Although tedious, tracking your expenses is important to managing your finances well. Using pen and paper or an excel sheet to jot down your daily expenses seems like a daunting task.
Luckily, there are dozens of expense tracking apps that make the process a whole lot easier. These apps provide you with helpful funding templates and categories, so you can start adding your expenses right away.
We’ve picked out some of the best apps for Android that let you track your expenses either manually or automatically.
1. Ivy Wallet
Ivy Wallet challenges the stereotype that most information-rich apps have to look cluttered and ugly. It strikes a great balance between large, bold icons and data you might need at a glance.
You can add multiple accounts, including those for money and crypto. Predefined categories are handy for organizing your expenses, and you can always create your own. Scheduled payments make it easy to track expenses like recurring subscriptions to services like Netflix or Spotify.
Although Ivy Wallet mainly specializes in manual expense tracking, you can set budgets for different categories to ensure you don’t overspend. The app also features great report charts and a calendar view that lets you focus on getting an overview of your spending.
One area where Ivy Wallet shines is managing different types of currencies, including over 20 popular cryptocurrencies.
Overall, the extremely simple user interface and lack of distracting elements make Ivy Wallet a great expense tracker app for absolute beginners. You can even choose to store all of your spending data locally for added privacy.
To download: Ivy Wallet (Free, in-app purchases available)
2. Fund manager
Money Manager from Realbyte Inc. brings a slightly more traditional approach to managing your expenses. This app takes an Excel sheet-like approach when it comes to listing and displaying your expenses. This makes it a great alternative for those tracking expenses using Google Sheets or Excel.
That said, the app isn’t too complicated to use. You can create categories, add accounts and even transfer money between them. The bookmark feature allows you to keep a tab on your most frequent transactions and keep them handy.
We’ve found Money Manager to be one of the most detailed expense tracking apps. Other features such as the ability to add a password, export your data to an Excel sheet, and access a built-in calculator while adding expenses make this one of the most powerful apps out there. listing.
To download: Money Manager (Free in-app purchases available)
3. Money lovers
Money Lover is another great app that helps you track your expenses. Although its feature set is quite extensive, with budget planning, currency exchange, interest calculation, etc., we still found it to be a great app for manually adding and managing expenses.
You can also connect your bank account and allow the app to automatically detect transactions using the SMS app. As powerful as it is, we liked the colorful icons and graphics used by Money Lover. You can also add a simple widget to your home screen that shows your account balance.
With over five million downloads on the Play Store, Money Lover is also one of the best budgeting apps to help you with your finances.
To download: Money Lover (Free in-app purchases available)
4. Spent
Spendee comes in handy when you need an accurate expense tracking solution. It’s also one of the few apps we’ve tried that has a true AMOLED dark mode. Add to that the colorful category icons and you have a visual treat.
When it comes to features, Spendee has it all sorted. You can manually track your expenses in different categories, set budget limits, and view detailed reports about your expenses. Thanks to the growing buzz around crypto and NFTs, Spendee also allows you to add specific wallets for these accounts.
The premium subscription upgrades you to unlimited wallets and budgets and adds support for automatic bank account synchronization.
To download: Spendee (Free in-app purchases available)
5. Wallet
Wallet uses an incredibly simple name to fulfill a very simple purpose. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of other apps, and it doesn’t need them. All you have to do is install the app, sign up using your Google account, and start tracking your expenses.
Unlike most other finance apps, Wallet only displays the most essential information on its dashboard. Most everyday interactions within the app can be done with less than two swipes and a few taps.
Once your accounts are set up, you can activate the categories you use frequently and tidy up the rest. Wallet also has a section where you can add savings goals and another tab where you can set budgets to avoid overspending. The fact that it offers an ad-free experience is the icing on the cake.
To download: Wallet (free in-app purchases available)
6. Fortune City
Fortune City is perhaps the only app that could very well change your financial habits. It gamifies the whole process of tracking your expenses and managing your finances, turning a rather boring process into something you start to enjoy.
Each time you add an expense in the app, you expand your city. There are over 100 different types of buildings that you can discover. We really like this approach because the app pushes you to track even the smallest of your expenses, which is a surefire way to improve your budgeting skills.
Fortune City has both the pros and cons of an app disguised as a game. While extremely fun and engaging to use, it sometimes adds extra steps that end up distracting you. Although the in-game mascot “Cashy” does a decent job of explaining how everything works, we wouldn’t recommend this app to someone who wants a minimal, fast-paced experience.
To download: Fortune City (Free in-app purchases available)
Stay on top of your spending
With a good expense tracker app, you should be well on your way to managing your expenses even more effectively by now.
While this list was for those who wanted a simple expense tracking solution, most of these apps go beyond that and help you budget and manage your finances. Getting into the habit of regularly logging your expenses and using other financial apps is a great way to improve your overall financial picture.
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