Tracking your expenses can be difficult and time-consuming. Here are the best income and expense trackers to help you better manage money matters.
Keeping a close tab on expenses is part and parcel of being a responsible adult, but for those who are wearing lots of hats, managing finances can be a massive ordeal. Day to day expenses can pile up as soon as money comes in.
Without knowing your financial status, overspending can be a real problem.
Fortunately, there are dozens of income and expense trackers that help you better manage your money, and most of these come with robust features that can offer a breakdown of your monthly cash flow, log in your receipts, or even offer financial advice.
If you're looking for ways to curb overspending, here are some of the best apps to track your income and expenses to help you meet your personal financial goals.
Table of Contents
1. Personal Capital
Pricing: Comes with a free budgeting tool. Opening a Wealth Management Account comes with a 0.49% – 0.89% management fee and requires a $100,000 account minimum.
Great for: Those looking for a decent versatile budgeting tool but also looking to invest
Personal Capital‘s Wealth Management tool for investors comes with a slew of fees, but fortunately for those only looking to budget, the platform offers a free (but surprisingly powerful) financial dashboard.
The Financial Dashboard allows you to track your cash flow and spending patterns with features that analyze individual transactions and spending categories. Monthly summaries offer comprehensive insights about where your money is going.
The built-in Cash Flow Analyzer allows you to link different financial accounts to the platform to help you create budgets for financial goals (e.g. paying off debt, planning for retirement).
The user-friendly Retirement Planner runs you through a list of “what if” scenarios to check if you're on track with your retirement goals. This versatile feature makes adjustments according to changes in your circumstances (e.g. birth of a child, saving for college, a change in career) while taking into account all external factors that can influence your retirement.
Other notable features include a Net Worth Calculator that tracks your assets and liabilities, an Investment Checkup tool that aggregates your investment accounts and a free personal advisor that you can contact for troubleshooting and recommendations.
See Related: How to Use Personal Capital Like a Pro [Tutorial]
2. Trim Financial Manager
Pricing: 33% is skimmed off the money you save from negotiating bills with Trim
Great for: Those looking to manage their subscriptions
Trim comes with a host of useful money-saving features, but its bill negotiation services are what make it one of the best income and expense trackers on this list.
Most of Trim's money goal tracking tools are completely free, and while they aren't as robust as dedicated expense tracker apps, they're still very useful. The budgeting tool can help analyze your spending so you can stay on top of your finances every month.
Trim's subscription canceling feature is also surprisingly free. By sending a quick text, the platform can cancel certain subscriptions on your behalf while sending you an update of potential subscriptions every month.
Trim's most notable feature is its bill negotiation services. Through this feature, the platform can negotiate your bill with any cell phone, cable, or internet provider. All you need to do is link your service provider to the platform. If your service provider isn't listed on the website, you'll then be prompted to upload your latest bill.
3. CountAbout
Pricing: $9.99/year for the basic subscription and $39/year for the premium subscription
Great for: Detail-oriented users looking for more ways to categorize their annual budget
One of the newer entries in our list of income and expense trackers, CountAbout offers a couple of interesting features, some of which are common in an income and expense app while others are pretty unique.
CountAbout comes with budgeting features, financial reports, custom income and spending categories, and the capacity to download your transaction from many financial companies. As of this writing, it is the only online service that allows you to import your date from Mint or Quicken, which allows for an easier transition.
One of the platform's most unique features is its capability to include widgets, which allows you to incorporate text-based and graphic elements into your interface.
For users who only want to be shown relevant content, this a godsend, as it allows them to customize the interface to reflect what you deem important. For example, this allows you to put a chart of your account balance directly on your accounts page.
CountAbout places a huge emphasis on security. It does not track your usage and guarantees that your data is kept private and secure.
4. Pocketsmith
Pricing: The free plan comes with limited features. Premium costs $9.95 a month while Super, the all-access plan, runs $19.95 per month.
Great for: Users looking for a powerful app but don’t mind shelling out a higher price
PocketSmith is a personal finance aggregation and analysis app that offers free, albeit limited, services. Its paid subscription, however, offers a host of powerful tools and extensive features.
While other income and expense trackers focus on budgeting your finances, PocketSmith puts greater emphasis on the future. The Forecasting feature shows you a prediction of your finances for up to 30 years in the future, based on trends and existing data.
The Scenario Testing tool allows you to enter different financial scenarios (e.g. studying abroad, paying for monthly rent) while showing you how it impacts your overall financial forecast. This allows you to better plan for your future and make wiser decisions, making it one of the best income tracker apps in the market.
The platform's budget calendar detects recurring costs and plots them in a calendar, offering an easy-to-understand view of your projected expenses which are color-coded by category. You can also track your budget, adjust spending plans, and view them through different time frames.
PocketSmith can also calculate your net worth based on connected accounts and offer comprehensive income and expense statements.
See Related: Pocketsmith Review 2020: Is It Safe and Legitimate?
5. Billshark
Pricing: The platform skims 40% off the savings it makes from negotiating lower bills on your behalf.
Great for: Those looking to lower their monthly bills
With claims of having a 90% success rate in helping you “save 25% on monthly bills in 2 minutes”, Billshark positions itself as one of the best tools to include in your personal financial plan. The platform offers a variety of services, but bill negotiation is its specialty.
Billshark cancels unwanted subscriptions on your behalf while helping you discover lower insurance rates. The platform's philosophy is to help everyone save money each month. Most people subscribe to services without attempting to lower the rates, which means most of us are actually overpaying.
Billshark works by reducing the amount you're charged each month for a plethora of bills, including landline, cell phone packages, internet, cable, and home security. The company works with most major companies including Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, SiriusXM, DirecTV, and Time Warner Cable among others. You'll only be charged if the bill reduction was successful.
Billshark can also cancel unwanted subscriptions in your account for a $9 fee for each canceled subscription. For absolutely no fee at all, Billshark also helps you find lower insurance rates by showing you the rates of several companies.
See Related: BILLSHARK Review: Is It Worth the Price?
6. Expensify
Pricing: The free account allows up to five SmartScans a month. Paid plans come with unlimited SmartScans and cost $4.99 to $9 a month.
Great for: Midsize and large businesses looking for a convenient expense tracker to handle overwhelming expenses
Expensify is one of the most affordable paid plans in our list of income and expense trackers, but it's mainly built for conveniently recording your expenses through receipts. The platform works with a feature called SmartScan, an optical character recognition technology that scans your receipts and automatically records the data provided including the amount paid, merchant, and transaction date.
Those without paper receipts can forward emailed receipts to the platform for convenient categorization. All plans come with SmartScans, but the free option is limited to five SmartScans per month.
The platform is tailor-made for businesses that handle a lot of expenses each month. Depending on your plan, you'll get access to key features that include expense report generation, receipt scanning, mileage tracking, expense categorization, automatic report submission for employee reimbursement, and accounting software integration (Xero, QuickBooks Desktop, or QuickBooks Online).
7. YNAB
Pricing: $11.99 a month or $84 a year. Both can be canceled anytime with a no-risk 100% money-back guarantee.
Great for: Those looking for powerful tools to get out of a financial rut
If you're looking to overcome financial problems, YNAB (You Need a Budget), is one of the best income and expense trackers that offers a more personal approach to maintaining a flexible budget. The platform claims that users can save an average of $600 in the first two months and around $6,000 during their first year of using the system.
Unlike other savings trackers that only offer income and expense recording, YNAB guides users through the entire budgeting process, with tutorials and support to help you get out of your financial rut.
YNAB's software is based around the philosophy of four rules: give every dollar a job, embrace your true expenses, roll with the punches, and age your money. Learn more about them here. Its paid subscription comes with a number of features. Debt Paydown allows you to set budgets to pay off various types of debt. Goal Tracking forces you to set financial goals for yourself while offering tools to reach them.
One of YNAB's newest features is the ability to automatically imports transactions from your bank account, but you can also enter your transactions manually. After importing your transactions, you'll have to assign them into categories. The platform allows you to import transactions from a variety of credit card accounts and bank accounts.
Each time you enter your transactions, you'll be able to see changes in the budgets you made for various categories. YNAB lets you know how much is left in your budget categories every time you spend.
Users will also be able to take daily online classes on a plethora of topics including creating a debt paydown plan, setting a budget, and reaching your savings goals among others.
See Related: Personal Capital vs YNAB: What is the Better Tool?
8. Mint
Pricing: A large chunk of its services are free, but individuals who want to sign up for the platform's credit monitoring service will have to pay $16.99 a month.
Great for: Those looking for a powerful but free tool to create and track their budgets and financial goals
Mint has over 15 million users, making it one of the most popular income and expense trackers on our list. The platform's primary feature is budgeting and tracking expenses. After syncing your banks, credit cards, billers, or investments into the app, it categorizes your expenses into predefined categories, or you can make your own subcategories too.
The platform also allows you to create and manage financial goals such as saving for a new home or paying off a credit card. Users will be able to tie debt pay-off goals to a specific debt account (i.e. credit card), to know how long it will take them to pay off certain debts.
Creating a savings goal and tying it with a savings account will help you track your savings every time you add money to that account. Once you've created your goals, these are conveniently reflected in your monthly budgeting.
Mint's newest feature is its capability to monitor your credit scores. You can view your credit score, age of credit accounts, payment history, and a whole lot more on the Mint dashboard. The platform also allows you to enable notifications for bill reminders, late fees, over budgeting, rate changes, or large purchases.
See Related: 13 Best Mint Alternatives to Better Your Finances
9. Tally
Pricing: You can try with a 1-month free trial and then it's a $4.99 per month subscription.
Great for: Those who would like to pay off credit card debt fast and interested to improve credit score.
Tally makes it very easy to pay off credit card debt by managing all your credit card payments in one place. With Tally, you can automate the payments and never miss a payment date to avoid late fees & safeguard your credit score.
The most important aspect about Tally is to create a personalized & effective debt payoff plan. Tally can even provide a low-interest line of credit to consolidate and pay off your credit card debt.
Related Resources
- 10 Best Dividend Income Trackers – Monitor Dividend Payments
- How to Drastically Cut Expenses – 12 Proven Methods
- 16 Helpful Pieces of Financial Advice (Tips From Top Bloggers)
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