Repository:
https://github.com/SecUSo/privacy-friendly-finance-manager
Introduction
I felt sorry for my friend Daniel when he told me about what had happened to him. I could relate to his story, cos I’ve had such experience in the past. I’m talking of no other situation than having financial issues. Daniel needed some money to solve a pressing issue. Luckily for him, he got a job offer, which he got paid. After receiving the payment,
Daniel spent every bit of the money and didn’t even notice what he was doing. To sad part is the fact that he didn’t even solve his primary issue. Just like most people, the reason why Daniel is in this mess is his lack of money management skill.
One of the advisable practices when it comes to money management is usually ‘accountability.’ If you can’t account or keep track of your expenditures, you will end up like Daniel. Nevertheless, most of us still find it challenging to keep track of our expenses. But I’m glad that technology as provided different solution to curb these bad habits.
In this post, I’ll be introducing to you one of the best android mobile apps for tracking financial activities. So you never be a victim of reckless money spenders.
What is Finance Manager?
Finance Manager is an open-source application used for keeping track of our day to day financial activities. The app is one of many apps developed by a privacy friendly group named SecUso. Just like many other apps from this team. The finance manager is built to respect your privacy. Unlike similar apps, this app doesn’t require or ask for permission to access any part of your device.
To get started with the Finance Manager you have to download from this Link
There isn't any need for me to state the step by step guide on how to use the app. Cos the developers have provided that information on the welcoming screen of the app. Instead, I'll move on to discuss its features.
Project Update
The last version, v2.0.2 was released on May 23. The changes made included minor bug fixes.
Feature of Finance Manager
This app is a simple and straight forward app, and as such, it doesn’t have many features. So I’ll be discussing the features of this app under these two areas.
Tracking users finances
There are three sections of this app that help track your finances efficiently. Accounts, latest transaction, categories. With these three sections, it was easy for me to keep track of all my financial activities. These three sections are:
Latest transaction, categories, and Accounts. The latest transaction is where users add and see their latest transactions. So I was able to add my transactions successfully. Another exciting feature when adding a new transaction is the option to choose if your transaction is an Income or Expenses. With this option, the app can calculate users overall transaction, both expenses, and incomes and shows it on the Accounts section.
Categories-is another feature that makes this app unique. This feature makes it easy when creating new transactions. In cases of some activities which the users perform often. Let’s say ‘feeding.’ All they have to do is create a category feeding. So if you’re like me that budgets $100 a month for food. All you do is create a category for food and input a budget of $100, and then you choose this category when adding a new transaction that has to do with feeding. Being able to track my feeding expenses makes me very happy. I even discover during this process that food takes a lot of money. That’s why I’ve been watching tutorials on how to fast.
Accounts: This shows an overview of the user’s total expenditure. The spending information is well displayed, and I was able to understand the information provided easily. Another interesting thing is that users can add and monitor more than one account.
User Interface/Experience
The user interface and experience is also a significant reason why I love this app. The app uses a beautiful blue and white theme. And also, the app is simple and straightforward to understand. Incase users find it difficult to know how to use the app. They developers made sure to provide a learn section where users can learn how to use the app. The user experience of this app is excellent.
Comparing Finance Manager with a similar app (Expense Manager)
Expense manager is one of the most downloaded finance tracking app on play store with over 5million downloads. Comparing both apps, I noticed that the Expense Manager app has some feature that can't be found in the Finance Manager app. Such as the Note, Dept, Reminder, etc. Nevertheless, I would still choose Finance Manager over Expense Manager because of its straightforward, simple and clean interface. From the image above, you can see how clean the interface of the Finance Manager is compared to Expense manager.
Also, Finance Manager app is free and does not contain ads, while Expense Manager includes ads.
Pros
- It simple to use
- It privacy-friendly
- It free and open source
Cons
- Just one currency type
- It doesn’t have any security measures.
Summary
Financial freedom can’t be achieved when we don’t work towards it. One of the ways to gain that freedom is financial accountability. In this article, I did review one of the best mobile app named Privacy-friendly finance manager that used to monitor our financial activities. I strongly recommend this app to anyone looking for a simple, clean, and free app for monitoring their financial activity.
Resources
All the images used in this post are from my usage screenshot.