Budgeting Apps that Make your Accountant Smile

While there are many fun apps out there that anyone can download on their smart phone, there is also an increasing number of practical apps that people can use to better their daily life. In a world where more and more people rely on their phone for everything, this increase in daily life apps is great news.

One area in which there are several apps is budgeting. People can download a variety of apps to keep track of their personal spending habits as well as doing a better job of staying on budget and knowing what they can and cannot spend on certain items.

Since we’re talking about budgets here, the following apps can all be downloaded for free.

Mint

Mint is a unique app in that it safely connects with your bank account and uses that information to automatically track your spending. From there, you can categorize your spending and see how it lines up with your budget. The app also can be set up to remind you about bills, alert you about spending, and provides encouragement for user’s financial goals.

Mint lets users create budgets for certain spending areas such as food, entertainment, and daily lattes, and helps you keep track of how you’re doing with those goals.

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, Mint is a great app to help track spending and stick to a budget.

Pageonce Money & Bills

Available for Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7, this app helps users connect all of their financial accounts – bank, credit cards, cell phone bills, loans, reward programs, and so on – in one easy place.

This app makes it easy for users to see how much they have right alongside with how much they owe and who they need to pay up to.

Expensify

This app helps users keep track of their expenses without worrying about losing those blasted receipts. Designed to help with expense reports, it’s easy for someone just wanting to keep track of their personal expenses to use as well. Users can simply take a picture of their receipts, upload them to their account, and can later access a report of their spending.

MoneyWise

MoneyWise is a unique app that helps users MAKE money as they track their spending. Partnerships with many big name companies allows MoneyWise users access to a large list of savings opportunities and can create personalized offers for users based on their spending habits.

MoneyWise also helps users track their spending, create and track financial goals, as well as watching accounts and budgets update automatically without monotonous data entry.

This app also offers tools to help users eliminate their debt and allows for them to build payments into the calendar service provided. Users can sign up to be alerted when they are running out of money, have a bill coming due, or an unusual purchase is spotted.

Trends graphs help users see a visual of where the majority of their money is going and can help decisions be made as to where spending can probably be cut. This app is a well rounded tool to help users track, save, and be on top of their finances.

Chris Turberville-Tully is a marketing strategist for Brightpearl Accountants, who provides on-line accounts service and bookkeeping for businesses, companies and corporations.