[Product Review] Money Lover: Great Expense Tracker
Expense tracker is one of the product that I need for my personal finance. I self-claim myself as avid expense tracker. Because my personal finance motto is not to worry about spending money whenever I want to, I actually want to make sure that I know where I spend all my money to. This way, it gives me freedom how and where I spend my money in the future.
Previously I had used premium-version of Monefy for almost 4 full-years. However after recent app-crash, I lost 6 months worth of tracking data because apparently I forgot to back-up the data and the data just vanished if I uninstall the app. This event triggered me to explore other app out there.
There I found new app called Money Lover.
This app apparently equip me with more advanced tool to help me manage my personal finance. I want to review the app and provide more help for anyone who is looking for expense tracker just like me.
I subscribed to the premium version since I feel that tracking money is important that spending my money in annual basis for this is helpful. But I believe the free version is also helpful enough, especially to those who don’t mind with the ads.
Important Feature
1. Fast & Detailed Tracking
One feature that I actually like is the ability to detect the potential category for recurring spending with default date of today. This feature helps me to input the data faster.
In addition, the data recorded is quite comprehensive, from the wallet of choice, whom we spend the money with, the location, specific event and event a photo. I do not use all of them. “Note” is helpful especially when I record gain from specific stock / crypto as additional note for me. I also use “Event” which I will explain later in more detail.
2. Event: Great way to track revenue and expense for particular event
I really love this feature so much! This helped me know spending for particular event that is important for me. This feature can be used to record specific spending for traveling in different location, hospital expense or any other spending. I actually also use it for tracking capital gain / loss for stock and cryptocurrency investment since there is both gain and loss component which can be combined here to know the net gain or loss that I make during specific time period that I define for myself.
3. Monitoring expense category across time
This feature is also something that I did not find in other app. Money Lover creates a view where we can see the expense for specific category across time. With this chart, I know I have been splurging on food lately and this reminds me to spend less on food until the end of the month. ;)
4. Multi-wallet and multi-currency with in-sync exchange rate
The app is going to be very helpful for anyone who needs multi-currency tracker. The app allows user to track the spending in multi-currency and view the aggregate spending in each currency. This app also has the ability to update the currency spending so the total money that we see in certain currency is always the most recent one.
I know this is going to be very very niche. I recently use an app that helps me to invest in US Stock called gotrade. This app requires me to track any gain or loss in USD so I can be very exact with the financial record. Even though the stake is quite little, it gives me sense of accuracy and control for whatever I gain / loss in USD currency.
This feature is probably helpful for traveling outside the country as well.
5. Multiplatform (iPhone, iPad and Web)
I really love the fact that the premium version of the app lets me use more than 1 devices to track my spending. So whenever I want and whichever device is nearby, I can track my spending with ease.
Improvement Points
1. Reporting view
Reporting is the most important part of an expense tracker. However, Money Lover does not deliver well in this part. The experience is not as seamless. The view can still be improved especially as a default view when we choose a view that requires to display more than 1 month expenses / revenue.
How to change the reporting view should also be also seamless. The option to be shown should include annual view and all-time view. This helps to always track the savings we make on every period that we want to see.
In Summary: Money Lover is a great app!
Despite one disappointment on reporting view, overall this app has been very helpful. All the data is stored in cloud and accessible through different platform, which makes me feel at ease that my data will not be gone.
In general, the developer of this app has been very detailed in delivering features that are quite helpful for the user. This app is also very seamless in helping me track my spending on daily basis.
