Dec 04, 2019 No list of expense tracker apps would be complete without a mention of Mint, one of the best known personal finance tools around. Mint is great because it is free, supports a wide range of banks and lenders, and comes from one of the largest and most trusted names in. Jan 14, 2020 Subscribe for our newsletter with best Mac offers from MacUpdate. How would you rate Receipts app? 2 Reviews of Receipts. 13 October 2016. Version: 1.2.0. Most helpful. This software is so helpful and it blows away other similar competing software.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Best Receipt Scanner App For Mac
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.
Financial literacy isn’t a buzzword. Yeah, it’s two words, actually. But that’s not the point. In the world where one wants to be successful, managing finances is inevitable. It doesn’t really matter who you are — a business owner, office worker, or creator — a reliable tool for managing expenses and bills should be in your pocket. Or, better, on your Mac.
In this article, we’ll talk about a paperless way of managing personal finances. First, everything paperless is trendy. Second, it simplifies your life and minimizes the chance you make a mistake in your accounting. Lastly, you’ll hardly ever lose a receipt if it’s digital.
How to choose the best receipt scanner and tracker app
Paper receipts are like school copybooks. You understand you hate them. You hate they are everywhere — in your drawers, pockets, and bags. But you can’t get rid of them, because they might prove valuable at some point in the future. Still, paper accounting is unreliable. A receipt can be drowned, burned, or lost. A scanning app and expense tracker can do a much better job — it’s like instead of carrying copybooks around, you only need a phone or a computer.
So how about getting you the best receipt saver? While receipt scanner software comes in many flavors, let’s first decide on the type of functionality we’re looking for. Here are the most common features:
OCR functionality. Optical Character Recognition is the technology that allows converting images or handwritten text into machine-encoded text. Basically, it’s how you extract data from a scanned receipt.
Duplicate detection. If you store multiple receipts in one spot, you want to be sure you don’t accidentally add the same bill twice.
Simple import. You might store bills and receipts in different formats, so it’s important that your receipt app can process the import of each format equally fast.
Search and filtering. Search receipts by date, amount, title, etc. If you use an expense tracker for business and have lots of docs stored on your device, it might be useful to put them into separate categories.
Save to cloud. Clearly, bills and receipts are the type of sensitive information you want to keep protected. This is why we recommend to look into receipt scanners that support iCloud sync or enable you to save docs to any cloud-based account.
Reminders. For sure, this is a nice-to-have. But since many receipt tracking apps have this functionality, it might be useful for you to know. You can set up notifications in your software for reminding when the next payment is due. Especially if you’re not using task managers — like Reminders, 2Do, or Taskheat — this feature can be quite useful.
To help you choose what you need, we’ve reviewed some of the top-rated receipt organizers and trackers below. Under the descriptions, you’ll find the info about whether the tools support the aforementioned features.
If you want the best scanner app for Mac
Receipts: Best OCR-based scanner
A winner in terms of quick and efficient receipt recognition. Receipts reads your docs — and, we must agree, it’s a pretty good reader. The app can extract key data like amount, date, and bank information instantly. And it doesn’t end there. Receipts enables you to add tax information, converts currency, and even supports the direct payment of invoices from the app.
Another incredible fact about Receipts is that it learns the logic and quickly adapts to your workflow. Once it understands the types of docs you manage, the app will automatically assign receipts to categories and contacts.
Price: $54.95 or $9.99 per month with the Setapp subscription.
Chronicle: Best expense tracker and payment reminder
If you’re more interested in expense tracking and paying bills in time, you should try Chronicle. This is a full-fledged finance management assistant. You can create bills in the app, set reminders, and always have a beautiful visualization of where your money goes. The app is available on iOS, too. Plus, it supports iCloud syncing, which eliminates the need to separately log data on every device.
Price: $19.99 or $9.99 per month with the Setapp subscription.
Best mobile receipt scanners to track expenses
Expensify for collaborative expense tracking
Expensify is a popular iOS and Android receipt scanner app that you can use to snap, save, and track bills. It’s majorly recognized for tracking an organization’s expenses. For instance, Expensify has an easy flow for sending receipts for approval and reimbursement. It’s especially useful for accountants and business owners who need a visibility over a company’s finances.
It works for individual use as well — for instance, if you need to quickly snap a picture of a receipt and save it on your phone.
Price: From $4.99 to $9 per month, depending on the functionality.
Shoeboxed for accounting reports
You can be your own accountant. Seriously. Shoeboxed is the best receipt app if the scope of your work is too small for hiring an actual accountant but too large for managing it all manually. It doesn’t have fancy features like self-learning and its UI is far from perfect. So the app is hardly a good choice if you need a solid receipt tracker for personal needs. However, it works perfectly well for preparing audit-ready reports on your organization’s expenses.
Price: From $29 per month.
Let’s briefly summarize all the features the mentioned tools have:
| Receipts(Mac) | Chronicle(Mac and iOS) | Expensify (iOS and Android) | Shoeboxed(iOS and Android) | |
| OCR | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Duplicate detection | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Self-learning | Yes | No | No | No |
| Simple import | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Search and filtering | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Saving to cloud | No | Yes | No | No |
| Set up reminders | No | Yes | No | No |
How long to keep financial docs
If the question you’re interested in is not “where” to store financial docs but “for how long,” there’s no easy answer. Most resources will tell you to keep the receipts and accounting reports for 3 years. But there are many nuances involved.
Prepare a secure spot for saving files
The first thing is to make sure the budget tracker you use has reliable local storage, or allows you to sync data to a cloud account. This way, your files will be safe throughout any period of time. For an extra layer of security, we recommend creating a backup of your drive — in case you store financial docs locally. Apple’s native Time Machine will work for the job. But it’s a better idea to create a bootable clone of your drive with Get Backup Pro — this will help you recover the files in case there’s an unexpected crash.
If you accidentally delete financial documents, don’t panic. There’s a way to revive them with Disk Drill, a powerful data recovery app for Mac. We hope you don’t have to use it, but owning Disk Drill can be a life-saver, seriously.
Documents you should keep forever
Not under your bed. There are specific financial docs that you should always keep in a secure place. Just like your birth or marriage certificate. While most people keep physical copies of important files, digital storage can be a very useful backup plan. Here’s a list of everything you shouldn’t get rid of once you capture it with a tracker software:
- Mortgage payment records. Basically, anything that certifies you’ve paid off your mortgage on property or land shouldn’t go missing. Any of these documents can have a crucial impact once you need to transfer the ownership to someone else, in the matters of property sharing, etc.
- IRA contribution information. This one is not so obvious but should also be noted. Ensure you keep IRA contribution statements for any nondeductible contributions. This will help you certify you’ve paid your taxes.
- A will. If it’s a handwritten document, make sure you scan it with the best receipt scanner app that uses OCR.
Depending on your job and activities, the other docs that you might want to keep indefinitely include equity and stock records, brokerage statements, insurance documents, debt payments, etc.
Expense and receipt tracking deadlines
Too much clutter is no good, though. A good spending tracker will handle it, but you’ll need extensive storage and great filtering features to keep all documents in. This is why it’s useful to know what documents can be removed and when.
Documents that should be kept for 7 years
- Employment tax records (from 4 to 7 years, depending on the country)
- Loss claims
- Unreported income > than 25% of your gross income
- Tax refunds and credits.
Documents that should be kept for 3 years
- Medical bills
- Insurance policies that have been canceled
- Property sales records
- IRS records on tax returns
- Credit card statements (if you need them for tax deductions).
Documents that should be kept for 1 year
- Any documents that you might need to use to dispute a transaction
- Canceled checks and paycheck records
- Bank statements.
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One year or three, the first step to financial security is getting a reliable receipt tracker. This will help you see a complete picture of where the money goes. So that you don’t have to feel a Lebowski ever again.
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Hopefully, this guide helped you pick the best solution for individual or business needs. Our personal favorites are Receipts for scanning on Mac and Chronicle for expenses tracking — both available on Setapp. If you need an easy-to-use receipt scanner app for iOS or Android, Expensify is clearly the winner. Among all the features you can get in a receipt scanning app, we can’t emphasize secure storage more. Because safety is the only side you should be on!