Pinoy Fund Runners

It was twelve months ago that I started managing my finance by having my own budget. The first application I used was actually an excel file forwarded to me by one of my officemates. I used it regularly and tracked my expenses religiously. The only problem was it takes a lot of effort to input the values and track the expenses. Also, it doesn't have any form of feedback on how far I am on the budget that I was able to set.

On April 2011, I started to look into Apps on mobile devices that would help me manage my finance with ease and provide me real-time report and trend on my overall finance. On my experience on budgeting, my criteria are as follows:

• Able to set budget represented by different criteria
• Should contain data for income and expense
• Track reoccurring expenses
• Monthly report for income vs. expense.
• Should be able to tell you how far are you from your budget: Budgeted vs. Actual
• Can be exported to excel
• Graphs like pie chart, bar and line graphs to show trends in my finance
• User friendly

So far, with all the available apps offered in the market, one app fits the criteria I made: Budgets for iPad by iBear LLC


http://ibearsoft.com/budgets/

What makes this app so cool is the interface (and the graphics). Because of the real-time update and report on my finance, I was able to make sound decisions over my expenses.

BTW, did I tell you it was free? Yes, its free. And the advertisement on the app is not that annoying when you are using the application.

I have been using it for almost 6 months, and because of this app, I have better control over my expenses.

TRY IT!!!

Unfortanately it doesn't have a counterpart for android. However, they were able to release a better application that has more features than Budgets. It is called "Money", also developed by iBear LLC, and available for android OS.

http://ibearsoft.com/money/

I haven't tried this app but I am very curious to explore it. Two cool things about it is the Bills and Calendar features.