Budgeting is a discipline that’s not often met with excitement. Many assume that budgeting is something reserved for companies or, say, freelance workers. However, personal budget software is just as important as corporate one — it’s a fundamental understanding of where money is coming and going.
You may consider it to be boring, tiring, time-consuming, or difficult, but managing your finances well can help you achieve goals and stave off the stress of a rainy day. Thankfully, there are tools and apps on Mac which can help you get on top of budgeting, no matter how experienced you are.
You can also access resources, like app user guides, budgeting advice and free workshops. EveryDollar is a budgeting app that helps users track their spending and plan for purchases.
- HomeBudget includes Family Sync, an advanced feature that allows a group of devices within the household (Android, iPhone, iPad) to exchange expense.
- Aug 14, 2019 Our Favorite Personal Finance App for Mac: Banktivity Banktivity is the right blend of powerful features and ease-of-use to help just about anyone improve how they manage their personal finances. Importing transactions is a breeze, and it offers flexible budgeting tools to help you stay on track and make sure you meet your financial goals.
- Jan 01, 2020 The Quicken app has been around even longer than Mint and is jam-packed with features. You can not only track all your transactions and accounts, but you can also plan for retirement and track the value of your property. On the flip side, the app requires a bit of a learning curve due to all its features.
- To install Home Budget with Sync 2020 For MAC, you will need to install an Android Emulator like Bluestacks or Nox App Player first. With this android emulator app you will be able to Download Home Budget with Sync full version on your MAC PC and iOS/iPAD. First, Go to this page to Download Bluestacks for MAC.
Why Should I Use Budget Tracking Software?
If you haven’t done a budget before, you should start now. You never know when you might need a particular sum of money to solve an issue, meet a goal, or take advantage of a sudden opportunity.
Budget programs help you reduce the stress and uncertainty that comes with not knowing where you stand financially. If you don’t have a home budget software, you might be tracking towards a situation where you run out of money, without even knowing it. If you do have a budget, then you’ll have a documented plan of action to improve your situation.
Importantly, you don’t need any qualifications to do a budget, nor do you need to be good with numbers. Take advantage of the best budget software for Mac to help you take control of your finances without the hassle. Budgeting tools come in many shapes and sizes, so selecting the right one for you depends on personal preference and previous experience with managing money.
Handy tips for budgeting tools
If you’re ready to start your budget, it’s best to consider a strategic approach to ensure maximum utility. Too often, budgets sit collecting dust after being created, and sometimes the act of creating a budget could feel like enough to satisfy financial concerns — it’s not. Here are some tips for making the most out of your budget.
First of all, definitely use an app to help you manage a budget. App developers invest a lot of time and money into figuring out how their software can make your life easier and better, so rather than trying to understand all the nuances for yourself, let a dedicated app do it for you. There’s even some free budget software around, so you have very few excuses not to try!
If you run a business (or freelance on a side), a little bit of work each week means end of year taxes are a breeze. It’s not about doing a marathon of work in a few days, but making a habit to consistently do a little bit here and there. Try aiming for 10 minutes every few days. The best tax preparation software will also have reminders and notifications to help you achieve this goal.
It might sound contradictory, but budgeting isn’t always about getting the numbers 100% accurate. When it comes to tax preparation software — sure. But budgeting is mostly about understanding where your money is being spent and then using that information to make more informed decisions going forward. Therefore, make sure you categorize your transactions so that it’s easier to spot those minutiae differences and trends. The best finance apps should do this for you automatically.
In summary, you want to ensure you take advantage of the online budgeting tools available to you, aim to update your records frequently, and focus on categorization over accuracy.
Features of good personal budget software
The best personal budget software for Mac is easier to pin down when you know exactly what you’re looking for. Not all apps are the same — they vary by function and pricing. Generally speaking, there are a few key features you want to see in your budget software for Mac:
It should be simple and easy to add new records or transactions
Importing bank and credit card statements should be possible
Automatically synchronizing statements will take the edge off your manual inputting
Useful dashboards or visuals will help you understand your situation at a glance
You should be able to categorize your transactions into groups
Out of those five key points, the ability to import is often the most essential. Importing saves you the hassle of adding each transaction into the money management software line-by-line, which adds up to a lot of time. It’s hard enough already to schedule frequent updates to your budget, so if you can remove the largest friction point of manual entry, then you’re in a good place.
The best budget software for Mac comparison
When it comes to programs to help budget money, there are countless options. It’s easy to get lost diving deep into each budget software review, but here are some of the best available, ranging from beautifully basic to powerfully advanced.
You’ve probably heard of Quicken, given that the name has been around since the early 80s. Even then, it was known as one of the best tax software companies around. That says something about the strong product, which carries all of the basic functions you’ll need to manage your budget well.
Right away though, you might notice that the interface has become somewhat dated in comparison to the newer contenders out there. But one of Quicken’s praised features is the ability to download bank statements and have the records automatically categorized, which can drastically reduce the time it takes to input your information, so you can spend more time making sense of it. Sadly, the Mac version is somewhat limited when it comes to advanced features, unless you splash out for the Home and Business edition.
MoneyDance is very similar to Quicken in terms of its basic features, including the ability to create a budget with notifications for bills and invoices. It also allows you to make your own charts and graphs to monitor spending habits over time, which can be seen on the homepage for a quick glance of your activity. Out-of-the-box integrations with online banking services also make it easy to send payments.
Unlike Quicken, Moneydance has some more advanced features including an investment monitor, which tracks your investments and their fluctuations — a useful addition, although best for the intermediate to advanced user. The app also has a developer API system in place to allow extended functions, mostly good for power users. Importantly, security is not an issue, as Moneydance utilizes end-to-end encryption for your data to give you that extra peace of mind.
You Need A Budget, also known as YNAB, is budget tracking software that runs on both Windows and Mac via web — saving automatically to the cloud, which is a bonus for multi-platform users. It also features native apps for iOS and Android, so you can literally tackle your budget from anywhere.
The app itself follows a simple design language, which is perfect for beginners, but if you find yourself needing help you can sign up for a personal instructor. YNAB doesn’t let you slack at all, and if you start to stray from your budget, the app will raise a red flag through it’s built-in Accountability Partner.
Although YNAB doesn’t support the ability to download and automatically categorize records from bank statements, it could be argued that entering them manually helps the user pay more attention to where their spending is going. Still, it’s a more time-consuming process that might be problematic for users processing hundreds or more records each month.
MoneyWiz stays true to its name — a comprehensive budget software and investment tracker that’s packed full with over 400 useful features. View your financial situation quickly by browsing accounts, groups, or searching for individual records. Speaking of records, you can enter them manually or have them automatically sync with leading banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and financial services for an accurate real-time understanding of your accounts.
With all of this data in hand, MoneyWiz can prepare and export over 50 reports to help you gain deeper insights into your finances. Your data could be accessed from its cloud-based app or straight from the native software for Mac. All in all, MoneyWiz is extremely powerful: accessible for beginners and interesting for the most advanced users.
Receipts is yet another money management software for Mac, and is specifically well-known for its clever handling of invoicing. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, Receipts automatically reads and translates important information about your bills, such as amount, date, currency, and more (even if the text is in another language).
Besides, Receipts can issue payments for invoices directly using third-party providers, such as iFinance and BankX. The OCR technology alone makes it a strong contender against other more simple online budgeting tools. Not least, Mac users will be glad to see how this application was designed to look and feel like a macOS product. Using a familiar user interface could make life a little easier after all.
Between the five options above, you have a strong starting point for your budgeting tools depending on your experience. Remember that importing is one of the key features to look for in budget programs. Still, in order to find the best fit you might need to try a couple of different options.
Thankfully, both MoneyWiz and Receipts have a free 7-day trial that you can take advantage of by heading over to Setapp, an app subscription service for Mac that gives you access to over 150 macOS apps, including all the necessary budget tools. Getting MoneyWiz and Receipts at once? You won’t be disappointed.
Budget planning is essential if you want to get your expenses under control and free your mind for other things. You probably already know that, but the hardest part is the implementation.
To get started, we recommend you a few expense trackers apps for your iPhone/iPad that will serve you tracking and managing your expenses. Many of them are so easy to use that eventually you will not even realize you’re using them. They will help you plan ahead, avoid costs and complications of missed payments, and see where you are spending money needlessly.
List of 10 Best Expense Tracking and Budget apps for iPhone and iPad
1. XpenseTracker
The XpenseTracker App allows you to manage your expenses for personal or business use efficiently. It has customizable categories/sub-categories and payment modes to ease your job. You can sort as you like depending on your need according to payment type, category, client or expenses by date.
XpenseTracker is excellent at tracking your expenses as it also tracks your mileage as well, so when the tax time comes along, reporting your mileage is easy too. The app also records last payment type for all categories, and it also supports all major currencies.
Price: $4.99
2. Spendee
Spendee is another application similar to the above, trying to stand out from the rest by showing a detailed interface that is also easy to understand. This app shows your income and expenses in different colours depending on your type, sets objectives to save the amount, and includes social and location functions to add even more information to the records of your movements.
Spendee app offers the superior support of multiple currencies, PIN protection, account syncing, listing of receipts and even a custom wallet for special events to track all your expenses.
Price: Free
Home Budget App For Mac And Iphone 8
3. Pocket Expense Lite – Personal Finance Assistant
This is an excellent expense tracker app to organize personal finances for free exclusively for iOS. This app design makes it one of the most compelling applications for Apple users. It allows to organize your expenses by categories, and sends daily, weekly, monthly or annual summaries offering a quick interpretation of the expenses.
You can protect your account with a password and set customized reminders for tracking your bills and pay securely through the app. It also supports multiple payments for a single bill.
Price: Free
4. DB Classic
With this free expense app, iOS users will be able to organise their daily expenses. Based on the Phone calendar, it allows you to enter an initial budget; As the daily expenses are recorded, the money is deducted. The budget app mentioned here is the offline-only version of DollarBird for iPhone, the same app for daily expense tracking for iPhone user. If you need the new cloud-base version, search “DollarBird” in the App Store instead. Both of them have high ratings from their users.
To be even more organised, this app offers you the possibility of creating different labels (Food, Debt, Rent, Leisure, etc.), so that at the end of the month you will have a more precise analysis of what you spent money on.
Price: Free
5. Live Expenses
Live Expenses helps to optimise control overall expenses that are generated every day. One of its primary features is to use both personally and professionally, as it allows you to attach images that justify how each of your expenses was generated.
The application is very intuitive and allows you to register your expenses quickly by adding categories. Afterwards these will be shown in graphics, and the app will also allow you to schedule periodic reports, make budgets and even save backup copies. The app also supports the use of foreign currencies and the exchange rates as well.
Price: Free
6. Visual Budget
Visual Budget helps you handle your personal and business accounts using advanced analysis and consolidation features. It can handle several accounts together and classify them into separate groups. You can modify category list as you want for each of your accounts, which are automatically created based on a standard model. And there will be two levels of categories/sub-categories to set your budget plan easily.
To get started, add all your expenses and income to track your daily spending. This app offers you all the information on the expenditure of your finances with detailed data and easy-to-understand graphics so you can know where your money in and out.
Price: Free
7. Money Control
Money Control is perhaps the most impressive personal app for finance on iPhone/iPad. Since it has an option of synchronising all your data with Dropbox, you can easily access on the go.
The system is simple, and it has a separate in-app purchase saves you from the sea of receipts, by just clicking a photo of your records and then adding it. Like other applications, you can also adjust budgets as needed, which will send alerts at excessive spending, as well as being able to schedule transactions, add labels to expenses, etc.
Price: Free
8. HomeBudget with Sync
HomeBudget app provides a combined set of options to help you manage your cash flow and expenses. You can set reminders for due dates and make payment on bills either as a transfer or an expense and bill list.
This app is well-built and easy to use. The categories can be easily adapted to the needs of users. You can also set a budget frame for each category and can attach images of receipts. Multiple currencies and automatic exchange rate conversion support let you handle your foreign funds.
Price: $4.99. Offering Lite version for free (20 expense entries & 10 income entries limited).
9. Next for iPhone
Thanks to its minimalist interface that allows quick access to all its functions. Next is considered one of the best budget apps for iOS. Its main characteristics do not differ from those offered by any of the applications mentioned above, although one of its disadvantages is that it does not allow adding revenue but only records the expenses that are generated in a month.
You can access your expenses and stats in multiple screens via swipe. Sync your data with iCloud not only for protection but also for easily accessing your data from other devices. Also, you can export your data to an Excel sheet.
Price: $2.99
10. Expense Tracker 2.0- Financial Assistant
Expense Tracker 2.0 app intends mainly for today’s busy individuals to get control of their expenses. It has an inbuilt financial and budgeting assistant which helps you to handle your finances at your fingerprints and gives some advice on saving money.
Home Budget App Iphone
The app is secured through passcode or Touch ID. You will be informed of your financial report every month, with scheduled expenses such as renting house, paying bills for telephone, or any other recurring expense, etc. Hence at the end of a month you have a more specific analysis of what you spent more money on.
Price: Free
Conclusion
These are the best expense tracker apps for iPhone so that you can take all your finances in order. Though each app has pros and cons, choose the best one suit you most to easily and quickly control all your personal expenses and your home economics or even keep your business accounts with these incredible applications.
Simple Budget App For Iphone
Some of them may offer the option to track your receipts. If not, you can get this list of the best receipt tracking apps for iPhone to get a great control over your money.
Other interesting tips and tricks for iOS:
How to Stop iPhone from Taking Photos in HEIC in iOS 12
How to Create an Apple ID without Using a Credit Card