily she doesn't use her Dropbox, so I logged in on her phone, since it syncs via Dropbox). Sure, I paid for two pro versions to do it, but it was worth it to sync and support an app that does what we need.
For whatever reason, Using Mint or Personal Capital never really worked out for me. I was looking to try an envelope style of budgeting, but would never actually use just cash like a savage. This allows you to set budgets per different categories. Actually entering my spending as I spend it seems to makes me more accountable. I love that I can select a category, but also enter a note so I know exactly what the purchase was.
It's great being able to create different categories and choose the ones allowed to rollover.
After two months, we are actually still on budget.

by Mr. Blue Bunny In Costa Mesa

SpendingTracker is the primary reason that I wanted to purchase an iPhone in the first place, and it has met or exceeded every expectation! It allows the hand-creation of categories of spending, keeps a transaction list for each month (which furthermore can be exported to MS Excel via a .csv file using the very low-cost upgrade), and reports running and final totals of expense for each category, in a list form or by pie chart with percentages. It also keeps track of income, but this is done without category-specific totals or pie charts. It took a minor amount of time to set up, and once this was done, it was very simple and rapid to use! EXACTLY what I was looking for!! And, I agree and appreciate the newer feature of allowing for negative values for expenses - this keeps reimbursements from being confused with income - a surprisingly helpful accounting practice. I expect that it could only really be improved by substantially increasing its size and complexity - which would probably be unrealistic for a low-cost and elegant app such as this.

by Bimmernerd

Like many people, my wife and I manage a busy household with children. We both work full time+ in the medical field and managing finances was a challenge. Several years ago I thought “there has got to be an app out there that allows us to share essentially a ledger or account register of some sort.” Of course there were several and we tried literally a dozen different apps. Many were complicated, forced you to create spending budgets or complicated things by adding unnecessary “fluff” or had issues with syncing or cost a monthly fee. We wanted a simple, accurate way to track how much we spent every month, on what, and could see how much we had left in our checking and savings. We wanted software my wife could enter a transaction in and it would show up on my version on my phone instantly from anywhere in the world and vice versa. SpendingTracker does just that, we have been using it for several years, earlier versions had occasional sync problems but the developer was always very responsive and able to help us fix the issue. The last several versions of SpendingTracker have been rock solid and do exactly what we need it to, nothing more, nothing less and helps my wife and I stay on top of our finances and spending habits. If you’re looking for a great app for sharing an account with someone that allows you to enter transactions on the fly - look no further this one is as close to perfection as you can get.

by Greendayfan182

For a couple years I managed my own budget in the notes app on my phone. It was a pain having to enter everything in each week and all. Especially when numbers were off and I had to go back 5 weeks and adjust accordingly.
Then I found SpendingTracker and wow it’s perfect. Recurring events, ease of adding income/expense with notes, categories for income/expense, I love it. Also, being able to set multiple accounts as in a checking and savings accounts, and transfer money between them in SpendingTracker is a great feature. And last but not least, I love the widget that you can add to your command center which makes it very quick to add income or expense and also see your available balance.
I did spend $3 for the pro version so I could add recurring expenses which was well worth it and makes setting my weekly budget incredibly easy. Each week all I have to do is slide over to the widget, click income, type in the amount of my paycheck, and I’m all set. This is a great app, would definitely recommend.

by C21judyg

I have used SpendingTracker for years to keep a credit card budget. We are retired and use one credit rewards card for everything that we can. I set up a limited amount for each month beginning with the billing date for the card. This way as I add my charges it subtracts them off the total amount I budgeted and keeps me from over spending. This is so easy and I know almost to the penny what my bill will be before I get it. I. In the note section I put where I made the charge and any other notes about what I bought. Another great thing is I can set my credit card to notify me when I make purchases and that reminds me to add it to SpendingTracker . If I shop five places I can come home and pull down my iPhone notifications and add them easily to SpendingTracker without getting out all the receipts and not worry about losing them. The decreasing balance shows me if I am running out of money to quickly. Try this if you way a simple way to budget. Also I was having trouble syncing my iPad and phone and Mark was prompt in helping solve that issue.

by Ricciola99

I have been using SpendingTracker for two years now. At first the biggest challenge is getting into the habit of using it daily for all of your spending. Over time I have started using more and more features, once I became familiar with the features I have already been using. Now, for the first time I will be syncing my phone app with my iPad. I quickly updated to the pro version because of its additional features and low cost. SpendingTracker does everything I needed a spending tracker to do and then some. I did not want to link to a bank account and complicate things, and SpendingTracker does just what I need. Keep track of all my income and spending. And it is flexible as well. I have added many new categories to further break down my spending habits. At the end of the year I am able to produce charts and graphs of all my spending, both home based business and personal. What a time saver when doing taxes instead of tallying up all of my receipts for the year. If you want a simple spending tracker, this is it. Just get in the habit of using it every day. Which by the way can even remind you to do that.

by DebR62

I was looking for a simple yet effective app that would help me see exactly where my money is going so I can find what part of my spending is necessary, where it’s wasteful, and find ways to do better. I love being able to have as many categories as I want to really break it down. How much of my income each month is from my full time job and how much from a freelance side job? Instead of just “entertainment” how much is going to books vs. music vs. movies? There’s even a place to make notes for more detail.

At this point, I’m not looking for financial advice from an app and I don’t want to link an app to my bank account. If you want those things, keep looking.

I’m looking for a portable, efficient alternative to a notebook and a calculator and I’m fine with entering my amounts manually. In fact that’s helpful so I don’t forget to log cash transactions that an automated bank-linked app would miss. I want to track income and expenses graphically and in detail. SpendingTracker does that perfectly. If that’s what you want too and you’re willing to enter everything manually, then I highly recommend SpendingTracker.

by Ncrabb2011

First, it’s important to note that SpendingTracker is almost entirely accessible to VoiceOver users. You won’t be able to take full advantage of the graphs and reports, but the data is available in other ways that are equally beneficial. This is easy to use, and it doesn’t intrude into your bank accounts. Granted, you have to enter your transactions manually, but there are some real advantages to that. Categories and transactions are easy to input and easy to understand. Those who crave color in their categories can have it. There are several useful ways to sort your data, and yes, you can export it if you need to.

Like any other app of its type, SpendingTracker is only as good as the data you enter. Yes, it takes some time to enter data, but the revelations you get about how you’re spending your money are fascinating indeed. SpendingTracker is your portal to financial peace of mind that will be harder to achieve without it.

Finally, note that the developer is extremely responsive to questions and provides accurate helpful answers. Your first assignment: Buy the upgrade, then track it in SpendingTracker as an expense. You’ll be glad you bought the upgrade.

by Bfosjbdhja

I’ve had SpendingTracker for a couple of years now, and I can definitely so it’s worth it. It works as intended. It’s free but you can pay a one time premium which I like. Everything is done manually, except for the report, which is really nice. I used to use Excel to track my budget and this works way more conveniently as I can add my expenses on the go. You can set a budgeting amount but you won’t be able to create a budget per category, which would be very nice if that can be added in. I wish there was a bank feed option and SpendingTracker instead of manually adding expenses because sometimes I forget or am too busy to add expenses manually. Lastly I’ve had an issue in the past, which has possibly been resolved, that when SpendingTracker offboards from my iPhone, the data is lost unless you create backup files in Dropbox. I wish SpendingTracker used other backup options such as Google Drive because I don’t use Dropbox so it’s kind of inconvenient there. Overall great app. Again, bank feeds, budget per category, please fix the offboarding and losing my data issue, and other backup options such as G-Drive and I will throw my money at you.

by Britni Uhrich

I’ve been using SpendingTracker for well over a year EVERY single day. Every single transaction I make gets entered. My total automatically gets figured, I can have as many different categories as I want, manually label transactions, keep track of multiple different accounts, it calculates all your categories so you can see what you’re spending as a whole. Seriously. SpendingTracker basically runs all my finances. It is literally perfect for the way I personalize like to organize my ledger.

While you can select different ways for it to organize your transactions (like by date, or highest amount to lowest amount, by category, etc), the ONLY thing I wish we could do is manually move around individual transaction. I keep mine organized by date, and sometimes I enter a transaction later on in the day that I actually did earlier and it automatically lists it after the other transactions done that same day, which clearly makes sense, but I wish I could move just that one around throughout the different transactions that were done that same day. But that’s literally the least biggest deal. I’m just extra particular sometimes lol.

I love SpendingTracker. I honestly can’t remember if I had to pay for like a premium version or something, but if I did, it was worth every penny.

by CR@SK

I downloaded and updated to the premium to get the extra features. I think that was worth the small cost. It is a simple-to- use program, and I like being able to add categories on the fly. Since I am retired, and have a small income, I like that I can put in a fixed budget amount, and then add misc. income to calculate come a total spending allowance per month. Then, there is an auto calculate that shows the under/over spending and the ability to carry over a positive or negative variance. I had created a spreadsheet in Numbers, but that was a bit clumsy, so this is a refreshing change. I enter the expenses on both the ipad and iphone, and the sync through Dropbox has been working well with live updates. This program was designed very intuitively and is exactly what I had been looking for. I think there are other apps which might have more features, but the ones I looked at seemed more complicated. This is simple and provides just the amount of information that I need to monitor my budget. It would be nice to be able to take a snapshot of receipts, however. There is a both a pdf and csv export function, so I can export the report into a spreadsheet (Excel or CSV) or as a pdf into an app like Notability for viewing. So far, in the first week, I give it a high rating for simplicity and comprehensiveness.

by Proud_Fangirl😍😭😱

SpendingTracker is great overall, and I don’t have the premium so I’m not sure if that’s different, but for the normal free one, I like it a lot it’s very helpful but i would like it better if, when making a second account it had the option to make it a savings account, so it would say things like “you’ve gotten $50 so far!” And it would have an option to take money away from the account but it wouldn’t say “expenses” bc that technically wouldn’t be right. And if u could set a goal for a savings account, and once u reach ur goal it tells u that u reached it and “would u like to raise ur goal or close this account?” Ya know? But yeah that would be great so if u would do that I would totally give five stars. Thanks for a very helpful app tho!

Edit: I realized it would also be awesome if there was a Debts section where u could write down who u owe money to and how much, and there’s a little button next to it so u can say “debt paid”

by Medigal50

Like many people, I wondered where all my hard-earned money was going and knew I needed to track all sources of income and expenses. I’ve been using SpendingTracker for 9 months now and highly recommend it for anyone wanting to feel more in control of their money. Because it is so fast and easy to use, I can enter my transactions on the spot or at the end of the day. It’s shocking how many meaningless purchases I’ve made, and I don’t think I’m an impulsive spender. But the habit of entering all my income and expenses has really helped me reduce pointless purchases—just knowing that I’ll have to enter my purchase gives me pause: “Do I really need this?” and “Is there something I already have that can serve this function?” I now review where my money is going each week because it’s so easy. At any time, I can see if I’m in the red or black and make adjustments. SpendingTracker has been a game changer for me.

by VA Paperwork Help

We are using the free services so far and may upgrade later if it seems like it would help. SpendingTracker is an extreme help for my elderly parents and I so far. We need to meet a minimum amount of expenditures monthly in order for my 90 yr old dad to get assistance from the Veterans Administration. We must make sure that they achieve the minimum amount each month in order to get $355 of monthly aide. To keep him at home while he is bed bound it means they need help coming in a few times every week. This spending app allows me to work with my mom long distance when I’m not visiting and she is already doing fine maneuvering the data entry on her own. At 82 yrs old she is easily able to enter the expenses and use your app, the categories we’ve entered make sense for the situation, and INSTEAD of income we entered $1040, the VA expenses minimum we must reach (for a $2400 household net). Mom can tell if she needs to purchase over-counter meds before this month ends or if she should wait until the new month starts. She can also tell ahead of time if the scheduled caregivers need to be scheduled on a different day, or if she can truly afford it that month. We would be lost without SpendingTracker and it’s ease of use. Thank you!

by Kimmie5659

I very rarely — if ever — give 5-star reviews. For me and my simple needs, “Spending” deserves it, hands down. No sign-up required! Inexpensive, 1-time upgrade price, (which I gladly paid after 2 days try-out). Easy-to-read data on my small screen! Easy to understand; very small learning curve. I tested about 7 other apps before this; most offered way too many features, some I’d never need. Retired, I live on a fixed monthly allowance, separate from income. All I wanted/needed was a way to breakdown and record my day-to-day spending habits, helping me to visualize (at a glance) where the money was going. Other pros: setting transaction reminders or just inputting on the go... automatic reoccurring monthly payments.... editing/adding categories... sort options... adding notes. More than pleased, I definitely recommend SpendingTracker if you want a simple, straightforward spending tracker.

by Imginger

Highly recommended and love the reports, level of customization and everything about it. It has been helping me track the incidental expenses (after I constantly insist the whole family give me their receipts) and had been pointing out the glaring areas where we need to monitor our casual spending (eating out, coffee, convenience stores) and I love it. Just one little bug that cropped up after my recent upgrade to the iPhone XS max... The third party keyboard I use (Microsoft WordFlow) is now magnified somehow when I go to enter expenses and the far right of the keyboard is covered up of the side/unusable. I have to switch to the Apple keyboard. And it doesn't happen always (which is curious) but about 80% of the time. I want to keep using SpendingTracker and I will regardless, but if it's something you can fix, that would be super, too!
**kudos**