[App Fridays] Here's how you can discipline your spending habits with Money Manager
Money Manager is a clean, intuitive, and clutter-free app to keep track of your financial health. We found this app among the easiest ways to organise bills by week, month, and year as well as by categories.
It is only mid-month and you may be wondering where all your money has gone already. Well, wonder no longer. To help you track your expenses and manage your money better, there is a whole crop of budget-tracking apps for smartphones these days.
We stumbled upon the very simple and well-designed Money Manager, which has been rated 4.8 stars on Google’s Play Store and has more than one million downloads so far.
According to user reviews, the app does just about everything “I want”. Read on for our review to find out if you should check out this expense management app for yourself.
A simple start
Much to the relief of those who worry about sensitive data being leaked through logins, the app does not require any sign-up to start with. Just download it and you can start using it right away. It is that easy!
A user has the option of logging in if they want to save and sync data.
How does it track expenses?
This is actually done with just one click. You tap the ‘plus’ symbol on the bottom right of the app to add a new transaction. If it is an income, you add it under income; similarly for expenses.
Under both income and expense, there are various subcategories that you can file the transactions under, such as bonus, increment, and reimbursements, and travel, food, and entertainment.
It actually took us only a second to record a transaction. Adding the details on where your money comes and goes and keeping track of what remains is thus extremely easy with this app.
You can also create a category if it does not exist in the app by default, by accessing the settings.
The developers have also added some small yet smart capabilities to the app. Say, for instance, you try to add an income under the following month, or before the day and date have come up – the app goes ahead and records that transaction in the current month.
Other features
A user can also set reminders to record a transaction, which too is achieved with a couple of taps and swipes.
This free app also gives intuitive and readable spending and income pie charts, which provide a succinct overview of your spending distribution.
The display of the charts is clear, nice, and informative, with the transactions grouped by categories. You can even export the financial reports, to share or save it.
Every icon for the features is placed on the homepage of the app for easy access, yet the homepage shows only a round-up of what the current month looks like, with the income, expenses, and balance displayed neatly.
On the Play Store, the app information states that it is available in various languages including, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, and French. However, we could not figure out how to switch to those languages.
The verdict
This app gives the whole picture of your finances in one place, to better understand where your money comes and goes, with visualised reports of income and expenses by time and category.
Overall, the app is clean, intuitive, and clutter-free. We found this app among the easiest ways to organise bills by week, month, and year as well as by categories. The icing on the cake with Money Manager is that it can be used for free, without ads and any restriction of features.
What can be added for bonus likes, you ask? It would be nice if the app could have automated options to add repetitive monthly bills like rent or mobile bills. Some users have also expressed the view that it would be even better with an option to track savings.
We would definitely recommend this app to keep track of your financial health for its simple, lightweight, straightforward, and very-easy-to-access user interface. There is no redundancy whatsoever on the app, and it records income and expenses extremely fast.
It is worth remembering that the app is just a tool to help with living within one’s means. Maintaining good financial habits is in your hands at the end of the day!
(Edited by Athirupa Geetha Manichandar)