What are the “pain-relievers” of the money expenses apps? Just a few, and not many are covering the tedious and paper-filled life of a today shopper.
How many expenses manager are in Google Play? I counted at least 40 of them. What is the difference between the first 10 and the next 30? I venture to say there is the same situation as with Google search, you got first at the table, or advertised and get the thumbs up, then you might be visible. Essentially, the real hard problems for expense trackers are not solved in the first 10, or 20 or 30 apps classified in Google Play. One of the culprits are also the criteria for judging those apps, and most of the time, form trumps function, or beauty get the chair, the geek the boot. Here is a list of, in my opinion, must have features in any expense app:
- repetitive expenses or incomes
- notifications for expenses or incomes
- categories for expenses, incomes
- support for multiple accounts
- support for multiple currencies
- reports for slicing and dicing money flow, in any possible way
- charts for the above reports
- dashboard or “one-view-tells-all”
- back-up/restore in the cloud
On the second tier of features are present in just a few of the apps in the first 30:
- storing image of receipts
- keep track of your expenses/incomes based on vendor/supplier
- automatically notifies the user when certain thresholds are passed
This is not about our application, but how we ended up on adding “real-life-scenarios” to our T47 Expenses, that we barely have seen implemented in other apps:
Scenario #1 – Handling returns
Hello Costco/Walmart/Metro/etc.. shopper user! How many times did it happen to not find the receipt for an item which broke in the first two weeks of usage? The image of the receipt is the best of all, even if the company is asking for the paper receipt.
Scenario #2 – Handling warranties
Did your 10$ bulb with five years warranty just died after 2 years? Or the 10 years warranty on the Samsonite luggage kicked in? Kiss the receipt good-bye and swallow the cost. Well, with a photo of the barcode and the photo of the receipt the manufacturer has to honor the contract.
Scenario #3 – Money back on credit card expenses
Do you really count all the receipts for food, gas or restaurants receipts spent with your card? Our reports can do it for you, and you will know in advance how much money you will have in the mail, before they know.
Scenario #4 – Loyalty cards, my second wallet bulging with points and promises
You just forgot your TJX card at home and could not get the discount, or the local grocery just asks for their card? In the Vendor section you can take a picture of it and show it to them. Bye, bye plastic !
Scenario #5 – Showing your local store, you are a big spender, so can get a discount, sometimes
I will tell you my story. I was charged twice to one of the big chains here in Toronto. The cashier “pretended” to cancel the first transaction but mangled it. The only differences between transactions where a few items. In my discussion with the manager of the store I showed him that I usually spend at least a few hundred dollars every month buying, so the dispute of 120$ was totally insignificant.
Scenario #6 – Get all the information in one place about the shopping stores you buy from
In our case, if you are in the store, just press “Find me” and once you pick the store, everything is at your fingertips: address, location, web-site, phone number and you can add your loyalty card.
Summary
We have more cards in the sleeve, but is anyone interested to hear us out? I will follow with interesting features that some of the users are asking for, which could be available, but not for free, because are implemented in the back-end.