Budget Calculator app review: simple personal financial management

Introduction

There’s a new financial management app just recently released in the App Store and it’s one with a little bit of potential. Let’s face it, there are a lot of them out there and it takes something a little bit special if an app’s going to have any sort of success at all. Budget Calculator by Maxim Gusarov, one of the founders of Applantic, doesn’t offer anything new per se, but the overall package has some real appeal.

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Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be a success you just have to put together a consistent offering and that’s what Gusarov has attempted to do here and for the most part he’s succeeded. This is a free budgeting app, although there are in-app purchases designed to enhance your overall experience it’s also compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Track Expenses

This app has a rather unique way of tracking expenses for you – it’s actually fully color coordinated which makes visualizing how you’re doing quite intuitive. The main window of the app presents a visual breakdown of each month of the year with a different color for each month. For example, the first month in your list is represented by green, but this is further broken down into dark green and light green. The dark green represents the amount of expenses in your month and the light green represents the left over extra income. It’s a great way to easily see how much of your monthly budget is gobbled up by expenses.

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Analyze Expenses

We often don’t realize just how much money we’re wasting, but with the Budget Calculator app you can quickly enter all of your financial information both expenses and income and be able to see at a glance just where most of your money is going. Entering this information in the app is extremely easy – you simply tap on the month you want to enter data for, then tap on the add new icon, choose the revenue or expense that’s most appropriate from the available list, and enter the amount. The whole process takes about 10 seconds, but once you’ve done this for all of your revenues and expenses you’ll be able to quickly see where you’re spending most of your money and where you can save some.

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It’s clear that the developer of this app, Maxim Gusarov of Applantic, has a passion for finance related apps as he’s created other finance related apps such as Convee a currency converter app and Mind Stretch a simple math game. This experience with developing other apps based around numbers is evident in the simple yet, effective approach he takes to creating a practical and useful budget app. Budget Calculator is consistent with the simple approach that he’s used in his other apps and the actual download will only require about 21.2 MB of available space on your iOS device.

Set and Achieve Goals

This seems to be a developer that really likes the idea of setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them as Budget Calculator is not the only app that Applantic has created designed to help you achieve goals. They also have another app called Response which allows you to create and partake in polls that can help you set goals and make decisions.

Budget Calculator is also a great app for helping you set goals as you can use your analysis of your expenses and revenues to see where the waste is. From there you can quickly determine where you could save a little money by cutting back a bit and set goals to reduce that expense in the coming months. You’ll be able to see how well you’re doing at this as long as you continue to enter the appropriate information in the app.

More Great Features

Another great feature of this app is that you can actually create your own custom categories for revenues and expenses. The app does have a fairly comprehensive list already included, but they haven’t thought of everything and in those instances you can simply add your own categories. The only drawback is that the free version is limited to 10 categories, so if you feel the need to have more categories than this you’ll have to purchase the full app as an in-app purchase.

When you’re using an app to track your personal revenues and expenses you want to protect your information from prying eyes. This app can also help you with this particular problem as it includes secure password protection. To create a password you simply tap on the settings icon in the top right corner and then tap on password protection. You have the option of either entering a manual numeric password or using a touch ID password if you’re using an iPhone 6 or newer.

If you upgrade to the full version of the app you can also convert and upload your information to your PC as a CSV table which is compatible with Excel. This is a handy feature as it’s sometimes nice to see information laid out in front of you on that big computer screen. If you prefer to stick with using the information on your iPhone or iPad you also have the option of viewing your information in a handy pie chart format if you’ve upgraded to the full version.

One final little tool that’s built into this app that’s worth mentioning is the use of smart notifications. As long as you enable them, it will send notifications to your device to let you know how you’re making out with achieving your goals.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Quickly track monthly expenses and revenues at a glance
• Each month color is coordinated for easy analysis
• Easily find budget leaks using interactive pie charts
• Create custom categories
• Include a secure password
• Export information to PC
• Helpful smart notifications

Cons

• Free version is limited to 10 revenue and income categories
• The free version also includes ads

A Simple Budget Calculator That Works

Budget Calculator is without a doubt a great app. The developer hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel here, but they’ve included everything you need to quickly track your revenue and expenses month-by-month. The use of color coordination to separate the months is a great idea and I love the fact that you can view your information in pie charts to quickly see how you’re making out. If you’ve been having trouble tracking your revenue and expenses then this app can definitely help you turn things around.