Top Personal Budgeting Apps to Use in India
While money may be brighter than sunshine and sweeter than honey, it does tend to be a sparing commodity, the preservation of which is not known to many!
One of the reasons why some of us find it challenging to save money is because we usually don’t or are unable to keep a prompt and easy track of our expenses. Maintaining the old ledger is a cumbersome effort in this day and age. Besides, not everybody is an expert in finance.
Digital budgeting apps offer a vital and viable solution to this problem. Fortunately, like most other things, money management can be easily mastered with a little tenacity and with the right technology.
Here’s our review of some of the most popular and reliable personal budgeting apps in India.
Money Manager Expense & Budget
Google Play Rating: 4.7
App Store Rating: 4.8
About the App: Easy access of content/features, convenient infographic representation of data input and reinforced filters to categories expenses are some of the defining features of this app. It also has a visually optimised calendar to record and plan expenses.
Pros:
- Comprehensive tracking features (of expense as well as income).
- Supports almost all major currencies in the world.
- The double entry bookkeeping and accounting model greatly helps maintain symmetry and regularises expense oversights. — Your debit and credit entries get adjusted correspondingly so you know how much you’’e expending with each entry.
- Useful ancillary functions (bookmarking, calculator, instant stats, easy backup and storage).
Cons:
- Backup only available for Google Drive (not Dropbox or Onedrive).
- The personalisation and illustrative designs still have room for improvement.
Fact-o-file: Already surpassed 5 million+ downloads. The app is designed by South Korean Company Realbyte Inc. RealByte only has 5 apps in its portfolio but Google ranks its Money Manager app among its Top 100 apps in more than 100 countries.
Total downloads for RealByte apps (As of November 2020) was 300,000.
Walnut
Google Play Rating: 4.3
App Store Rating: 3
About the App: As one of the most popular personal finance apps, it offers category-spending options by splitting entries under various heads (bills, EMIs, SIPs, household expenses, groceries, drinks, food, travel etc.). It also channels data from SMS and email communication to better understand the user’s cash outflows.
Pros:
- Handles periodic cycles of credit cards
- Can integrate with UPI to enable in-app payments
- Designed to link other users and record shared expenses.
Cons:
- Data privacy and security concerns as the app is equipped with access to personal communication (SMS and emails).
- Focus of the app has pivoted recently from budget-tracking to loan selling (via Walnut Prime).
Fact-o-file: Walnut started out in 2014 under its parent Thumbworks Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and quickly received major investments from investment from SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital a year later. In 2018, it was acquired by Capital Float, a fintech startup for $30m.
With over 10 million+ downloads on Google Play, the app has emerged as a leader in the digital personal finances category. However, since the launch of its small ticket credit line Walnut Prime, the app’s focus has shifted towards credit customisation and loans disbursement than personal budgeting.
The focus on personal correspondence by the app has also raised concerns about privacy.
DNS or Domain Name System is the computerised version of a web address. For example, a user-friendly domain like google.com is changed into a computer-friendly IP address like 64.233.160.0. Monitoring DNS traffic is important to insure routing proper traffic to one’s servers. If DNS data gets stored in the app’s cache, it raises heavy security concerns.
This has increased the need for the user to monitor changes in DNS address and study the app behaviour during offline sessions to authenticate data security.
It adds an extra hassle for the more digitally-aware users, not to forget the ignominy of those who aren’t, to these concerns.
AndroMoney (Expense Track)
Google Play Rating: 4.7
App Store Rating: 4.6
About the App: It has a nice user interface, and a meticulous design that entails even recording expenses through spreadsheets. In-app expense distribution is presented through graphics (charts, MS Excel etc.).
Pros:
- Category-management and daily accounting included.
- Allows users to view detailed expense reports.
- Allows data-syncing and storage (Dropbox, Google Drive).
- In-app calculator and number-pad present.
- Passcode protection.
Cons:
- No UPI or wallet-linked fund transfer option.
- The graphical user-interface can become a little complicated to follow for some users.
Fact-o-file: The company is privately-owned and its corporate headquarters of the company are based out of Taiwan. It has been active since 2011 and its portfolio consists of 2 apps, both listed under the category “Finance”.
The Andromoney (Expense Track) app is one of the most popular apps on Google Play with over a million+ downloads.
Monefy — Budget Tracker and Expense Tracker
Google Play Rating: 4.5
App Store Rating: 1
About the App: It’s the most BASIC money-management app out there for use. With three clicks (expense, input, category) recording expenses is easy and comes with an array of customisation like multi-currency support, built-in calculator, synchronisation, widgets etc. Spendings distribution can be viewed in pie-chart form.
Pros:
- Easy-to-read charts
- Multiple accounts usage available.
- Expense can be tracked in multiple currencies. Real-time exchange rates apply.
- Backup and export (in CSV) are easily done.
- Passcode, Touch ID and Face ID protection.
Cons:
- A number of features (currency support) are limited under the free version. Required $2 to unlock.
- Very little web support available.
- No in-built exchange rate
- The iOS version is missing some features (some languages, budget mode etc.).
- Unlike the easy sign-in syncing in some other apps, this one requires a third-party dropbox.
Fact-o-file: The app was developed by a Norweignian company called Aimbity AS in February 2014. However, Moneyfy is the only major app on the company’s portfolio. Despite having over 6 million+ downloads worldwide and consistent feature in the list of the top 100 apps, details about the company’s business remain relatively obscure.
Spendee
Google Play Rating: 3.9
App Store Rating: 4.6
About the App: Spendee is a popular money-management app amongst the youth, especially the travellers. It has a simple user interface, ease of use and infographic data that cross-referencing income-expense records. Many even view it as an abridged version of Wallet.
Pros:
- It allows linkage of bank accounts, E-wallets and crypto-wallets, giving a comprehensive account-management experience. (Offers connection to at least 2,000 different banks all over the world).
- Wide range of intuitive financial tools. Graphical interface shows comparison between monthly expense data.
- Breaks budget down to daily allowance. Helps maintain personal financial optimum.
- Multiple user-linking allowed. Helps keep track of shared expenses.
- Multi-currency support.
- Dedicated customer support services.
Cons:
- Security implications with relation to sharing account information (although the developers emphasise on using bank-level encryption for the app).
- The latest app-update (Spendee 5) has reportedly not been well-received by users. Involves alterations in popular features (daily and monthly expense tracking).
Fact-o-file: The app was founded in 2017 in Cech Republic as a financial assistance platform. As of October 2019, the company has raised over $550,000 in three funding rounds so far and has registered over a million downloads. It continues to be promoted by both Apple and Google and has secured favourable reviews from Business Insider, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal.
Wally
Google Play Rating: 3.1
App Store Rating: 4.0
About the App: The app is very visually gratifying with colour-coded expense categories, pie-charts etc. The basic free version covers almost everything apart from multi-currency usage and shared expense records. It was quite the rage in early 2015, with one of the few niche players in the personal budgeting space at the time. However, if expense analytics is your desire, this app has little to offer.
Pros:
- Export (via CSV) and cloud storage of data is done easily.
- Huge repository of currencies (about 60) and offers account connection in 15,000 banks world over.
- Has provisions for setting reminders, lists, note-taking and comments to customise entries.
- Intelligent scanning enabled for receipts and other expense documents that saves time by avoiding manual entry.
- Available in 18 languages.
Cons:
- Slightly confusing to navigate in the beginning owing to features-overload.
- The review section for expense analytics is limited.
- ALthough there is in-app AI-enabled chat support, customer service and grievance redressal isn’t prompt.
- The paid version (Wally Gold) is costly (upto $7.99 a month) without access to advanced budgeting features, multi-currency support and handling foreign accounts isn’t possible.
- Limited offline usage available (including adding accounts).
Fact-o-file: The app was developed in 2013 by two Dubai-based businessman brothers.
It became popular due to its novel use of machine learning applications. It was the highest-rated finance app in iOS (4.7/5) in 22 countries and was among the Top 10 apps in 3 countries (India, China and USA). Even though it has grown past its prime and is now battling new entrants in the rapidly-expanding fintech sector, Wally still remains a popular and reliable money management app.
Some Other Popular Personal Budgeting Apps in India
According to a report by Allied Market Research, the global personal finance software market is pegged to reach $1,576.9m by 2027 with a CAGR growth of 5.7% during 2020–27.
Although personal finance includes a host of elements from expense tracking, budgeting, wealth management, portfolio management, digital payments, digital credit etc., they all involve and interplay between personal finance and technology, which also forms the premise of digital budgeting apps.
Less than 17% of people are now using Excel sheets to manage their money. With the rapid growth of the fintech sector and improvements made in personal banking, it remains to be seen how promptly the entire population takes to digital budgeting and expense tracking, for therein lies the key to financial freedom.
(Originally published October 4th 2021 in transfin.in)
