Accurately tracking your personal expenditure is an exercise with many benefits. Try doing it for around three months and you will gain some pretty great insights on where your money is actually going.
It also helps you to set your financial goals and how you can commence the process of meeting them. Monitoring where each and every penny goes manually can be a straining process. That is where an expense tracking app comes to your rescue.
Money management apps are not new. Their popularity among a wide user base cannot be denied. Recently, there has been an explosion in the number of such apps in the market. If you are considering building such an app for your audience, there can be no better time to do so than now.
Today, you can find many additional features in an expense tracking app. However, there are certain essential features that make up the foundation of every successful app. Here are nine must-have features that your expense manager app may embody.
Categorization of Expenses
It is an undeniable truth that expenses can be better managed when they are properly categorized. Built-in categories that can be modified by the users offer convenience. For businesses, it should also come with the functionality to provide their users with the ability to search for the expenses by the name of the suppliers.
Account Binding for Better Asset Tracking
Binding of the accounts in an expense tracking app enables the users to find out the best place to invest their savings. It also enables them to determine their true expenditure on the basis of which they can set long-term and short-term goals.
On the basis of the user information, the app should generate a distribution plan displaying the allocation of assets of the user
Tracking and Evaluating Expenses
One of the fundamental functions of a daily expense manager app entails the analysis of revenues and expenses. The users should be able to track repeated expenses, monitor their taxes, and arrange receipts so that they do not overlook any transaction. Receipt imaging, whereby users can capture a picture and input it into the system is another great functionality worth incorporating. They should also be able to keep a record of all their debts, print, and mail cheques.
Options for Organizing Bills and Budgets
A great expense tracking app will facilitate a systematic organization of your bills weekly, monthly, and yearly. It should also enable users to organize their budgets for both short-term and long-term. Users should also get notified of their pending payments through the app.
Advanced Search and Reporting Functionality
A quality expense manager app provides various parameters of search to its users. They should be able to search by categories, mode of payment, tags, status, among others. They should easily view analytics through charts available by category, mode of payment, tags, status, among others.
For discerning exactly where the earnings are going and their performance based on ROI, data reporting feature is a must. Lastly, your users should be able to avail of the hard copy of this report by print.
Automatic Synchronization
The expense tracking app must have built-in backup and sync functionalities. User information should get automatically backed up on Google Drive, SD Card, etc. It will enable them to access the information from any device and thus will impart them more convenience.
Provision for Other Essential Tools
A daily expense manager app can be made more valuable if you pack it with a few of these useful tools like a tip and loan calculator, and a credit card payoff and interest calculator. A tool for creating notes and shopping lists will also enhance the usefulness of the app.
Multi-Level Data Protection
Data protection is a must when it comes to tracking finances. The app should follow the best security standards. Take a cue from one of the most widely-used expense tracking app Mint that stores the information of its users in a database that consists of multiple layers of security. As app owners, you should exercise the duty of verifying and updating the security levels of your app consistently. The app should be able to facilitate a user’s account recovery in the case of any undesirable circumstances.
Centralized Place for All User Accounts
In order to impart a great finance management experience, the app should be able to assemble the information from varied user accounts at a single place. This data aggregation feature is immensely useful for the purpose of record binding. To accomplish this, you can either integrate your app or a ready-made technology to offer exceptional security.
Conclusion
There is no doubt about the fact that people significantly benefit from keeping a track of their money. There are many benefits of successfully tracking your expenses and investments. It is the major reason why the popularity of daily expense manager apps is rising at a tremendous pace.
The app has become indispensable especially for business users worldwide. You can now help people regulate their finances and manage them to the best of their ability by developing an innovative expense tracking solution with the features mentioned above in it.