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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.
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.
Easy Budget App For Mac
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.
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.
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.
Whether you own your own business or you’re just trying to track expenses as part of your job, the following 10 apps will help you scan, track, and manage your receipts.
The criteria used to choose the best receipt scanning appsincluded ease-of-use, quality of scans, OCR functionality, and user reviews.
The best apps for scanning and managing receipts include:
- Expensify
- Smart Receipts
- Receipts by Wave for Business
- ABUKAI Expenses
- Genius Scanner
- Clear Scanner
- Tiny Scanner
- Office Lens
- Fitfin Budget App
- Zoho
1. Expensify
Expensify is included on most lists of apps to scan and managereceipts, and that’s for good reason. It’s an award-winning app that does justabout everything you’d need in such an app.
Expensify lets you snap a picture of the receipt, and itwill process the receipt photo to pull out all the important details.
The value this app offers above others is that it saves timewhen you’re trying to save receipts. This is critical when you’re traveling anddon’t have a lot of time to deal with them. The ability to snap a photo and runis critical.
A few of the best features of Expensify includes:
- Includes a feature to track mileage
- Integrated with your phone’s GPS sensor
- Import credit card transactions
- Integrates with accounting software like QuickBooks or NetSuite
Download Expensify: For Android, For iOS
2. Smart Receipts
Smart Receipts is another receipt focused app that makescapturing and organizing your receipts very simple.
It essentially makes your mobile phone a receipt scanner inyour pocket. On top of that, it’ll save you time when you want to generate anexpense report, and even lets you track more mileage while you’re traveling forbusiness.
It basically helps you track everything that takes time totrack when you’re traveling for your job.
The best features of Smart Receipts include:
- Customize PDF, CSV, or ZIP format reports youcan export
- Free and open-source
- Take receipt photos or import from your photogallery
- Tag receipts you’ve captured with metadata tohelp you find them later
- Track your mileage during travel
- Sync your receipts and reports with Google Drive
- Has an OCR feature to recognize text from yourscans
Download Smart Receipts: For Android, For iOS
3. Receipts by Wave
Another app focused primarily on saving and managing yourreceipts is Receipts by Wave. This app is especially easy to use, and syncswith your free Wave account for cloud storage of all those receipts.
The nice thing about this is that it doesn’t matter if youlose your phone, you’ll always have access to your important travel records viathe web.
Some of the key features of Receipts by Wave include:
- One of the best OCR text recognitions of anyreceipt scanning app
- Wave’s cloud-based accounting software lets youincorporate receipts into reports
- Scan multiple receipts (up to 10) all at once.
- You don’t have to be online to scan and savereceipts
- Edit notes to go with scanned receipts
Download Receipts by Wave: For Android, For iOS
4. ABUKAI Expenses
Abukai is a surprisingly simple app that has one mainpurpose, and that is to manage all your expenses without much effort.
Saving your receipts is literally a two-step process withthis app. You just take a picture of the receipt or invoice while traveling andsubmit the receipt to save it to your phone. The app processes the receipt tothe expense report you’ve set up, which you can send to your email or any otheremail address.
The app has received numerous awards from big names likeNasdaq and PC Magazine. Most of the praise comes from the way Abukai automatesreport-generation for you. Reports can be exported in either Excel or PDFformat.
The free version includes 12 expense reports a year, whichmeans if you only need it to send a single report a month, you won’t have tospend a dime.
Download Abukai: For Android, For iOS
5. Genius Scan
It isn’t just receipt-scanning apps that’ll do the trickwhen it comes to scanning and managing your receipts. If you think about it,all you really need is an effective scanning app to do the job.
Genius Scan is one of the perfect apps for this. If you’relooking for the simplest app for scanning and storing your receipts while youtravel, this is it. The app lets you export those scans to any of your cloudstorage accounts via JPEG or PDF.
It integrates with Box, Dropbox, Evernote, and more.
Features of this impressive document scanning app include:
- Document detection and perspective fixing
- Scan several receipts at once.
- High-quality scans
- Tag receipts to make finding them much easier
- All receipts are immediately stored on the phonefor best security
Download Genius Scan: For Android, For iOS
6. Clear Scanner
Clear Scanner is one of those scanner apps that make aperfect receipt manager. That’s especially true with Clear Scanner because ofthe built-in OCR capability so that text from your receipts are recognized andimported as well.
You can use Clear Scanner while you’re traveling to quicklycapture receipts and save them as PDF documents or JPEG format that you canattach to your expense reports.
The app automatically detects the corners of the receipt soyou’re only saving the receipt itself and nothing else, which can save space inyour mobile device. You can also edit the photo before saving it to yourdevice.
The app also syncs with Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive,Evernote, and other cloud services so you can access your receipts from anywhere.
Download Clear Scanner: For Android, For iOS
7. Tiny Scanner
If simple is what you’re looking for, then you need look nofurther than Tiny Scanner. It essentially turns your mobile phone into aportable document scanner. It’s also lightweight, so it takes up hardly anystorage in your device. It saves all receipts (or other documents) as an imageor a PDF document.
Because it’s so lightweight, it’s also lightning fast.
Even though it’s just a document scanner, it’s also a greatway to organize receipts because it includes the ability to sort those scansinto multiple folders. You can share the scans via email, to any cloud accountslike Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive, or even over Wi-Fi directly to yourcomputer.
If the most important feature of a receipt scanneris lightweight and speed, then this is the app for you.
Download Tiny Scanner: For Android, For iOS
8. Office Lens
Office Lens is a mobile app offered for free from Microsoft.It’s a document scanner but is especially suited for receipt scanning.
The scanning part works exceptionally well, since OfficeLens automatically trims and enhances the document so the text on it is easy toread. You can then export the scans to any Office app like Word or PowerPoint,of you can just send the PDF to your email or your OneDrive account.
The nice thing about using the app like Office Lens is thatit isn’t just for receipts. You can use it to scan and store any document anduse those scans in the many other apps that it integrates with.
It doesn’t only help you scan and manage your receipts, butit’ll let you be much more productive with all the paper documents you dealwith.
Download Office Lens: For Android, For iOS
9. Fitfin Budget App
When most people think of receipt scanning apps, they thinkabout business and travel expenses. But the truth is one of the most commonuses for receipt scanning is family budget planning.
Easiest Budget App For Mac 2017
One of the easiest ways to keep a budget is trackingexpenses. And the easiest way to capture every expense is by storing everyreceipt from each purchase you make. This makes it easy to remember everexpense you’ve had when you’re updating your budget.
Fitfin is made specifically for this purpose. You can addbudget folders to the app, and capture receipts that apply specifically to thatarea of your budget.
The great thing about using this app for receipt scanning isthat it has the bonus of helping you create and keep to your budget.
Easiest Budget App For Mac Download
Download Fitfin: For Android, For iOS
10. Zoho
No list of receipt scanner apps would be complete withoutZoho. Zoho is well known for offering cloud-based office apps like Email,Calendar, and more. But what many people don’t realize is that Zoho also offersa fantastic receipt-scanning mobile app.
This app offers access to all those Office apps. But mostimportantly, when you tap on Expense,you can quickly upload receipts by taking a snapshot of the receipt.
The Zoho app will perform OCR scanning on the receipt andfill out all the details into the expense form for you. This saves a lot oftime, and it lets you quickly apply those details to your expense trackingrecords.
Zoho is a highly functional app beyond the receipt scanningfeature, making it an easy choice if you want access to the full suite of Zohoproducts.
Download Zoho: For Android, For iOS
Free Budget Apps For Computer
Using Receipt Scanning Apps
The ability to turn your receipts from paper to a digitalformat can make your expense tracking much simpler. And with most apps offeringthe feature to even automate sending those receipts to expense reports couldmake your business travel effortless.
Best Budget App For Macbook
Choosing the right receipt scanning app really depends onwhen you need to scan apps and how you need to use them. Try out a few of theseapps and see for yourself which one is right for you.