One of the essentials of Financial Planning is tracking your expenses regularly. This valuable exercise can help you prepare a framework for achieving your life goals in a systematic and planned way. Today, we have more apps than ever that can make this exercise simple and enjoyable. Microsoft’s new Garage Project – Microsoft Spend claims to meet all the above requirements.
Microsoft Spend, an expense tracker for iOS
Like most expense tracking apps, Microsoft’s Spend offers features like the ability to take photos of receipts. So, you can quickly snap a picture of receipts and attach it to a purchase. If you’re making purchases in cash, ‘Spend’ makes it easy to create a record of that expense and attach a receipt. It’s like having a virtual accountant in your pocket.
When you download the Spend application, you must provide your email address for confirmation. It will send a confirmation email on that account.
Post setup, the app automatically begins tracking all your expenses from a linked credit card or bank account. All purchases show up in a feed in your app. You can swipe on the expenses to mark them as personal or business. You can also edit purchases or bulk classify expenses through the web dashboard.
The app can generate expense reports on a weekly, monthly or custom bases, which can be exported at spreadsheets or PDFs.
All said, there are areas where the app falls short or lacks in delivery part. For instance, the email confirmation is delayed when you sign up for the service. Plus, there’s no guiding manual available that can quickly walk you through the important setup process.
Apart from the above, the app appears intuitive and integrates seamlessly with most banks and wallet services. Expenses are neatly categorized and show up quickly in the app. Even adding new expenses using the app can be fun, you can use the phone camera to copy/attach a receipt.
Download the app.
