On August 25, 2008, we reviewed a collection of 15 different personal finance applications for the iPhone and iPod touch in a roundup entitled iPhone Gems: Every Personal Finance Application, Reviewed. This review contains a review of two applications from that roundup; additional comparative details can be found in the original full story.
Spend ($1) and Spend Lite (Free) from Adamcode are simple budget management applications, allowing users to keep track of daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly budgets, as opposed to sorting transactions by account. On launch, the Spend apps display the main budget screen, which lists each budget the user has entered, including its name and balance, along with an edit button for budget deletion, an options button for choosing whether to show the amount available or the amount spent, an add button for adding new budgets, and a help button which leads to an FAQ page on the developer’s website.
When adding a budget, the user is given fields to specify the budget name, amount, its frequency, cycle amount, and the starting dates of the current and next cycle.
Once a budget has been created, tapping on it opens the budget view, which shows a list of transactions, an edit button for editing the budget’s information and settings, and an add button for making new transactions. The new transaction view offers users editable name, amount, date, and budget fields. A white bar at the bottom of the budget view represents the amount of money available, a figure that is listed directly above the bar.
Finally, and info button in the bottom right corner brings up the budget’s information as entered when it was created, allowing the user to edit the name, amount, frequency, and cycle amount, and shows stats relating to the number of expenses on this cycle, total expenses, and the average expense.
Decent but ordinary, Spend and Spend Lite (the free version is limited to five budgets, the $1 non-Lite version is unlimited) do complete the tasks they claim to handle, and represent the only apps that can handle multiple reoccurring budgets at these price points. For users that can live without features like data export and password protection, Spend and Spend Lite are the most affordable apps in their class, but we think it’s likely that users seeking this kind of budgeting flexibility will also appreciate a more full-featured application. Overall, Spend Lite warrants our general recommendation, while the $1 Spend is worthy of only our limited recommendation.
Our Rating
Spend Lite
Spend
Company and Price
Company: Adamcode
Website: www.adamcode.com
Title: Spend, Spend Lite
Price: $1, Free
Compatible: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod touch
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