My Budget Book – Keep An Eye On Your Budget

Summary

Money, cash, dosh, dough, bacon, moolah, Benjamins—call it what you like, the bottom line is: it's all about the money.

What does having hundreds of terms for the same thing say about a culture? The answer: we want it, we need it, we've simply go to have it. And for many of us keeping a vigilant eye on our resources is of utmost importance. If you want/need to always be in the loop on exactly how much money have and how much you've spent at any given time, a classic book of accounts is the way to go, or rather: a contemporary take on the account book is the way to go. This is where My Budget Book comes in. Find out more after the jump.

Test device: Samsung Galaxy Note
Android version: 2.3.6
Root: No

The app is a neat little package (1,02 MB) and the one required permission (recording information on the SDC) seems totally straight forward.

Here's the developers' overview of what My Budget Book has going for it:

• Easy access. No internet connection required - No registration!
• Available in 10 languages (At the moment the moment the app language is based on your telephone settings).
• See this month’s balance when the app starts up.
• The graphical overview is perfect for planning your expenses over the upcoming of months.
• Customize the overview by changing the number of past and future months that are displayed.
• Manage more than one account - Record you earnings and expenses across all accounts.
• Visualise the statistics as a table or graph and see where your money has gone by categorising all earnings and expenses.
• Filter your earnings and expenses according to months, quarters or whole years.
• Use the powerful search function to look for specific expenses and/or time periods.
• Carry your balance over into the next month. 
• Manage standing orders so you can plan ahead for the upcoming months.
• Create templates to make inputting your expenses is even easier.
• Add further main and sub-categories to get a better overview of your expenses
• Use the notepad to monitor important expenses.
• Protect your data by activating password protection.
• Export your data in HTML or CSV Format (on an SD card).
• Create backups so you never lose your data.
• Import your existing data using the CSV import function (Just move the CSV file to the folder "SDCard/My Budget Book" and import it via the app settings (Import of other formats will be made available by request)

Whew—sounds good, but does it deliver? Overall we are very pleased with My Budget Book's performance. It can do all of what a classic hardcopy budget planner can do and then some. The cool thing is that all of the extra features are actually quite fun to use, which means that even if keeping an eye on your finances is more of a necessary bane than a pleasure, you can still have fun doing it.

Once My Budget Book is installed on your device you will see the main screen which provides you with an overview of the most important features. Five buttons are located near the bottom of the display:

• Status: Balance of all your accounts
• Overview: What you've spent over the past few or upcoming months
• Account statement
• Statistics: Check out statistics of past or upcoming months
• Diagram: Same as above, but in diagram format

Nine icons are located above these buttons. The icons afford users easy and fast access to the my Budget Book's functions.

• Revenues: Organise your incoming cash flow using a plethora of different categories (salary, dole money, gifts, interest...). If ever a category is missing you can always create it.
• Expenses: Again, different categories are available and you can create whatever you feel is missing.
• Standing orders: Create and manage your regular standing orders.
• Categories: Again, create and manage categories for your revenues and expenses.
• No Category: This is where you'll find all entries that have not (yet) been assigned to a category.
• Last entries
• Detailed search
• Memo: If you want to watch specific expenses or standing orders, tick/check them and they will then be added to this sub-category.

Two further buttons are located at the very top of the display. One of the them is a monitoring tool of the entire overview (account balance, monthly balance, monthly expenses and revenues) and the other is a shortcut list to the features (add revenues/expenses, change orders, select account, display diagram, export data (HTML / CSV), delete all orders, settings and support).

The settings (which can be accessed via the device's menu button) harbour the following options:

• Main settings: Manage accounts, admin (payment method, adjust the number of months included in the overview, etc.) and activate password
• Choose currency
• Import / Export: Data can be imported and exported as CSV files
• Update data: The programme can be set back and all categories, orders, etc. Can be deleted instantly

Bottom line:

My Budget Book is a great option for users who like/need to keep watch over their finances. Be it for users dealing with multiple accounts, users on tight budgets, families managing household budgets—the app has great features for all sorts of user profiles. We especially like that it allows users to anticipate what will be going on with their finances in the future.

Using the app is easy, but what takes some time and patience is setting it up and entering all of your personal data, especially if you deal with lots of standing orders, multiple accounts, etc.

My Budget Book runs just as it should, and that is to say very well. We've been testing it for about one week and it hasn't yet crashed or shown any other signs of instability. It runs nice and smooth, too.

Sometimes, in order to keep better track of your money you have to spend a little money first. My Budget Books costs EUR 1,77 which is a fair price for such a useful app that doesn't come with any ad banners or dodgy required permissions.

As our app of the week it is currently available for only EUR 0,79 from the AndroidPIT App Center.