Even though it is tedious, it is important to keep track of your expenses in order to manage your finances properly. Using pen and paper or an Excel sheet to jot down your daily consumption seems like a daunting task.
Fortunately, there are dozens of expense tracking apps that make the process much easier. These apps provide you with useful financial templates and categories so you can start adding your expenses right away.
We have selected some of the best apps for Android that allow you to track your expenses, be it manually or automatically.
1. Ivy Wallet
Ivy Wallet defies the stereotype that most information-heavy apps should look cluttered and ugly. It strikes a good balance between big, bold icons and data that you might need in an instant.
You can add multiple accounts, including one for cash and crypto. The preset categories are useful for organizing your expenses and you can always create your own. Scheduled payments make it easier to track expenses such as recurring subscriptions to services like Netflix or Spotify.
Although Ivy Wallet specializes primarily as a manual expense meter, you can set budgets for different categories to ensure you do not overconsume. The app also has beautiful report graphs and a calendar view that lets you focus on a bigger picture of your expenses.
One area where Ivy Wallet shines clearly is managing different types of currencies, including over 20 popular cryptocurrencies.
All in all, the extremely simple user interface and lack of distracting elements make Ivy Wallet a great expense tracking app for absolute beginners. You can even choose to store all your expense data locally for increased privacy.
Fetch: Ivy Wallet (free, in-app purchases available)
2. Money Manager
Money Manager by Realbyte Inc. brings a slightly more traditional approach to managing your expenses. This app goes after an Excel sheet as an approach when it comes to listing and showing your expenses. This makes it a great alternative for those who track expenses using Google Sheets or Excel.
That said, the app is not too complicated to use. You can create categories, add accounts and even transfer money between them. The bookmark feature lets you keep track of your most frequent transactions and keeps them just a tap away.
We found Money Manager to be one of the most detailed expense tracking apps available. Other features like being able to add a password, export your data in an Excel sheet and access a built-in calculator while adding expenses make this one of the more powerful apps on this list.
Fetch: Money Manager (free, in-app purchases available)
3. Money lover
Money Lover is another beautiful app that helps you track your expenses. Although its feature set is quite extensive, with budget planning, currency exchange, interest rate calculation and more, we still found it to be a great app for manually adding and managing expenses.
You can also link your bank account and allow the app to automatically record transactions using the SMS app. As powerful as it is, we enjoyed the colorful icons and graphs that Money Lover uses. You can also add a simple widget to your home screen that shows your account balance.
With over five million downloads in the Play Store, Money Lover also works as one of the best budget apps to help you with your finances.
Fetch: Money Lover (free, in-app purchases available)
4. Spendee
Spendee is handy when you need a direct expense tracking solution. It’s also one of the few apps we’ve tried that has a true AMOLED dark state. Combine it with the colorful category icons and you have yourself a visual pleasure.
When it comes to features, Spendee has it all sorted. You can manually track your expenses in different categories, set budget limits and see detailed reports on your expenses. Thanks to the growing buzz around crypto and NFTs, Spendee also lets you add specific wallets to these accounts.
The premium subscription upgrades you to unlimited wallets and budgets and adds automatic bank account sync support.
Fetch: Spendee (free, in-app purchases available)
5. Wallet
Wallet uses an incredibly simple name to fulfill a very simple purpose. It does not have bells and whistles from other apps and it does not need them. Just install the app, sign in with your Google Account and start tracking your expenses.
Unlike most other financing apps, Wallet has only the most important information displayed on the dashboard. Most of the daily interaction in the app can be performed with less than two swipes and a few taps.
Once you have created your accounts, you can activate the categories you use often and have the rest tucked away. Wallet also has a section where you can add savings targets and another tab where you can set budgets to avoid overspending on things. The fact that it provides an ad-free experience is the cherry on top.
Fetch: Wallet (free, in-app purchases available)
6. Fortune City
Fortune City may be the one app that may very well change your financial habits. It gamifies the whole process of tracking your expenses and managing your finances, making a rather tedious process something you start to enjoy.
Each time you add an expense to the app, you expand your city. There are over 100 different types of buildings that you can discover. We really like this approach because the app pushes you to track even the smallest bit of your spending, which is a surefire way to improve your budgeting skills.
Fortune City has both the pros and cons of an app disguised as a game. While it is extremely fun and interesting to use, it sometimes adds extra steps that end up distracting you. Although the game’s mascot “Cahy” does a decent job of explaining how everything works, we would not recommend this app to anyone who wants a minimal and fast-paced experience.
Fetch: Fortune City (free, in-app purchases available)
Keep track of your expenses
With a proper expense tracking app, you should be on your way to managing your expenses even more efficiently now.
Although this list was aimed at those who wanted a simple expense tracking solution, most of these apps go beyond that and help you set budgets and manage your finances. Introducing the habit of routinely logging on to your expenses and using other finance apps is a great way to improve your overall financial situation.
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